Emperor Ferdinand I, by Hans Bocksberger the Elder
So this week on
Resignations Privatcast we have the thrilling, and I mean thrilling, news that yours truly is going to be contributing to a new anthology of essays in the exciting area of allohistory. For those of you not familiar, this is where people posit alternate ideas about what could have happened, but did not. For example, what if Russia won the Ninth General War, or what if Russia won the Ninth General War, or really, what if Russia won the Ninth General War? Conceivably other scenarios are possible, but once you check out the actual websites where they discuss this stuff, pretty much all they're interested in is the versions of events in which we're pretty much all just serfs.
This volume however promises to be different. As we all know, no one person has ever managed to rule Europe. Not even when we add in geographic hedges like, north of the Pyrenees, or west of the Carpathians, or leaving aside Scandinavia. No one has ever done it, no one has ever even come close to it, and the career of the emperor we've been examining here at
Resignations Privatcast for the last year and a half provides a useful examination of the reasons why one man, or woman for that matter, can never wrestle the continent into submission.
That said, this book is going to examine the figures who came the closest to pulling off the unimaginable coin trick of uniting Europe under their rule, and then imagining that extra step with which they won the whole thing. I for my sins am going to be writing about Charles V. Others will be writing about figures like Jan Sobieski and Philip the Great. And lest any one think this anthology is just going to be one long series of love letters to Team Roman Catholicism, we have a lovely contribution from a lecturer at the University of Kaiserin examining what would have happened if, during Erste's succession crisis, when Brandon England and Wettin Germany stood at the altar and contemplated joining together in a personal union that would have created an empire stretching from Kurland to County Kerry, they had actually gone through with it. Instead, of course, it was not even the usual matters of inconsistent national aspirations, religious difference or clashing political cultures that did in the project. It was simply some of the most toxic family relationships ever to cross the European stage, replete with arrogance, grudges and in one celebrated moment, the actual throwing of a crown.
But that's someone else's story. Mine is Charles', and what would have happened if Charles managed to subdue his rascal Lutheran subjects. At which point, all he would have to do is conquer France, defeat the Ottomans, keep the pope of the moment from stabbing in the back, and really Europe would all be his. Imperator in fact as well as in name. Piece of cake. Really. In any case, I will be sharing more information about the book, including title, publication date, and the names of the other contributors, as soon as I can. But now, back to our story. This is
Resignations, our continuing privatcast look at all the great quitters of history, and the story of how they all came to make the decision to walk away from it all.
So, when the Elector Friedrich IV of Saxony met Charles V at Liege on Easter, 1553, so that they could together begin a campaign against the French, nothing was spared in the way of spectacle. It helps here to imagine a Germanic Field of the Cloth of Gold. At the emperor's camp outside the city's walls, with thousands watching, elector did emperor feudal homage on a stage erected for the purpose. The message, to the assembled nobility, knights and soldiers, and to the audience of the great and good not actually present, was simple. The Empire stood united against her enemies, the bloody internal strife that had cost it the Vicariate was done, and Germans now stood shoulder to shoulder, Catholic and Lutheran alike, to send the armies of Henri II home with their tails between their legs.
Of course what transpired over the months that followed was, far from the lofty expectations announced to the world at Liege, a set of marches more intended to avoid violence than to prosecute it. No matter how much either emperor or elector protested his good will and fidelity, neither could dispel the fear that the other would outmaneuver him, and either land a surprise blow himself, or sacrifice him through indifference to the French at some moment of vulnerability. After all, Friedrich had very good reasons not to place himself between the jaws of two Catholic kings. And Charles could not help but remember that Henri of France had declared himself the protector of the German Lutheran princes, of which Friedrich was most definitely one.
At the same time, the cost of what was now over ten years of continuous war in Germany had drained the treasuries of all involved. Until the defeat of Friedrich's brother-in-law "Henry IX", in the case of Saxony much of this cost had been born by the exchequer of the English king. Even so, the expenses run up by the war were enormous. Some of the present campaign against the French had even been funded by selling the jewels and dresses of the electresses Elizabeth and Dorothea. In that the army this act would help to field was being traded for the liberation of the Duke Alexander, we can only imagine one assented, and the other, had she been alive, would have.
One of the few practical benefits to these long months of ineffectual, and astronomically expensive, war-making in the west was that it brought the two chief principals close enough together that it was relatively easy to begin a back and forth in which the parties might find a way to peace. Unfortunately, these negotiations had to be done in the absence of the most skilled diplomat in the Saxon ranks, as Julius was off fetching home Friedrich's heir, and if possible finding that heir a bride from among the Wettins' English relations.
