The Richelieu of the Emperor
Was Khlesl (Klesl, Klesel, Clesel) the emperor’s Richelieu? Minister-favourite, cardinal and bishop all in one person would suggest so. Both ruled their monarchies and rulers at a time when their type of First Minister was in vogue. The monarch lived in glory and enjoyed his benefits. His favourite in the government ran the political and administrative machinery. In this respect, Khlesl was like Richelieu. Khlesl was also a cunning politician who used reason and intrigue. It was precisely their rationality that made their actions puzzling for their contemporaries. They were inscrutable and wanted to be. This provided plenty of material for doubts, accusations and propaganda.
But Khlesl was also a very different man. The prerequisites for his rise were very different from those of Armand-Jean de Plessis, Duc de Richelieu or Francisco Gómez de Sandoval y Rojas, Duque de Lerma. These minister-favourites came from aristocratic houses. Their houses were networked with the aristocratic power elites of their monarchies. Their origins played a prominent role in their careers and their opportunities to govern as minister-favourites. Khlesl, on the other hand, worked his way up the ecclesiastical-imperial staircase through performance and ability. The baker’s son needed performance, intelligence, cunning and tactics, for which both bishop-cardinals are known, to get to a bishop’s chair, where Richelieu virtually began. Richelieu came to the diocese of Luçon as an aristocratic agnate with courtly connections.
Ahead of his time
The aristocrat Richelieu was supported by the courtly and aristocratic structures in France. Because of his origins, he felt connected to the aristocrats around him. The lower middle-class upstart Khlesl, on the other hand, had to contend with a court nobility that was conscious of honour and property. He increasingly experienced the nobility of the power elite as a camarilla of council dynasties that fleeced the emperor. His reproaches against the aristocratic courtiers and his demands for work discipline and performance provoked them. They declared Khlesl’s criticism to be the attacks of a spiteful non-noble commoner against loyal followers. They denied the baker’s son the necessary grit that characterised them according to their self-image. In the course of the dispute over the finances, Khlesl questioned patronage as a means of bonding between the emperor and public officials. Khlesl called for an official ethos for which there would only be sufficient support in the dynasty and the ruling apparatus in times of Emperor Joseph II. His ideas on the organisation of the Habsburg-Ottoman peace could also only be realised in the 18th century. One could say that Khlesl was ahead of his time. He had to work his way through social and political structures that did not allow for the lasting success for which he fought. He did find individual allies time and again. But on various fronts, he came across as a lone fighter. This role made him great. He had to assert himself and remain firm under difficult conditions with the help of his individual abilities. It seems inevitable that he failed in the face of fundamental opposition. The fact that he rose to become a minister-favourite and cardinal under these circumstances is all the more remarkable.
The right young man
The Jesuit pupil Melchior Khlesl was the right young man, at the right time, in the right place at the end of the 1570s. Rudolf II and his advisors were planning a Catholic agenda. The new emperor wanted to make his officials and the inhabitants of his towns and markets Catholic. In addition, the clergy of the old church needed to be revitalised and there was a modest willingness for self-renewal. The emperor’s closest advisors, however, favoured restraint. A large part of Austria believed in Protestantism and the means of power were extremely limited. They searched for a suitable clergyman for their cause and came across the prospective priest Khlesl. Having grown up as a Protestant baker’s son, he craved attention and a challenge. He aspired to be more than a simple parish priest or cathedral provost and later more than a simple bishop of Vienna. The convert Khlesl wanted to be at the forefront of a „reform“ of the Roman Catholic Church. Reform meant renewing the clergy and convincing or forcing the population to convert to the Roman Catholic faith.
This ambitious young clergyman turned out to be a multi-talented man in line with the emperor’s wishes. The excellent preacher Khlesl was well received by the faithful. At the same time, he got by without increasingly polemicising against people of other faiths. As a theological campaigner, he favoured moderate tones and also reached out to the Protestant population. With the help of the court, Provost Khlesl became the official and vicar general of the Prince-Bishop of Passau in Vienna. As official, he endeavoured to reform the priests in a moderate Tridentine spirit. He led the Religionsreformation, a sovereign campaign to catholicise the towns and markets of the emperor as well as the prelates in Austria below the Enns.
