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Waldstein advanced towards the Lower Elbe, and took 

 a fortified position at Dessau. There he was three times 

 attacked by Mansfeld. On the 1st and on the llth of 

 April, 1626, Mansfeld was beaten ; on the 25th of the 

 same month he was put to the route. He reinforced his 

 army in Mecklenburg, and in June invaded Silesia with 

 20,000 men, in order to join Betlen Gabor. Waldstein 

 marched in a parallel direction, and weakened his enemy 

 liy skirmishes. On the 8th of September Mansfeld was on 

 the banks of the Waag in north-western Hungary, with 

 only one-fourth of his army, while Waldstein with fifty 

 thousand men stood between him and Betlen Gabor. This 

 prince made peace with the emperor, and Mansfeld, leav- 

 ing the remainder of his army to the command of John 

 Ernst, duke of Saxe-Weimar, fled to Venice, but died on 

 his way, in a village in Dalmatia. Christian of Halberstadt, 

 his fellow-adventurer, had died before him, in the 27th 

 year of his age. 



While Waldstein was victorious in eastern Germany, 

 Tilly carried on the war in the country west of the Elbe 

 against the king of Denmark. In consequence of a fall from 

 his horse, which had affected King Christian's mind to an 

 alarming degree, he firmly believed that God had chosen 

 him to be the champion of the Protestant religion. But 

 half of his army was destroyed by the skilful manoeuvres of 

 Tilly, and at last the king was obliged to make a stand at 

 Lutter am Barenberg, between Goslar and Hildesheim. 

 A battle ensued, in which the Danes were completely 

 dd'eated 17th of August, 1626), and Christian fled beyond 

 the Elbe into his dominions. 



Tilly employed the following year (1627) in besieging 

 and taking the towns on the left side of the Elbe, which 

 were occupied by Danish garrisons. In the month of 

 July he was joined by Waldstein, who, after his victories 

 over Mansfeld, had driven the Danes from the countries 



if the Elbe. Waldstein, after having put the dukes 

 (if Mecklenburg to flight, attacked the king of Denmark, 

 who had assembled a new army (1628), and in one cam- 



i his troops conquered all the continental possessions 



liristian IV., who was compelled to beg for peace 

 before the end of the year. A congress assembled at 

 Liibeck, and on the 22nd of May, 1629, Waldstein granted 

 peace to the king of Denmark, on conditions unex- 

 pectedly favourable : Jutland, Slcswik, and Holstein were 

 restored to Christian, who promised not to interfere in the 

 German affairs nor to make any furl her claim on bishoprics 

 on behalf of his kinsmen. Immediately after the peace of 

 Liibeck, Waldstein was invested with the duchies of Meek 

 lenburg, the dukes having previously been dispossessed 

 and put under the ban of the empire for their adherence to 

 the king of Denmark. 



One of the most remarkable events in the Danish war 

 was the siege of Stralsund on the Baltic, a town which 

 belonged to the Ilimseatic confederacy, though it was sub- 

 ject to the duke of Pomerania. Stralsund being occupied 

 by a Danish garrison, it was besieged by the troops of 

 Waldstein, who conducted the siege during the months 

 of June and July, 1G28. On the 14th of July the town 

 capitulated ; but before the Imperial troops had taken pos- 

 m of it, a Swedish fleet appeared off Stralsund, and 

 landed a strong body of troops, who took possession of the 

 fortress. Although the inhabitants of Stralsund had pro- 

 mised obedience to the emperor, the Imperial troops were 

 not allowed to enter the town, which remained under the 

 command of a Swedish general. Of this most unfair and 

 insulting interference on the part of the Swedes, Wald- 

 htcin was previously aware ; and this was one of the 

 reasons why he allowed such favourable terms to the 

 king of Denmark at the peace of Liibeck ; another cause 



-.i daring design of the emperor on the liberty of 

 the Protestant religion. Encouraged by the success of his 

 armies, and misled by imprudent counsellors, Ferdinand 

 II., on the 6th of March, 1029, issued the ' Edictum Resti- 

 tutitmU.' By this edict he deprived the Calvinists of their 

 religious liberties ; and he declared that, conformably to the 

 Mid Peace of Religion, all the bishoprics, abbeys, and 

 churches which had been taken from the Roman Catholics 

 since that, peace should be rentored to them ; and that the 

 Roman Catholic pOMewon of Protestant territories should 

 not be hindered from the enjoyment of the privilege-- 

 granted by the ' Jus Refotmandi.' The ecclena 

 states which had been ceded to members of the house of 



the elector of Saxony, who -was still an ally of the em- 

 peror, -were alone excepted from this ordinance. If 

 the ' Edictum Restitutionis 1 * had been executed, a general 

 civil war would have been the immediate consequence; 

 but it met with much opposition. Only a few Protestant 

 bishoprics were conferred upon Roman Catholic princes, 

 and the legal execution of the Edict was made dependent 

 upon the arbitration of a general meeting of all the 

 states. This meeting was called the ' Day of Composi- 

 tion,' and was fixed for the month of February, 1631. 