Everyone understood the issue of religion to be both the most intractable problem, and at the same time the one most essential to forging a lasting peace. Either side might be willing to make concessions as to matters of territory or succession, but neither had shown much flexibility as to the final religious settlement of the empire. One idea promoted by the imperials was that all sides accept the authority of a general council of the church. The one which had just been meeting at Trent until the invasion of the League of Chambord had given the pope an excuse to dissolve it, but it could be recalled, and this was the Catholics' favored position. However, also possible was the appointment of a fresh council following some formula that would be more acceptable to the Lutherans.
Here though, Charles's chief problem was not even Friedrich: it was Pope Julius III. As hostile as the reformist princes were to the idea of submitting their religious beliefs and practices to the approval of the officers of the church they had seceded from, the seat of power in Rome was still more reluctant to submit its prerogatives to a general council empowered to reform it from without and to introduce into the body of Catholicism any of the reforms it had just denounced as heretical and forbidden.
Thus if Charles moved to satisfy the elector, he would lose the pope. If he moved to satisfy the pope, he would lose the elector. Friedrich, without accepting the notion of a council as such, outlined in a hypothetical his belief that the only ways in which one would be acceptable would be not for Lutheran doctrine to be submitted to the approval of a prior body of church law, but for the two faiths to negotiate a merger on an equal basis. Whether he calculated this so as to be noxious enough to the Catholics he'd never have to worry about making good on the idea, we simply do not know. Nonetheless, it was the effect.
A second position, supported by Ferdinand and the party of Catholics who had lost patience with Charles's apparent policy of perpetual war on the Lutherans, and who were increasingly coming to think that without some immediate intervention by accident or design the parties would just backslide back into conflict, was that the Lutherans accept in principle the idea that the religious question would be resolved by a future church council, and the Catholics put off any efforts to reunify the empire under the Church until the completion of that council, but that all parties undertake to make certain that no such council would ever meet. This had the imprimatur of support from a relieved Rome, but Friedrich smelled the same trap he had twenty years before, that once he submitted to the authority of such a council, the other parties could change their mind, decide to hold it, and thus rule in the adverse and embark on a crusade in earnest against him. Or, those parties could change, peace-minded and exhausted Habsburgs be replaced by their fresher and more impatient kin, and once again the council agreed to on the condition it never to be held, suddenly could become a reality.
Thus when news arrived of Edward VI's death, and not long after that, of Suffolk's defeat and the succession of Mary to the throne of England, both sides were already frustrated with the lack of progress, either in the collective military enterprise against France, or in working through the most serious barriers to peace with each other. There were advisors to the emperor who counseled Charles keep the elector from leaving, just as those same advisors had wanted to seize Friedrich while he was kneeling before Charles on Easter Sunday. But if the ten years of fighting had not been enough to make Charles accept the permanent independence of the Lutherans from Rome, it had at least broken him of thinking that getting Friedrich in his custody would solve all his problems. Like so many other courses of action available under the present circumstances, that course of action had been tried before, and been found more than a little wanting.
And so, to the relief of one prince and the disappointment of the other, the elector departed Charles's company. It was on the long ride back to Saxony that Friedrich finally resolved the only way forward was to at last exploit the differences between Emperor Charles and his brother King Ferdinand. This had actually been one of the stratagems of Friedrich's father the Elector Johann some twenty years before, which had been set aside when Ferdinand had proven himself no less enthusiastic about the Catholic religion than Charles.
But matters were now far different: Charles had made war against the Protestant princes in a way that prejudiced and endangered Ferdinand's rule in Bohemia and Hungary, he had plotted to secure the Holy Roman throne for his son Philip, with a reversion to be held in Ferdinand's line of heirs, and he had compounded these failures by recklessly waging multiple wars against not just the Protestants but at the same time other powers, like Catholic France or their allies the Ottoman Turks. So Ferdinand, even aside from the ever-present temptation of the imperial crown, was more than ready by now to break with a brother he had come to find tiresome, overbearing and dangerous.
From Friedrich's perspective, this turn was overdue. In no way had Charles been moved to anything close to the consensus Friedrich and Ferdinand had reached so effortlessly at Schandau. The Saxon elector now understood: even with the metaphorical gun to his head, Charles could not leave off his role as the enforcer of Catholic orthodoxy in any permanent way. But neither could Friedrich deal confidently with Ferdinand so long as Charles held the authority as emperor with which he could wreck any arrangement Friedrich reached with the King of the Romans. So truly, the only way forward was to use Ferdinand to somehow displace, and perhaps even overthrow, Charles. And this had to be done now, for with the support of England lost, likely forever, Friedrich could not afford another campaign against the imperials. The one saving grace was that the imperials' finances were in such parlous condition that they could scarcely more afford to make war against him.
