Sweden emerged as a determined victor, with major territorial gains including control of the trade-rich Oder river and the whole of Western Pomerania, as well as huge indemnity payments and permanent representation at the German parliament.9 Many in Sweden felt cheated nonetheless, maintaining that the war should have been continued until the Protestant cause was victorious, or at least until more money could be exacted. Some of the clergy condemned the treaty from their pulpits, stirring up opposition to it until they were formally forbidden to do so. French gains were particularly resented, the more so as they had been largely brought about by Christina’s personal intervention. The whole of the central Rhine area and a dozen Alsatian cities passed into French hands, making a bitter mockery of Gustav Adolf’s last warning, only days before his death, that France must not be allowed to gain control of any German territory.10
France’s star had begun to rise, and its neighbour’s long bright day was drawing to a close. In a clear signal of the continuing decline of Spain’s Habsburg Empire, the United Provinces of the Netherlands finally gained their independence, and the city of Amsterdam won an important smaller victory by forcing the end of free navigation on the Scheldt river, so diverting trade away from Spanish Antwerp northward to its own burgeoning wharves. With revolts on their hands to east and west,11 and continuing war with France, the Spaniards could hardly afford to press for better terms.
For the land of the first brave rebellion, it had all been in vain. There was to be no confessional liberty in Bohemia or Moravia, and no restitution of the lands confiscated from the rebels. To Prague’s many exiles there remained two simple choices: embrace Catholicism, or stay away. ‘We are abandoned,’ a despairing Comenius wrote to the Swedish Chancellor. ‘You hold our liberty in your hands, and you are handing it over to our oppressors.’12 In France, too, the boy King Louis was ‘oblig’d to preserve in all and every one of his Countrys the Catholick Religion…and to abolish all Innovations crept in during the War’. Only in the German lands did a partial confessional tolerance prevail, a tolerance for rulers, if not for those ruled. By the principle of cuius regio eius religio, German princes might choose their religion, and their subjects might follow suit. After all the years of fighting, there would be no single faith across the continent. People stopped talking of Christendom, and began instead to speak of Europe.
It was all too much for the Pope, who saw in the treaty a certain end to the Catholic hope of a reunified Church, cherished since Luther’s first revolt more than a hundred years before. In a furious outburst, he denounced it as ‘null, void, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane, and devoid of meaning for all time’.13 As in Stockholm, so in Rome: France’s gains were a source of particular outrage; it had been Cardinal Mazarin who, four years before, had attempted to block the Pope’s election, and the two had nursed a mutual enmity ever since. Unable to strike at France’s heart, the Pope fixed on the francophile Queen of Sweden as the object of his personal vengeance. Proclamations were pasted up in the imperial capital of Vienna, inveighing against the impostor Christina, who had stolen the crown from its rightful Polish owner. The Emperor, though in private no doubt agreeing, was readier to recognize that the time for conflict was past. He saw a different writing on the wall, and quietly had the proclamations taken down. In Münster, Cardinal Chigi, the Pope’s unhappy representative, turned at last from the negotiating table with a resigned ‘O tempora, o mores!’
But if the Pope had lost his dream of a reunited Church and Spain had lost its prosperous Dutch provinces, the greatest loss had been sustained by the people of Germany, whose homes and farms and cities had been the main theatre of the war. The ‘great Effusion of Christian Blood’ had mostly been their blood; a third of the population, possibly half, had been killed. Weapons had not been the only threat, nor often even the main one. Hunger and disease, including periodic outbreaks of plague, had claimed the lives of soldier and peasant and townsman indiscriminately. Always on the move to the next battle or the next supply area, the armies had carried their disasters with them across the increasingly ravaged land, spreading dysentery, typhus, and worse as they passed.
The treaty brought the Germans peace, but they made no other gains. By the end of 1648, much of their territory was in ruins. The western regions and the three great rivers lay in foreign hands.14 The deep disruption of war had broken the many vital bonds of ordinary daily life. In some areas, there was no trade at all. Though property could be given back and titles reconferred, the ‘general Restitution’ occasioned by the treaty had no power to recreate ‘those things which cannot be restor’d’. In the bitter aftermath, a once advancing German political culture was dashed into the parochial pieces of smaller rival states. Thenceforth they would all defer to the bold young giant, France.
And in the end, the savage tragedy of 30 years turned to dispiriting farce. When a team of weary riders arrived at last with the Emperor’s letter accepting the terms of the treaty, it was found to be in code, and their dusty saddlebags contained no key. At length the letter was deciphered, but further delay ensued: in a near parody of baroque formality, it took the next three weeks to agree the order in which the different sections of the treaty should be signed.
It was not out of pity for soldier or peasant, or concern for trade and treasuries, that Christina wanted to end the war. In later years she would be quick to suggest the use of arms when it was in her own interest to do so. But warfare was quintessentially a man’s game, and no amount of little lead soldiers on her schoolroom table could turn it into a game that she could play. Like Elizabeth I of England, she might have ‘the heart and stomach of a King’, but unlike Elizabeth, she also had Axel Oxenstierna, who had been capably directing the war for almost fifteen years. While it continued, he was bound to retain his premier position in Sweden, and bound to detract from Christina’s own authority in other matters of government. Her stratagem for the peace conference was thus a perfect complement to her tactics at home. Her aim in both was to undermine the Chancellor.
The Chancellor did not attend the conference himself. Instead, he sent his eldest son, Johan, now in his middle thirties, through whom he intended to direct the Swedish negotiations. Johan was tall and majestic, but apart from this he could not boast – although he did boast – any of his brilliant father’s qualities. He was a headstrong man, inordinately proud, hot-tempered, red-faced, fond of wine, and very fond of women. He arrived in Osnabrück at the beginning of the negotiations to a guard of honour 500 strong, with a retinue of almost 150 servants. Through the three long years of talks, every day was punctuated by trumpet fanfares announcing the rising and the setting of the Chancellor’s son, and every meal in between. They were seldom blared at the usual times; Johan gave many elaborate banquets and generally slept late into the morning. Exasperated locals rumoured that he and his men kept supplies of bitter almonds to chew during the discussions – it was supposedly the only thing that could keep them sober.
Johan was the official leader of the Swedish legation, or so he repeatedly insisted, but there was an unofficial leader as well. Not daring to override the Chancellor formally, Christina had sent a second, smaller legation headed by her late father’s representative, Johan Adler Salvius. Of modest birth, Salvius was among the very few men in Sweden who had managed to rise through the ranks to a position of national influence. Trained in law, medicine, finance, and the science of war, he had also made a fortune by the shrewd courting of a rich widow. He was now almost sixty years of age, with an impressive record of diplomacy behind him, and he was certainly better suited than Johan Oxenstierna to lead the Swedish legation in Osnabrück. But Christina had lacked the