The History of the Thirty Years War | Page 7

the German States. This
circumstance could not fail to rouse the latter from their security, and to
render them vigilant in self-defence. Their ordinary resources were
quite insufficient to resist so formidable a power. Extraordinary
exertions were required from their subjects; and when even these
proved far from adequate, they had recourse to foreign assistance; and,
by means of a common league, they endeavoured to oppose a power
which, singly, they were unable to withstand.
But the strong political inducements which the German princes had to
resist the pretensions of the House of Austria, naturally did not extend
to their subjects. It is only immediate advantages or immediate evils
that set the people in action, and for these a sound policy cannot wait.
Ill then would it have fared with these princes, if by good fortune
another effectual motive had not offered itself, which roused the
passions of the people, and kindled in them an enthusiasm which might
be directed against the political danger, as having with it a common
cause of alarm.
This motive was their avowed hatred of the religion which Austria
protected, and their enthusiastic attachment to a doctrine which that

House was endeavouring to extirpate by fire and sword. Their
attachment was ardent, their hatred invincible. Religious fanaticism
anticipates even the remotest dangers. Enthusiasm never calculates its
sacrifices. What the most pressing danger of the state could not gain
from the citizens, was effected by religious zeal. For the state, or for the
prince, few would have drawn the sword; but for religion, the merchant,
the artist, the peasant, all cheerfully flew to arms. For the state, or for
the prince, even the smallest additional impost would have been
avoided; but for religion the people readily staked at once life, fortune,
and all earthly hopes. It trebled the contributions which flowed into the
exchequer of the princes, and the armies which marched to the field;
and, in the ardent excitement produced in all minds by the peril to
which their faith was exposed, the subject felt not the pressure of those
burdens and privations under which, in cooler moments, he would have
sunk exhausted. The terrors of the Spanish Inquisition, and the
massacre of St. Bartholomew's, procured for the Prince of Orange, the
Admiral Coligny, the British Queen Elizabeth, and the Protestant
princes of Germany, supplies of men and money from their subjects, to
a degree which at present is inconceivable.
But, with all their exertions, they would have effected little against a
power which was an overmatch for any single adversary, however
powerful. At this period of imperfect policy, accidental circumstances
alone could determine distant states to afford one another a mutual
support. The differences of government, of laws, of language, of
manners, and of character, which hitherto had kept whole nations and
countries as it were insulated, and raised a lasting barrier between them,
rendered one state insensible to the distresses of another, save where
national jealousy could indulge a malicious joy at the reverses of a rival.
This barrier the Reformation destroyed. An interest more intense and
more immediate than national aggrandizement or patriotism, and
entirely independent of private utility, began to animate whole states
and individual citizens; an interest capable of uniting numerous and
distant nations, even while it frequently lost its force among the
subjects of the same government. With the inhabitants of Geneva, for
instance, of England, of Germany, or of Holland, the French Calvinist
possessed a common point of union which he had not with his own
countrymen. Thus, in one important particular, he ceased to be the

citizen of a single state, and to confine his views and sympathies to his
own country alone. The sphere of his views became enlarged. He began
to calculate his own fate from that of other nations of the same
religious profession, and to make their cause his own. Now for the first
time did princes venture to bring the affairs of other countries before
their own councils; for the first time could they hope for a willing ear to
their own necessities, and prompt assistance from others. Foreign
affairs had now become a matter of domestic policy, and that aid was
readily granted to the religious confederate which would have been
denied to the mere neighbour, and still more to the distant stranger. The
inhabitant of the Palatinate leaves his native fields to fight side by side
with his religious associate of France, against the common enemy of
their faith. The Huguenot draws his sword against the country which
persecutes him, and sheds his blood in defence of the liberties of
Holland. Swiss is arrayed against Swiss; German against German, to
determine, on the banks of the Loire and the Seine, the succession of
the French crown. The Dane crosses the Eider, and