Khlesl was, contrary to what RJW Evans (Rudolf II and his world. A Study in Intellectual History) has implanted with great resonance in historiography, the emperor’s man and without the will of Rudolf II his work would have been impossible. Khlesl’s work as the emperor’s „general reformer“ reached its peak in the second half of the 1580s. Many council bodies and residents capitulated – at least formally – to gradual coercion. Khlesl did not act as a „ruthless counter-reformer“ (Ronald G. Asch). Until the end of the 1580s, Khlesl’s career proceeded as he envisioned it. He envisaged achieving great things as a general reformer and retiring as Bishop of Wiener Neustadt. But when he had to take over the administration of the diocese of Wiener Neustadt in 1589, dark clouds began to gather for his career.
Religious pragmatism
The religious reformation and the reform of the clergy were on weak foundations. Some of the people were in the second and third generation of the Protestant faith. They were also supported by the nobility, who had the privilege of being Lutheran. Massive protests threatened. However, Rudolf II and his advisors wanted to avoid this. Their reformer had to proceed cautiously. As an ecclesiastical reformer, Khlesl’s room for manoeuvre was also very limited. Parish priests and monasteries were unruly. New, trained clergy were rare. Renewing the established structures was expensive. The emperor, the prince-bishop of Passau, the clergy and the Catholic power elite were not very generous. Khlesl’s individual abilities enabled him to succeed despite the opposition. He managed to do what no one else could, according to the radical Catholic Georg Eder, Councillor of the Imperial Aulic Council. Khlesl was characterised by discipline and long-term thinking. He was able to stick to what he saw as possible for the time being without losing sight of the goal. He thought from the end. This character trait shaped his career and was fundamental to his policy of balance and peace as a minister-favourite.
The rational and pragmatic nature of Khlesl’s mission put him at odds with controversial Jesuits such as Georg Scherer. The latter favoured theological struggle, exorcism and miracles. Khlesl criticised Scherer’s methods and was attacked by Jesuits for his thoughtfulness. Khlesl was at odds with radical Catholics over whether miracles and an unshakeable belief in divine help guaranteed success. These differences remained with him until the end of his life. Wilhelm Lamormaini, Jesuit confessor to Ferdinand II, then rejoiced that Khlesl had admitted his error. Ferdinand II’s unconditional trust in God and not human prudence was the key to a victorious Catholic policy. However, the admission was certainly a figment of Lamormaini’s imagination or the result of Khlesl’s politeness. The latter remained convinced that a decision-maker had to rely on reason and not on miracles.
Competing interests
The Religionsreformation ran out of steam around 1590. The emperor tried to save it. He appointed Khlesl as the formal director of the campaign. But its support at the Viennese court collapsed. Their patron Leonhard IV von Harrach died, Archduke Ernst and with him court secretary Sebastian Westernacher moved to Brussels. The „Long Turkish War“ was also unleashed. Khlesl was able to rely on the new strong man at the imperial court, chief chamberlain Wolfgang Rumpf and his colleague Paul Sixt Trautson. But their power in Vienna was limited. Here, Chancellor Wolfgang Unverzagt, another Catholic upstart from Vienna, was seen as all-powerful. He fought against Khlesl.
Unverzagt knew that the Viennese councillors, especially the monastery councillors, were behind him. They had established themselves as patrons of the clergy. They lived off the gifts and donations of their protégés. In return, they expected assistance – regardless of their spiritual qualities. The emperor was often unable to pay his staff. The estates and benefices of the clergy had to serve as an institution for services for the court. Khlesl’s attempts to bring the priests into line with Tridentine principles were attacks on the income of imperial officials and thus on the privileges of the House of Austria. The emperor knew how necessary an attractive clergy was in the competition with the Protestant faith. But for a trained and professionalised clergy, income had to remain with the parishes. Khlesl was supported by the Catholic courtly establishment. Unlike the subordinate councillors, the latter did not have to suffer from investments in the ruler’s church. This aristocratic establishment was still small before the turn of the century and the time of its supporting investments in churches and monasteries was just beginning. The Catholic court dignitaries were able to live with the demanding demeanour of the pugnacious priest Khlesl and were inspired by him. Only with his further rise did Khlesl become a rival for them too. The various forms of resistance and the loss of courtly support in Vienna largely put an end to the Religious Reformation. As a lone fighter against the abuses in the clergy stabilised by patronage, he was in a losing position in Vienna. But he saw this campaign as his calling. He fought for it and his career took a new direction.
