Reacting, not to the offence against his personal honour, but to the insult offered a representative of His Most Christian Majesty, Father Joseph demanded an apology. Tilly tendered excuses and had the offender clapped in irons; but in spite of all this, Father Joseph had reason to believe that the affront was premeditated and that the whole incident on the steps had been carefully staged by Tilly himself. Well, calumny was what the servants of Christ had been taught to expect yes, and even rejoice in; for to be tried by calumny was a sign, if one were following the way of perfection, that God considered one ripe for the hardest lessons. To suffer slander without resentment or bitterness was possible only to souls that had lost themselves in God. At Ratisbon, Father Joseph redoubled his exercises of passive and active annihilation.
He had need to do so; for what happened at Tilly’s headquarters was only the first of a long series of similar trials to his patience. Pamphlets were hawked about the streets of Ratisbon, in which he and his master, the Cardinal, were denounced with that savage intemperance of language characteristic of all controversial writing in the seventeenth century. The pamphlets were in Latin and unsigned. Rumour had it that they were composed by two Spanish ecclesiastics; but the fact that the authors were Father Joseph’s political enemies did not prevent them from saying some very just and sensible things about him, things that were being said by men of ordinary intelligence and decent feeling in every part of Europe. People everywhere were wondering, like Flamel, how a Capuchin could reconcile his profession with the framing and execution of policies that resulted, as anyone with eyes in his head could see, in the increase of misery and crime. To them it seemed as though he were deliberately using the reputation of his order to whiten the sepulchre of Richelieu’s iniquities.
In the epigrammatic Latin of the pamphleteers, ‘huic ille tegendo sceleri cucullum praebet.’ (He, Joseph, offers him, Richelieu, a friar’s hood to hide his crimes in.) Richelieu himself knew very well how important it was for a politician to cover his actions with the prestige of religion and high morality. In his dealings with foreign countries, he always took enormous pains never to seem the aggressor, always to have the appearance of legality and right on his side. Nor was this all; for, in the words of an Italian diplomat of the period, ‘it is said that when Cardinal Richelieu wishes to play some clever trick, not to say some piece of knavery, he always makes use of men of piety.’ Bad men could never do the harm they actually accomplish, unless they were able to induce good men to become, first their dupes, and then their more or less willing, more or less conscious accomplices. ‘Huie ille tegendo sceleri cucullum praebet.’
What happens when good men go into power politics in the hope of forcibly shoving humanity into the kingdom of God? Echoing the wisdom of common men, the pamphleteers of Ratisbon had their neatly pointed answer in the best Senecan manner. ‘Sacrilega sunt arma quae sacra tractantur manu Miles mitrae imperat cum mitra militibus imperat.’ (Sacrilegious are the arms wielded by a sacred hand. When the mitre commands the soldier, it is the soldier who commands the mitre.)
The whole political history of the Church is summed up in those phrases. Again and again ecclesiastics and pious laymen have become statesmen in the hope of raising politics to their own high moral level, and again and again politics have dragged them down to the low moral level upon which statesmen, in their political capacity, are compelled to live. That the Ratisbon pamphleteers should have chosen to wrap up a great moral and political truth in a tissue of lies and scurrility was unfortunate; for by so doing they made it absolutely certain that Father Joseph would pay no attention to what they had to say. Father Joseph’s performance at Ratisbon was a miracle of diplomatic virtuosity. His first task was to allay the suspicions of the Emperor, who had been repeatedly warned by Richelieu’s enemies in France-Marillac, the Queen Mother, the great nobles, the extreme Catholic partisans of collaboration with Spain-that the Cardinal was plotting nothing less than the overthrow of Hapsburg power.
This happened, of course, to be true; all the more reason, therefore, for persuading Ferdinand that it was false. This Father Joseph accomplished more or less successfully by discrediting the people from whom the Emperor had received these warnings. They were people, he explained, whose personal ambitions had been thwarted by the Cardinal’s rise to power, or who objected to the Cardinal’s efforts to achieve what His Imperial Majesty was so wisely and benevolently trying to achieve in Germany: the union of a divided country under a single centralized authority. It was true that France had been forced to protect itself against Spanish aggression; but to pretend that the Cardinal or his master had any designs against Austria was a malicious falsehood ….
From his interviews with the Emperor, Father Joseph padded away on his bare feet to Maximilian of Bavaria and his fellow Electors. To these he spoke of His Most Christian Majesty’s extreme concern for the liberties of his cousins, the German princes. He was shocked to observe the way in which these liberties were now being menaced; his heart bled for the unhappy victims of the Emperor’s tyranny. The imperial army, under that arrogant upstart, Wallenstein, had been raised to fight the heretics; but it was being used even more effectively to subjugate the Catholic Electors. With Wallenstein quartered at Memmingen, this solemn Diet was nothing but a farce. Under the threat of overwhelming force the Electors were no longer ‘free agents; it was the end of that grand old German Constitution, to which His Most Christian Majesty and the Cardinal were so deeply and unshakably attached. Their only hope lay in acting at once, while the Emperor had need of them to nominate his son King of the Romans. Let them refuse even to discuss the question so long as Wallenstein remained in power. If there should be any trouble, Their Highnesses could rely on the Cardinal to come to their aid. The Electors listened and took heart to do what the Emperor’s military successes and his high-handed Edict of Restitution had secretly made them wish to do for some time past. They demanded the dismissal of Wallenstein and a reduction in the size of the imperial army.
Ferdinand had no great love for Wallenstein, whose loyalty he suspected and of whose vast personal ambitions he had been fully informed. At the same time he was loath at this particular juncture to get rid of him. After all, Gustavus was busy up there in the North, consolidating his position and preparing for attack. Father Joseph hastened to reassure him. Gustavus, he cried contemptuously, who was Gustavus? A twopenny-halfpenny little princeling at the head of a troop of starving barbarians. No, Gustavus simply didn’t count; pitted against the imperial army, he would be swept off the face of the earth. And, of course, if by some unlucky chance he should happen to give trouble, the Emperor could always call Wallenstein back to his command and recruit a few more regiments. Meanwhile with regard to the election, His Imperial Majesty need have no fears. Once Wallenstein was out of the way, the grateful princes would do what they were asked, and the fact that they had voted freely would redound enormously to the glory of the Emperor and enhance his moral authority through the Germanies.
All this was sound enough and, feeling that Wallenstein was a moderate price to pay for his son’s election, Ferdinand consented to dismiss his general. In September emissaries were sent to Memmingen ordering Wallenstein to resign. Father Joseph, meanwhile, had sent a letter to the general, reminding him of their delightful conversation about the infidels and advising him to submit without demur to the Emperor’s bidding. After all, he pointed out, Gustavus Adolphus was in Pomerania. With his magnificent army he was bound to win some victories, and the moment that happened the Emperor would be forced to come hat in hand to the only soldier in Europe capable of dealing with so formidable an enemy. His Highness would then be able to demand practically anything he liked; to allow himself to be dismissed now would be a stroke of the most consummate policy. Wallenstein accepted the advice, which was in accord with what his horoscopists (Johann Kepler at their head) had discovered in the stars. Obediently and without protest, he resigned his command, and with him were dismissed eighteen thousand cavalry and not less than twice that number of foot soldiers. Merely by talking, Father Joseph had won the equivalent of a major military victory.
Now that Wallenstein had been dismissed and his army cut in half, the Emperor turned to the Electors for his reward. But Tenebroso-Cavernoso had slipped up the back stairs and into their private council chambers before him. Their Highnesses, he whished, had scored a signal victory; but the fruits of that victory would be wasted unless it were followed
