induce the Emperor and Gustavus Adolphus to settle their dispute by negotiation.5

6

As a result, a conference was held at Danzig between Gustavus Adolphus and the Imperial plenipotentiaries; but this did not bring an amicable settlement, and soon the Snow King was marching with his army across Germany. In the following years the King of Denmark repeated his offer of good offices and mediation; and, after the Peace of Prague, the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg and the Duke of Lünenburg pressed their interpositions upon the belligerents, without much effect." From other states came numerous offers of good offices and mediation, not the least hopeless and meddlesome of these efforts toward peace on the part of neutrals being the mission of the Duke of Arundel to Vienna in 1636 with the English King's offer to "interpose our mediation and credit with all the Princes and States of our profession in religion within the Empire to persuade them to submit to the Emperor, and accept peace." Akin to the British fiasco was the presumptuous proposal of the Duke of Parma in 1637 to mediate between France and Spain-a proposal which Richelieu turned down in coldly polite words."

8

Did the rejection of offers of mediation furnish legitimate grounds for offense to the Powers which had tendered their services? This

5 Chemnitz, op. cit., I, 28-36; Khevenhüller, Annales Ferdinandei, X, 1146-1147. G. Droysen, Gustaf Adolf, II, 125-139.

6 The Powers in dispute at Danzig did not limit themselves to the mediation of Denmark alone. Note the following extract from the instructions given to the Swedish plenipotentiaries in April, 1630: "III. Inquirent deinde, quinam Mediatorum vice fungentur? Et si venerint e Dania, ab Electoribus Saxoniæ et Brandeburgensi aut Civitatibus Hanseaticis, denique a Regibus Galliæ, Britanniæ aut ab Ordinibus Generalibus Belgii Legati, hi admittentur omnes, aut quotquot advenerint ab amicis. Nec repudiabuntur, si qui ab Electoribus Imperii conjunctim fuerint ablegati aut ab Infante Belgica vel Duce Bavariæ. Quod si suos Rex Poloniæ præsto habuerit, suamque interpositionem obtulerit, ne illi quidem rejicientur."-Rikskansleren Axel Oxenstiernas Skrifter och Brefvexling, II, i, 588.

7 Chemnitz, I, 318-319; II, 28-29, 116-118, 142-143, 231-232, 315-317, 435, 569, 619, 924-938, 1028-1046; Khevenhüller, op. cit., XII, 260, 1722-1747, 2340.

8 S. R. Gardiner, History of England, VIII, 158-159; Khevenhüller, XII, 1881, 2095-2141.

9 Avenel, Papiers de Richelieu, V, 1022; VIII, 323.

question was not discussed by Grotius in his De jure belli ac pacis, published in the year 1625. But the jurists of the later part of the seventeenth century who built upon the foundations of Victoria, Suarez, Gentili and Grotius, and who found the history of the Thirty Years' War to be a rich storehouse of materials to supplement the archaic collection of cases and precedents from classical lore accumulated by their predecessors, had more to say on the subject. Pufendorf, the disciple of Grotius, attempted to establish the principle in his De jure naturæ et gentium (1672) that a belligerent state was under obligation to accept an offer of mediation; and more than this, that neutral Powers might rightly compel a settlement upon terms which they themselves should fix by joining forces against the state that refused their manifesto.10 It was a project of armed mediation in German affairs, such as Pufendorf defended, that attracted the flighty ambitions of James I of England and his son Charles throughout the greater part of the Thirty Years' War; and perhaps it was the contempt which the Stuarts earned for themselves on the Continent by their ineffectual meddlesomeness that drew from Pufendorf the warning that only those princes should undertake "mediation by force of arms" who were able to compel submission to their award.

On the other hand, Johann Textor, in his Synopsis juris gentium (cap. XX, 50-61), published at Basel in 1680, took issue with Pufendorf and argued that no belligerent state was bound to accept an offer of mediation if it had good reasons for refusing. Furthermore, a refusal of an offer of mediation was not to be considered as a legitimate ground for offense or for a declaration of war. This position was also held by Wicquefort, whose celebrated treatise on L'Ambassadeur et ses Fonctions was published at The Hague in 1681.

II. THE PAPAL AND THE VENETIAN OFFERS OF MEDIATION

When Richelieu changed his policy of covert alliances for one of open warfare, the Papacy made an earnest effort to persuade the Catholic princes to accept the mediation of the Vicar of Christ, suggesting that a conference of plenipotentiaries should be assembled

10 Lib. V, cap. xiii, 7.

for this purpose. The Papal offer of mediation was accepted; and thereupon Urban VIII very skilfully cut short the diplomatic skirmishes as to the location of the proposed conference by himself naming Cologne. To this city in October, 1636, came Cardinal Ginetti as legatus a latere and commissioned to perform the office of mediator among the Catholic princes. The Empire and Spain hastened to applaud the zeal of the Holy Father and hurried their plenipotentiaries to Cologne in the hope of throwing upon France the odium of refusing the opportunity to make peace.11

The allies soon discovered that Richelieu at the outset had played a clever trick upon them by naming his brother, the Cardinal of Lyons, as the plenipotentiary of France. No appointment could have been more disagreeable to the Spaniards. The celebrated contest between the crowns of France and Spain was then at its height, and the rank of Alphonse de Plessis as a prince of the Church would entitle him to a place in the congress superior to that which the representatives of Spain could claim. The objections of the Court of Madrid to the Cardinal of Lyons were eminently legitimate objections in the opinion of seventeenth century jurists, but nevertheless they had the appearance of delaying the negotiations, and gave Richelieu the opportunity to pose as a great lover of peace when, after some delay on his part, he withdrew the appointment "in order to remove any obstacle in the way of the good work of pacification." 12