Aspirations in politics
The failure of the general reformer became apparent in 1595. Khlesl was offered the bishopric of Vienna. In the end, he could not refuse the gift. However, Khlesl resisted the intention to restrict him and his sphere of influence to the dwarf bishoprics of Vienna and Wiener Neustadt. He wanted to continue the catholicisation of the Fourth Estate. A position in the government was to make this possible. He had his prince-bishop and the Pope advertise for him as a political advisor. Khlesl already held the title of Imperial Councillor, had travelled to the Empire and Rome on diplomatic missions for Rudolf II and was intensively involved in Habsburg house politics in Passau. The Habsburgs wanted to see one of them as the next prince-bishop. Khlesl worked hard to achieve this and succeeded. Archduke Leopold prevailed against the Bavarian competitor.
Double-edged cunning
Khlesl immersed himself in the courtly world. He became a „Machiavellian“. He learnt to appreciate the double-edged side of his cunning. He used cunning and psychological tricks even as an official. He had to bring priests and inhabitants to Catholic discipline with little coercion. The most he had at his disposal in the religious reformation was the power of words and he could hardly fire his clergy. Nevertheless, Khlesl was extraordinarily successful. He was a gifted manipulator using language and detours. The tactical approach suited him. At court, he experienced the normality of camouflage and deception in the feeling that he was better at the game than his opponents. Khlesl and his rivals accused each other of operating with Machiavellian techniques. Khlesl was not a follower of the Florentine state theorist Niccolò Machiavelli. He Khlesl does not appear to have studied his theories. He did not adhere to secular power politics, as Richelieu is said to have done. The talk was of courtly dodges that were branded as immoral, i.e. Machiavellian. Khlesl was aware of the ethical dubiousness of his actions. However, he claimed that there was no getting round double-dealing and intrigue at court. And he was fighting for a good cause. He later declared to Ferdinand II that the use of deception and subterfuge was dictated by reason. However, fighting by hook or by crook did not get him into the Viennese government. It would take him until 1609 to reach a position in Vienna from which he could have reactivated the religious reformation. By then, however, it was too late. But, his efforts and perseverance to reach a position commensurate with his abilities – his talents, as he said – testify to his pronounced conviction of success and strength of will.
Towards the end of the century, the conditions for a churchman to reach the centre of secular power in Vienna appeared promising. The imperial court was increasingly counting on a Catholic victory. The young Ferdinand of Inner Austria showed his cousin on the imperial throne how to win regardless. As a prince with God-fearing determination, he quickly brought the Protestant estates, who were believed to be overpowering, to their knees. At the same time, the assertiveness of the troops for the Turkish war became apparent in Austria. The promotion of Catholic courtiers also bore fruit. Men such as the Hans Jakob von Löbl, governor in Linz, were now available as Catholic spearheads. Spanish and Roman influence did the rest. There was a growing feeling at the imperial court that Catholicism would triumph. Khlesl wanted to play a leading role in this. At times he presented himself as a radical fighter. He adopted a tough Catholic stance, which he had rejected in practice as an official in Passau. Conviction and strategy took over. He fought for the position of deputy councillor in Vienna. But he could not get past Unverzagt and his colleague Ernst von Mollart.
Family crisis in the House of Austria
Around the turn of the century, a dispute within the Habsburg dynasty gained momentum. The House of Austria demanded that Rudolf II place a successor on his throne. But the emperor feared for his power and his income. The convulsive self-assertion of the psychologically battered monarch against the pressing brothers, against Philip II and then Philip III, as well as the Roman Curia, also began to hijack religious policy. Two hearts were now beating in the emperor’s chest. His allies in the fight against Protestantism were at the same time his enemies in the question of succession.
Khlesl used the Habsburg turbulence as an opportunity. He had good contacts with Rumpf and Trautson, was a master of rhetoric and had a good relationship with Ottavio Cavriani, chief equerry (Oberststallmeister, chief master of the horse) and favourite of Gubernator Matthias. Khlesl offered himself to Archduke Matthias as a contact to the imperial court. The famous Bruderzwist in Habsburg (Franz Grillparzer) was in the offing. However, Khlesl remained a marginal figure for the time being. A personnel bloodletting in the Viennese government increased his chances in the battle for an influential position. Reichart Strein von Schwarzenau, Matthias‘ chief steward (Obersthofmeister, major domo) and confidant in house politics, died. Unverzagt was summoned to Prague by the emperor. Governor Ernst von Mollart had to go on diplomatic missions and was later also summoned to the imperial court. At the same time, Khlesl lost his support in Prague. The Emperor fired Rumpf and Trautson. The subsequent chief steward Karl von Liechtenstein was particularly indebted to Khlesl. Khlesl had persuaded the Protestant baron to convert. However, Liechtenstein’s room for manoeuvre at the imperial court was extremely limited.