It was at Wartburg that Friedrich met finally the son lost to him for so long. If history does not record the moment of their reunion or the words they exchanged, it's likely because there was not that much to say: Friedrich's behavior over the years had been evidence of his feelings on the matter enough. Of more immediate consequence, Friedrich was able to meet with his close council, including of course the now-indispensable ducal prince Julius of Braunschweig and the Duke Johann. Together they decided Julius would bear a letter to Ferdinand proposing (1) that Charles leave the Empire for his other realms forthwith; (2) the rule of the empire be given to a regency council, consisting of the four secular electors (Maximilian as King of Bohemia, Friedrich as Elector of Saxony, and the Electors of Brandenburg and the Palatinate), chaired by the King of the Romans. Thus Maximilian would be preserved in his offices, while losing the ability to proscribe the Protestant faith; and (3) all princes who guarantee the freedom of Catholic worship within their realms would themselves be exempt from having their religious policies regulated by the imperial courts.
Julius was not slow on his return from Prague with Ferdinand's extraordinary answer: there would be no new regency council. Charles as emperor would be persuaded to leave, the regency would pass to himself as King of the Romans outright, and the powers of that office would be kept intact. With respect to the religious settlement, Ferdinand specified that he would grant no license under any circumstances to those who preached the body and blood of Christ were not in the Eucharist, which meant that religious freedom would remain limited to Catholics and Lutherans to the exclusion of the other Christian sects proliferating in northern Europe.
For once, Friedrich found himself favorably surprised by a Habsburg turn in the negotiations. As to the regency council, he had gathered it would not be that simple or that clearcut as his first proposal seemed. And as to the limits Ferdinand sought to place on permitted worship seemed to Friedrich far from unfavorable. Of course, Friedrich would continue to shield the other Christian sects, just as he had previously, no matter the commands to him from the imperial center. But if that permissiveness lay with him and not the emperor or the King of the Romans, that left him the role as defender. Even now, in the early years of the
tuer angelehnt, Friedrich sensed the political possibilities that lay in him being, if not the leader of a unified reform movement as he had dreamed before Luther's intransigence had prevented him, then their common benefactor and protector.
So for once the answer prepared for the Habsburgs, after so many decades of haggling and threats, was a simple yes.
Of course Friedrich knew that functionally this time he was giving up little. In the event Ferdinand did betray him, he would be in little worse circumstances than he found himself now. Crucially, he still would not be conceding the authority of a general council of the Catholic Church to render a judgment over him and his subjects. It was then with a grim resignation that he received back in late November 1553 not the final assent he thought he was sure to receive now from Ferdinand, but a final, additional demand: Albrecht Alcibiades was still free, and still terrorizing Franconia with an army of 5,000 mercenaries. Ferdinand would excuse Friedrich his earlier abrogation of his promise to fight the French, but only on the condition he dispatch Albrecht Alcibiades once and for all.
Friedrich's answer to Ferdinand was just as clear: Albrecht Alcibiades was a traitor under the imperial ban for making common cause with the empire's enemy France. Customarily, the reward for deposing such a prince would be that prince's lands, and that was the precise wage Duke Moritz had accepted from the Emperor to enter his service against Friedrich. Friedrich now demanded the same with respect to Albert Alcibiades, which would mean all the lands of Brandenburg-Kulmbach. Receiving this reply, Ferdinand fell mute. Friedrich took this as assent.
Thus it was in early March 1554 the Saxons invaded Brandenburg-Kulmbach. Friedrich was now ailing, and this time it was Johann who led the armies. Albrecht offered battle near the town of Kronach, the home and namesake of the Wettins' court painter Lucas Cranach. Here as with Moritz's final battle, superior numbers and veteran troops proved decisive, and Albrecht Alcibiades' army was dispersed and Brandenburg-Kulmbach overrun. Unlike Moritz though, Albrecht Alcibiades had value alive: if the Habsburgs were reluctant to recognize the Saxons' possession of his lands, it would be a small matter to let the feared general and brigand loose to menace them some more. Otherwise, it seemed plain to all the parties that in occupying Brandenburg-Kulmbach Friedrich had seized an additional bargaining chip, which he could conceivably trade for a favorable outcome with respect to the disputed succession of Hesse, or to all the outstanding questions that plagued the empire and its rulers.
Regardless, it was now time. It was late spring, 1554. The long-promised imperial diet at Augsburg was about to begin. And this was to be the real thing, with all the princes, even the ones who had so lately been trying to kill each other, in attendance. And it was to be for, as they say, all the marbles.
Next: war is over, if you want it.