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Rh province, and comprised the Hanoverian department of Hildesheim and in part that of Arensberg, Brunswick, the northern part of the province of Saxony as far as the Elbe, Halle, and most of Hesse-Cassel. The area was 14,627 sq. m., and the population nearly two millions. Cassel was the capital. A constitution on the French imperial pattern granted by the king remained practically inoperative, an arbitrary bureaucratic regime was instituted, the finances were from the beginning in a hopeless condition, and the country was drained of men and money for Napoleon's wars. In January 1810 most of Hanover was added, but at the end of the same year half the latter, together with the city of Minden, was annexed to the French empire. There had already been serious revolts and raids, and after the battle of Leipzig the Russians drove the king from Cassel (October 1813), the kingdom of Westphalia was dissolved and the old order was for a time re-established. At the congress of Vienna (1815) Hesse-Darmstadt surrendered her share of Westphalia to Prussia, and the present province was constituted.

 WESTPHALIA, TREATY OF, a collective name given to the two treaties concluded on the 24th of October 1648 by the empire with France at Münster and with Sweden and the Protestant estates of the empire at Osnabrück, by which the (q.v.) was brought to an end.

As early as 1636 negotiations had been opened at Cologne at the instance of Pope Urban VIII., supported by the seigniory of Venice, but failed owing to the disinclination of Richelieu to stop the progress of the French arms, and to the refusal of Sweden to treat with the papal legate. In 1637 the agents of the emperor began to negotiate at Hamburg with Sweden, though the mediation of Christian IV., king of Denmark, was rejected by Sweden, and the discussions dragged on for years without result. In the meantime the new emperor Ferdinand III. proposed at the diet of Regensburg in 1640 to extend the peace of Prague to the whole empire, on the basis of an amnesty, from which, however, those Protestant estates who were still leagued with foreign powers were to be excluded. His aim was by settling the internal affairs of the empire to exclude the German princes from participation in negotiations with foreign powers; but these efforts had no result.

A more practical suggestion was made by the Comte d'Avaux, the French envoy at Hamburg, who proposed in 1641 that the negotiations at Cologne and Hamburg should be transferred to Münster and Osnabrück, two cities in the Westphalian circle not more than 30 m. apart. A preliminary treaty embodying this proposal was concluded between the representatives of the emperor, France and Sweden at Hamburg on the 25th of December 1641. A dispute as to precedence between France and Sweden, and the refusal of the latter power to meet the papal nuncio, made the choice of a single meeting-place impossible. It was arranged, however, that the two assemblies should be regarded as a single congress, and that neither should conclude peace without the other.

The date fixed for the meeting of the two conventions was the 11th of July 1643, but many months elapsed before all the representatives arrived, and the settlement of many questions of precedence and etiquette caused further delays. England, Poland, Muscovy and Turkey were the only European powers unrepresented. The war continued during the deliberations, which were influenced by its fortunes.

The chief representative of the emperor was Count Maximilian von Trautmansdorff, to whose sagacity the conclusion of peace was largely due. The French envoys were nominally under

Henry of Orleans, duke of Longueville, but the marquis de Sablé and the comte d'Avaux were the real agents of France. Sweden was represented by John Oxenstierna, son of the chancellor, and by John Adler Salvius, who had previously acted for Sweden at Hamburg. The papal nuncio was Fabio Chigi, afterwards Pope Alexander VII. Brandenburg, represented by Count Johann von Sayn-Wittgenstein, played the foremost part among the Protestant states of the empire. On the 1st of June 1645 France and Sweden brought forward propositions of peace, which were discussed by the estates of the empire from October 1645 to April 1646. The settlement of religious matters was effected between February 1646 and March 1648. The treaty was signed at Münster by the members of both conventions on the 24th of October 1648, and ratifications were exchanged on the 8th of February 1649. The papal protest of January 3, 1651, was disregarded.

The results were determined in the first place by the support given to each other by France and Sweden in their demands for indemnification, the concession of which necessitated compensation to the German states affected, and secondly by the determination of France to weaken the power of the emperor while strengthening the Roman Catholic states, especially Bavaria.

Sweden received western Pomerania with Rügen and the mouths of the Oder, Wismar and Poel, in Mecklenburg, and the lands of the archbishopric of Bremen and the bishopric of Verden, together with an indemnity of 5,000,000 thalers. The privileges of the Free Towns were preserved. Sweden thus obtained control of the Baltic and a footing on the North Sea, and became an estate of the empire with three deliberative voices in the diet.

The elector of Brandenburg received the greater part of eastern Pomerania, and, as he had a claim on the whole duchy since the death of the last duke in 1635, he was indemnified by the bishoprics of Halberstadt, Minden and Kammin, and the reversion of the archbishopric of Magdeburg, which came to him on the death of the administrator. Prince Augustus of Saxony, in 1680. The elector of Saxony was allowed to retain Lusatia. As compensation for Wismar, Mecklenburg-Schwerin obtained the bishoprics of Schwerin and Ratzeburg and some lands of the Knights of St John. Brunswick-Lüneburg restored Hildesheim to the elector of Cologne, and gave Minden to Brandenburg, but obtained the alternate succession to the bishopric of Osnabrück and the church lands of Walkenried and Gröningen. Hesse-Cassel received the prince-abbacy of Hersfeld, the county of Schaumburg, &c. The elector of Bavaria was confirmed in his possession of the Upper Palatinate, and in his position as an elector which he had obtained in 1623. Charles Louis, the son and heir of Frederick V., the count palatine of the Rhine, who had been placed under the ban of the empire, received back the Lower Palatinate, and a new electorate, the eighth, was created for him.

France obtained the recognition of the sovereignty (which she had enjoyed de facto since 1552) over the bishoprics and cities of Metz, Toul and Verdun, Pinerolo in Piedmont, the town of Breisach, the landgraviate of Upper and Lower Alsace, the Sundgau, the advocacy (Landvogtei) of the ten imperial cities in Alsace, and the right to garrison Philippsburg. During the Thirty Years' War France had professed to be fighting against the house of Austria, and not against the empire. It was stipulated that the immediate possessions of the empire in Alsace should remain in enjoyment of their liberties (in ea libertate et possessione immedietatis erga imperium Romanum, qua hactenus gavisae sunt), but it was added as a condition that the sovereignty of France in the territories ceded to her should not be impaired (ita tamen, ut praesenti hac declaratione nihil detractatum intelligatur de eo omni supremi dominis iure, quod supra concessum est). The intention of France was to acquire the full rights of Austria in Alsace, but as Austria had never owned the landgraviate of Lower Alsace, and the Landvogtei of the ten free cities did not in itself imply possession, the door was left open for disputes. Louis XIV. afterwards availed himself of this ambiguous clause in support of his aggressive policy on the Rhine. The independence of Switzerland was at last formally