Khlesl, nominated but not consecrated Bishop of Vienna since 1602, was now dependent on Matthias as his patron. He was able to make his mark in Vienna in two ways. Firstly, a militant spirit prevailed in the Catholic camp. It culminated in the decision of the advisors around Matthias and the Imperial Privy Council in autumn 1604 to revoke the religious privileges of the Austrian nobility. Khlesl was not formally involved in the deliberations on these resolutions. However, he drove forward the fight against the influence of the Protestant opposition at court and in the House of the Estates (Landhaus).
The other path was the question of succession. Matthias wanted to marry in order to improve his chances in the succession dispute with the emperor and his brother Albrecht, regent in Brussels. From mid-1603, he and his brother Maximilian, supported by Trautson and Khlesl, pressed ahead with his marriage. The emperor responded to Khlesl’s efforts to win the Bavarian princess Magdalena for Matthias. Rudolf II expelled Khlesl from Vienna. At the same time, the emperor’s struggle against his relatives intensified. His defensive struggle, especially against his brother Matthias, grew from a fraternal quarrel to a fratricidal war.
Stephan Bocskai
The balance of power began to shift in 1604 when Prague and Vienna sought to seal the end of the Austrian estates‘ opposition. An emperor intoxicated by the glory of generalship, fuelled by Spain and Rome, overstretched his power and this meant above all his financial resources in the war against the Ottoman Empire and against the mostly Protestant nobility in Hungary and Transylvania. The rollback by the troops of the Transylvanian prince Stephan Bocskai shook the imperial strength in the struggle with the estates of his lands. The Protestant nobility in Hungary, the imperial hereditary lands and the Bohemian crown lands gained new strength. This forced the emperor and Matthias, as well as the Catholic nobility and the ambitious Catholic clergy, into a battle of retreat. Despite this, Rudolf II refused to back down from his war policy. This provided the decisive impetus for the quarrel between brothers and cousins to turn into a military coup.
At the instigation of the Curia, Khlesl had been back in Vienna since the beginning of 1606. The gubernator’s agenda included peace negotiations with Bocskai and the Turks. Khlesl was not one of the key advisors. But he already had Matthias‘ ear. At times, he was able to persuade him to favour alternatives to the policies of his key advisors. Khlesl favoured a dynastic-catholic approach in order to overcome the crisis of the House of Austria without making major concessions to the Protestant nobility. To this end, the archdukes agreed on a secret treaty devised by Khlesl. But this was not worth much. The differing interests of the Habsburgs and the Bavarian dukes involved meant that the project had no chance of success. The power option left to Matthias was an alliance with the Estates. In this way, the Catholic realpolitikers around Karl von Liechtenstein determined political developments in Vienna.
Matthias‘ break with his brother was driven in particular by former dignitaries of the emperor and Hungarian nobles. Khlesl looked on and pleaded unsuccessfully with Rudolf II in favour of his solution to the house crisis. He endeavoured to find the next, also closed back door for the emperor’s brother, who was well aware of this.
It was the coup with the annoyed dignitaries and the opposition, that made Matthias King of Hungary and ruler of Austria and Moravia.
Khlesl participated vehemently in the following power struggle in Vienna. It was fought over influence at Matthias‘ court as well as over the political and religious costs of the fraternal coup. The denominational concessions demanded of the estates‘ opposition particularly hurted Khlesl. His success as a general reformer was under threat. He fiercely resisted concessions to Matthias‘ Protestant allies. The Bavarian marriage and a united House of Austria were supposed to help overcome the crisis. Once again he failed. The field belonged to the Liechtenstein camp. The latter negotiated a treaty, the so-called Kapitulationsresolution, with the Austrian estates‘ opposition.
Minister-favourite at last
Khlesl’s renewed defeat was another stage in his ascent. The bishop climbed to the position of royal minister-favourite. King Matthias‘ attitude was decisive. He quarrelled with the concessions made to the Protestants. He was unable to cope with the harsh criticism from Catholics and his own relatives. This gave Khlesl’s career a resounding boost. His rival Liechtenstein left the field. Prince Liechtenstein made a few more attempts to get Khlesl out of the saddle. But at the Habsburg family reunion at the end of 1611, he was forced to accept defeat and withdraw. In 1609, Khlesl had six months to fight against the concessions. But the pressure from the estates and an emperor thirsting for revenge, from the House of Austria and from the Catholic realpolitikers got out of hand. Khlesl capitulated. He officially recognised the concessions. He accepted his limits and switched to the pragmatism that had characterised his work as an official and general reformer during the 1580s. He was once again in charge and emphasised responsibility. He limited himself to taking action against Protestant positions and influences on a small scale.