The Papal offer of mediation had been conveyed to the Catholic princes through the nuncios at the European capitals; but, although the Swedish Queen had an ambassador at Paris, no invitation on the part of the Papacy reached this dignitary. Such an oversight was, of course, consistent with the Roman attitude toward the Protestant Powers. Before the days of Martin Luther, Innocent III had declared that the Head of the Catholic Church was the "supreme mediator over all lands on the earth"; but in the seventeenth century the Papacy 11 Adam Adami, Relatio historica de pacificatione Osnabrugo-Monasteriensi, cap. ii, 8; Mémoires de Richelieu, IX, 71 seq.; Avenel, op. cit., V, 222-223, 463, 521-522, 525-526; Grotii epistola ad Oxenstierna II, ii, 104, 169, 217, 236, 260, 268, 289, 337; Bougeant, op. cit., I, 261-264.

12 Avenel, VIII, 309; Mémoires de Richelieu, IX, 74, X, 108; Grotii epistolæ ad Oxenstierna, II, ii, 260, 264, 268, 273, 284, 286, 294.

was still unable to reconcile itself to the accomplished facts of the Reformation, and at the conference of Vervins in 1598 the Papal mediator had threatened to withdraw if the English were admitted to the negotiations.13 This discriminating policy was poorly adapted to the needs of Europe during such a vast conflict as the Thirty Years' War. France could not be expected to run the danger of ruining her alliance with the Protestant Powers by negotiating under a mediation which did not extend to her allies; and it was too much to ask of a proud and powerful nation such as Sweden to participate in an assembly where its presence was ignored by the chief mediator. Moreover, the attitude of the Papacy was a stumbling-block in the way of Richelieu's great ambition to compel the summoning of a universal peace congress in which the Protestant princes of Germany might have seats and there add to the confusion of the Hapsburgs.

The unfolding of Richelieu's scheme of a universal congress began in the spring of the year 1635, when High Chancellor Oxenstierna came to Paris in the interest of the new alliance between France and Sweden, which gave promise of repairing the losses of Nördlingen and the Peace of Prague. On April 28, Oxenstierna signed the Treaty of Compiègne whereby neither ally was to treat with the Emperor save jointly and with common consent.14 But even at this time the Chancellor was far from being convinced that the alignment with France would bring good to Sweden and to the Protestant Powers in Germany, and that after all it might not have been a better policy to conclude peace with the Emperor, as the Duke of Saxony had done. The Regents of Sweden shared these doubts with Oxenstierna, and refused to ratify the Treaty of Compiègne for the reason that it bound the allies to refrain from separate negotiations with the Emperor.15 Richelieu was therefore under the necessity of winning at more ardent Swedish approval of the French alliance. For this purpose he dispatched the Marquis de Saint-Chamond to the Chancellor

13 Registrum de negotio romani imperi, ep. clxxxv; Hugonis Grotii epistolæ, ep. 709; Grotii epistola ad Oxenstierna, II, ii, 297.

14 Hallendorff, op. cit., V, ii, 318; Léonard, op. cit., V; Bernard, op. cit., III, 365; Dumont, op. cit., VI, 88.

15 Chemnitz, II, 775, 925.

and the Baron d'Avaugour to the Regents with instructions to secure the promise of Sweden to relegate all peace negotiations to a general congress at which the allies might meet the Emperor with a united front.16 In carrying out these instructions Saint-Chamond succeeded in obtaining from Oxenstierna a qualified acceptance of the proposal that the Swedes should join the French at the Congress of Cologne in treating with the Emperor. This half-promise was included in the Treaty of Wismar, signed on March 20, 1636.17 For the moment it appeared as though an important step had been taken in the direction of a universal peace congress.

Another formidable obstacle in the way of the congress remained to be overcome. Could the hitherto unrelenting attitude of the Papacy upon the question of intercourse with the Protestant Powers be swerved in the interest of the peace of Europe? On July 5, 1636, the Cardinal of Lyons wrote from Rome to say that the Pope would not raise insuperable objections to the presence of the Swedes at Cologne, although their plenipotentiaries would be ignored by the Papal Legate, and their negotiations must needs be conducted through other channels.18. While this arrangement indicated a concession on the part of the Holy Father, Richelieu was well aware of the fact that it would not satisfy the scruples of the Swedes. In his own mind he was convinced that the Papacy did wrong in not permitting its nuncios to treat with the Protestant Powers, that if the Papacy honestly sought to bring about a general peace by means of its mediation, then it was not enough for the Papal Legate at Cologne merely to tolerate the presence of the Swedish plenipotentiaries at the proposed congress, but that a formal invitation should be sent by the Pope to the Protestant belligerents. These views Richelieu expressed to the Holy Father through the French representative at

16 Avenel, VIII, 286, Mémoires de Richelieu, VIII, 344.

17 Avenel, V, 463. The fifteenth article of the Treaty of Wismar read: "Is eligatur tractatui locus qui æque commodus et tutus utrique sit qualis pro præsente rerum statu videtur esse Colonia."-Hallendorff, V, ii, 371. The treaty as published in Pufendorf's De rebus Suecicis, lib. x, 14, reads the same, except the word creditur is in the place of videtur. Inaccurate summaries of the treaty are in Londorp, op. cit., IV, 566; Léonard, V; Bernard, III, 375; Dumont, VI, 123. 18 Avenel, V, 526.