The religious troubles seemed now to be nearly at an 

 end. All the states of Germany wished for peace; and all 

 hoped that this peace was to be settled on the ' Day of 

 Composition.' The Protestant party was still powerful 

 enough to obtain favourable conditions for their religion. 

 The emperor's power had much increased, but the ambi- 

 tion of his counsellors and the haughtiness of his generalis- 

 simo, Waldstein, met with vigorous opposition among the 

 members of the Liga, who obliged the emperor to deprive 

 Waldstein of his rank as commander-in-chief of the Im- 

 perial forces M030). Foreign interference was not at all 

 necessary. But foreign interference was nevertheless pre- 

 pared by France and Sweden. 



Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, was master of all 

 the countries which lie around the northern and eastern 

 parts of the Baltic, and his favourite plan was to make this 

 sea into a Swedish lake. He was also a pious man, and 

 sincerely attached to the Protestant faith. Deeply 

 afflicted by the dangers to which this religion was exposed 

 in Germany, he formed the plan of becoming its protector, 

 and he pursued this plan with the more zeal and persever- 

 ance, as he was convinced that by becoming protector 

 over the Protestant religion he would also become master 

 of the Baltic. Immense influence in Germany, and the 

 possibility of being raised to the dignity of emperor, would 

 nave been the consequence of success in either of his 

 iimbitious designs. (Extracts of documents contained in 

 Breyer, Beitrage zur Geschichte des Drtissigjdhrigen 

 Kntget, pp. 210, 219, 221, 252.) France, then weakened 

 hy civil troubles, was unable to interfere directly in the 

 German war, and her minister, Richelieu, employed 

 every means id his power to persuade the king of 

 Sweden to make the first attack. Gustavus Adolphus 

 being then at war with the Poles, Richelieu tried to nego- 

 tiate a truce between the belligerent parties ; but the 

 emperor, anxious to prevent, any such peace, sent his gene- 

 ral, Arnheim, to Poland, with those troops who had been 

 employed in the siege of Stralsund. Although the Swedes 

 had first violated the German territory by occupying that 

 fortress, they nevertheless considered the assistance which 

 the emperor gave to the Poles as a declaration of war. 

 But, instead of attacking the hereditary states of the em- 

 peror on the Polish frontier, Gustavus Adolphus, by the 

 mediation of the French ambassador, Charnacc, made a 

 truce with the king of Poland for six years, at Altmark, in 

 the month of September, 1629. He then made great pre- 

 parations for an attack on the German countries along the 

 Baltic, and ordered his fleet to blockade the towns of Wis- 

 mar and Rostock in Mecklenburg, which were occupied 

 by the troops of Waldstein. The king of Sweden was the 

 more active because he was checked in his designs on the 

 Baltic by Waldstein, who had assumed the title of Imperial 

 admiral of the Baltic, and who, by means of the Hanseatic 

 towns, wished to restore the supremacy of the German navy 

 in the northern seas. But, having been deprived of his mili- 

 tary command by the emperor in 1G30, Waldstein saw him- 

 self compelled to defer the execution of these gigantic plans. 



French subsidies enabled Gustavus Adolphus to be ready 

 for the new war as early as the spring of 1630. On the 

 24th of June he landed 16,000 men on the island of Use- 

 dom, on the coast of Pomerania. He styled himself Pro- 

 tector of the Protestant Faith, and came to Germany at a 

 moment when the princes were assembled at Regensburg 

 for the purpose of settling their religious affairs, and when 

 the Protestant party itself had sufficient power to protect 

 its faith. The first act of Gustavus Adolphus was to 

 compel Bogislav XIV., duke of Pomerania, a Protestant 

 prince, to appear in his camp, and to surrender to him his 

 capital, Stettin, a town equally important by its fortifica- 

 tions and by its situation near the mouth of the Oder. He 

 then gradually occupied all Pomerauia, and on the 13th o 

 January, 1631, concluded a treaty with France, by which 



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