Archduke Leopold caused the next spiral in the fraternal quarrel. The young prince-bishop of Passau dreamed of the imperial throne. Rudolf II had put this flea in his ear. Leopold opposed his cousin Matthias and marched to Prague with the Passau army. The coup and his debacle brought Matthias the crown of Bohemia and Khlesl to Prague in the spring of 1611. Here he acted as Privy Councillor. He was not actually entitled to this status. The presidency of the Privy Council had previously been held by Count Trautson – an old, well-connected dignitary who had supported Khlesl as an official. In Prague, Khlesl distanced himself on all sides from his harsh, religiously based policy against the Protestants. He emphasised the need for a realpolitik approach. In this respect, the interpretation that Khlesl had turned into an out-and-out politician in these months cannot be the fundamental misjudgement that the historian Heinz Angermeier saw in it. Khlesl saw himself as a realpolitiker, a politician who analysed the situation dispassionately. However, this did not mean that he had buried his religious goals. The impression or accusation that he had left his church behind with this policy was not only fuelled by his Catholic opponents. It was also fuelled by the ideals of Catholic historians such as Ludwig von Pastor and Johann Rainer. In Khlesl’s case, the coolly calculating politician pushed the prince of the church into the background, Pastor judged. The assumed or hoped-for contrast between politician and bishop, ultimately between cold reason and warming faith, made it difficult to take a differentiated view of the political theologian Khlesl.
Reason and compromise policy
In Prague, Khlesl’s eyes were focussed on the Roman-German royal election. The prospects for Matthias were sobering. The ecclesiastical electors, and with them probably Electoral Saxony, favoured Archduke Albrecht as the future emperor. In addition, an over-indebted Matthias, gagged by his own estates, wanted to become emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Khlesl openly adopted an attitude and a policy that alienated him from the Catholic camp. He opened his arms to the Correspondents, the Protestant action party in the Empire. He joined the empire-wide circle of radicals, realpolitikers and false players who wanted to make their mark on imperial politics in a critical phase. Despite adverse circumstances, Khlesl succeeded in electing Matthias as emperor. Matthias owed the imperial crown to the Protestant, especially the Reformed electors. The ecclesiastical electors rejected him. Khlesl realised how important the Protestant wing of the electoral college was. He was convinced that he had to win over the correspondents, especially the Electoral Palatinate camp, in favour of electing the next Habsburg and for a functioning Imperial Diet (Reichstag). However, this required some concessions from the Catholic camp.
Khlesl rose to become the head and motor of the imperial government. At the beginning of 1613, he won the presidency of the Privy Council. He left Trautson behind him as the last co-favourite. However, Khlesl owed his position to a weak emperor. Matthias was unable to give him the necessary backing to assert himself emphatically in the ruling apparatus. Matthias had to accept many reprimands from his minister-favourite for his lack of interest. The emperor allowed Khlesl to use criticising and thus humiliating language, which the court nobility resented. The willingness to talk his head off certainly contributed to the great trust that Matthias and his wife Anna placed in their minister-favourite.
Khlesl’s defeats allowed him to climb higher and higher. They were part of his success story. But the retreat battles left their marks. He became increasingly convinced of the Habsburgs‘ weakness. A scarred Matthias had to assume the office of emperor in a divided Roman-German Empire. In the truce with the States General, a part of Netherlands, Spain had shown how limited the resources of its Habsburg brother were. Khlesl therefore favoured responsibility, reason and a policy of compromise. He did not believe that power politics in the spirit of religious and legal superiority had any real chance of success. Khlesl was a man who believed in his wisdom. That is why the conviction that had congealed from failure and success, together with his self-confidence, which had been strengthened by his rise, was a powerful defence against challenges. He propagated the primacy of politics to both sides and the duty to maintain the status quo on his own side. In the face of a stalemate, he declared that a defensive policy and a political interpretation of the Religious Peace must ensure the continued existence of the Catholic Church and the House of Austria.
The policy of damage limitation made him appear increasingly suspicious to the die-hard Catholics. From 1606, he increasingly became the man with the impenetrable arts for the Curia and, from 1611, an opponent. Those Catholics who, according to Khlesl, wanted to go the straight path, fought against giving in on matters of faith in order to secure the future of the papal church and the Catholic camp. He relied on a very long breath and detours. At the same time, the militant Protestants in particular did not accept his change of course. His strategy of postponing the desired goal into the future suffered from a fundamental flaw. He lacked a supporting vision for the present. Peace, functioning imperial institutions and „old German trust“ as the ideal bond of the Roman-German Empire did not have the necessary appeal in view of the chances of escalation identified by the confessional camps and the European powers.
Individual opportunities
Could Khlesl, as the Emperor’s minister-favourite, have been the right man, at the right time, in the right place? Did his abilities and his room for manoeuvre open up tangible opportunities for him to take developments in a direction other than war? Did his imperial policy, as Angermeier believed, offer a real alternative to the course of history? Khlesl certainly had the makings of extraordinary political achievements. The peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire is the prime example of this. Enforcing peace against the warring faction at the imperial court proved his mastery as a skilful negotiator and his resilience in the face of opposition. But he had allies. The High Porte in Constantinople wanted peace, as did the majority of the estates that Khlesl had so scolded. Compared to his other challenges, these peace negotiations were therefore conducted under conditions that were favourable to him. And Khlesl pursued a policy in various theatres that met with diverse, fierce resistance.
Obstacle Government
Khlesl’s room for manoeuvre suffered from the composition of the government. The personnel of the imperial court was determined by the different logics that Khlesl wanted and had to fulfil. One logic was the logic of balance and compromise. He even appointed Lutheran noblemen to ministerial posts. For the government of an imperial leader committed to peace, this practice took precedence over the parties. But Khlesl gave the Catholics the upper hand in the ruling apparatus. This did not fundamentally contradict the logic of equalisation. Catholic ministers and dignitaries such as Obersthofmeister Friedrich von Fürstenberg were certainly in favour of understanding. However, the primacy of the Catholic advisors also meant involving those Catholic forces in the empire that did not have a compromise in mind. This brought radical Catholic actors on board, which had a fatal effect. Khlesl had to work with the advicers of Rudolf II. The latter had increasingly abandoned an imperial policy above the confessional parties and sided with the Catholic camp. At the same time, the House of Austria, which was becoming more and more radically Catholic, was making demands.
Like Richelieu, Khlesl had to assert himself against his radical catholic enemies of heretics, his Dévots. Catholic agitators such as Imperial Vice-Chancellor Hans Ludwig von Ulm and Minister Andreas Hannewaldt sat at the council table. The President of the Imperial Aulic Council, Johann Georg von Hohenzollern, campaigned for an imperial war against the Electoral Palatinate camp. Unlike Richelieu, Khlesl did not have the power to eliminate the Dévots, and Matthias did not have the strength to keep their supporters in the House of Austria and among the imperial princes out of imperial politics. The logic of involving the parties in the appointment of the councillors weakened the position of the minister-favourite immensely. His personnel policy, however, shows how little he was the egomaniac allegedly driven by hatred and revenge. He brought advisors to Rudolf II such as Hannewaldt and Duke Heinrich Julius of Brunswick onto the Privy Council. They had previously fought him passionately. In his eyes, reason of state demanded their commitment. So he put his resentments – if he felt them – to one side.
Hostile archdukes
Khlesl’s room for manoeuvre for a successful equalisation policy suffered from resistance from the House of Austria. The headwinds from Innsbruck, Graz, Brussels and Madrid were too strong and Matthias too weak to shield Khlesl. Favourite-minister Lerma’s course and the understanding of the Spanish ambassador Baltasar de Zúñiga may have helped him somewhat. But they did not offer any real support in imperial politics.
For around 20 years, Khlesl performed an increasingly hostile pas de deux with Archduke and German Master (Deutschmeister) Maximilian, Grandmaster of the Teutonic Order. The dance got off to a lively start. Maximilian nominated Khlesl as Bishop of Vienna and withdrew the nomination after a scandal. The rebellious cathedral provost had a different idea of his future than the German Master, guided by advisors such as Unverzagt. Maximilian was close to his brother Matthias. He supported him in his endeavours for the crown of Rudolf II. During the fraternal quarrel, the German Master backed the noble Realpolitikers around Matthias. At the same time, he had the Protestant electors in particular in mind for the Roman-German royal election. He was interested in dialogue with the Protestants. He fought against the influence of a Khlesl who argued strongly in favour of Catholicism. This changed almost 180 degrees under Matthias as emperor. The German Master was now vehemently in favour of a future Emperor Ferdinand II. He became an advocate of a hard Catholic line. He did not even shy away from the use of military force. Khlesl, on the other hand, favoured a political way of securing the succession. Maximilian showed no sympathy for this.
Khlesl was looking for the right „composition“ for the confessional dispute to enable the election of the king and the Reichstag. German Master Maximilian declared this to be the subversive activities of the minister-favourite. Maximilian remained a voice competing with Khlesl in the ear of the emperor. At the same time, he and his cousin Ferdinand repeatedly represented the emperor as gubernators in Vienna. This helped them to form and strengthen a party of archdukes at the imperial court consisting of opponents of Khlesl. Supported by militant Spaniards such as Ambassador Íñigo Vélez de Guevara, Conde de Oñate, they favoured a tough and belligerent stance towards the Correspondents, Ottomans, Transylvania and Venice. The imperial party with Khlesl, Johann Eusebius Khuen von Belasy and Maximilian von Trauttmansdorff pursued a comparative, peace-orientated imperial policy and more independence from Spain. Khlesl resisted the rule of Madrid at the imperial court. Matthias let Khlesl have his way and shared his views. However, he did not stand by his favourite-minister against the Habsburgs and the archduke party as emphatically as the latter needed.
Murder or imprisonment
The future of Ferdinand and the House of Austria in particular divided Khlesl and the German Master. In the latter’s eyes, the minister-favourite boycotted the speedy election of a king in the Roman-German Empire. The dispute between the German Master and Khlesl fuelled Khlesl’s poor image. The judgement of the German Master carried particular weight for the politically and Habsburg-minded historians of the 19th century. The favourite-minister was working against Archduke Ferdinand so as not to have to give up any of his power, was one of the central accusations. Maximilian and his camp interpreted or discredited Khlesl’s policy of composition and succession as pure preservation of power. Whoever suits them follows them – to this day. This view is reinforced by Khlesl’s opacity. The will to power for the sake of power probably played a role for Khlesl. Commitment and resilience required an enormous source of strength. It was not possible without a strong ego. However, holding on to the power to shape events in order to enforce his policy of equalisation in the empire, with the Ottomans or Venice, was at least as much of a driving force. A policy favourable to the archdukes would also have been the right strategy for maintaining his personal power. However, Khlesl would have had to sacrifice his conviction, his belief in his insight.
To devalue Khlesl’s fight for concessions to an attitude does not do justice to his efforts. And why should mere posturing turn the Catholic camp against Khlesl? To explain his endeavours in these conflicts as a pure desire to govern or hatred of Ferdinand II was ammunition in courtly shooting and a search for meaning in a policy that was not understood. Khlesl certainly practised delaying tactics in his endeavours to make Archduke Ferdinand a Roman-German king even as a simple sovereign of Inner Austria. However, this is understandable. The German Master and the Imperial Chancellor Johann Schweikard, Archbishop and Elector of Mainz, as the main players in this matter provide a convincing argument in favour of this. They were certain that they would be able to organise Ferdinand’s election. However, they also believed that military force was necessary to enforce the election against the reformed electors and the correspondents. Their policy amounted to war and Khlesl rejected the war. He regarded it as ruinous for the House of Austria and the Holy Roman Empire.
The radicalism that Maximilian developed against obstacles to succession affected the correspondents and Khlesl. The Grand Master’s desire to get Khlesl out of the way grew. He saw the minister-favourite as the plague and the devil of the House of Austria. Taking Khlesl down became his obsession. He even contemplated the murder of the cardinal. Ferdinand put the brakes on his cousin. In addition to the accusation of delaying the Electors‘ Diet, there was the defenestration in Prague (Fenstersturz). Khlesl did not react as belligerently as Maximilian and Ferdinand had imagined. The assassination attempts on Khlesl in Pressburg were probably carried out at Maximilian’s behest. They failed. Cousin Ferdinand had already suggested kidnapping as a milder way of getting rid of Khlesl a year and a half earlier.
Challenging power elite
Khlesl’s dispute with the archduke’s party was more than just a dispute about faith and political direction. The baker’s son was engaged in a fundamental struggle with the aristocratic power elite. The dispute accompanied Khlesl’s reign insidiously, as the court nobility resisted instructions and criticism from an upstart. Khlesl demanded due performance. This offended the nobility’s sense of honour. The dispute ignited violently over money. The struggle over the monarchy’s income and Khlesl’s relationship with money provided plenty of material for accusations and slander. Unlike Richelieu, he did not see income as a prerequisite for developing extraordinary splendour. He did not live in splendour. This is likely to have fuelled fantasies about his hidden treasures or those deposited in Venice. After his fall, the disappointment was great. His fortune consisted largely of the debts of others – especially the emperor.
He endeavoured to secure ample benefices for himself and the diocese of Vienna. He did not want to be crushed by debt like his predecessor. A secure income gave him freedom of action. Debts seemed threatening to him. His lower middle-class background was the inspiration. Getting into debt meant doing badly. For him, debt meant insecurity and a lack of control.
Khlesl was surrounded by a courtly and military aristocracy, whose economic existence included incurring debts. Here, loans were part of the pursuit of profit and an expression of existential confidence. The ruler’s debts to his followers stabilised the system of rule. Khlesl perceived the emperor’s excessive debts as a crisis and a threatening weakness. His militant politicians and men of war, as well as the archdukes, planned against it and waged war as if it was of secondary importance how the money was to be raised. The reactions to the affront by the Bohemian estates‘ opposition reveal the differences. The men of war demanded that they strike out and cover their expenses with the expected spoils. Radicals of faith wanted to follow them in their religiously based certainty of victory. Khlesl, on the other hand, insisted on reliable financing. The luck of the determined or God’s help for the orthodox were not enough for Khlesl to plunge into war. He was afraid of the „great wide sea“ onto which an ill-prepared, belligerent reaction would drive the emperor. His judgement that this sea was too big and too unpredictable was one that he held even in the Catholic weddings at the end of his life. It was to prove correct.
Courage and care
The pursuit of success and security through foresighted action accompanied him throughout his entire career. Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg, Ferdinand II’s favourite, explained Khlesl’s attitude with his low birth. Khlesl lacked the heroic spirit innate to the nobility, claimed Eggenberg, who rose to become prince through the favour of Ferdinand II. Reason as the intellectual tool of his quest for security is, of course, one side of the coin. The other is Khlesl’s willingness to fight for his convictions, sometimes to the point of self-destruction. It is remarkable how many and how high-ranking players he has clashed with in the course of his career. He was obviously not lacking in grit.
Khlesl endeavoured to raise money for imperial policy. An important instrument for this was financial reform. The aim was to free up funds for the political power of an emperor in financial difficulties through orderly budgeting. This threatened all those who profited from the imperial financial jungle. The opposing side accused Khlesl of only wanting to cement his personal power with his demands. They declared avarice and greed at work. The financial reform revealed the modest influence of the minister-favourite in the ruling apparatus. His attempt to create a more efficient and transparent financial system did not stand a chance. The monarchy’s income remained unchallenged as the opaque domain of patronage and thus of the aristocratic power elite.
Khlesl failed as a fighter against the aristocratic power elite. His rise, however, seems all the more remarkable. He had to use his individual abilities – intellect, diligence, rhetoric and tactics – to assert himself against the courtly structures. Unlike Lerma and Richelieu, he was not a representative of this elite. He did not have a network of aristocratic friends and relatives from birth. He did not enjoy the trust of the Habsburgs, who favoured rule by dynasties of councillors. His influence on Matthias was an extraordinary peculiarity, and for this reason alone was suspicious. The impression of a lone fighter against overpowering structures and currents is not only fuelled by this scenario.
Image problems
Khlesl’s flexibility helped him to verbally wrestle his way to becoming a minister-favourite. However, his expedient demeanour and argumentation ruined his reputation. The reputation of a false schemer – which he was – meant an image problem for his endeavours to gain trust as an imperial politician. Richelieu was able to use duplicity and tactics from a position of strength. The tactician Khlesl had little more than rhetoric and cunning or deceit at his disposal. In his early years, he had learnt how to score points on difficult terrain. But in his imperial policy, he campaigned for a renaissance of „German trust“. At the same time, because of the rampant mistrust, he could not do without a mask so as not to antagonise either side.
Juggling between the expectations of his various offices and roles exacerbated the image problem. As the minister-favourite of a Catholic emperor, he held an office of which the Catholic League and the majority in the House of Austria had a clear idea. They rejected the equalisation policy of a head of state above the parties. Khlesl reassured them at times that it was all a sham. He also had to reconcile his endeavours to achieve a balance with the expectations of a Roman Catholic bishop. The view that a different role required and justified a different attitude created a bridge and legitimisation for him. This view must have seemed contrived in a climate in which the dictates of religious conscience demanded unambiguous confessions. It remains to be seen whether he would have had more freedom to pursue a conciliatory policy as a secularist under pressure from the radical Catholics in the House of Austria and among the imperial princes.
As a bishop, he believed he had to take an anti-protestant stance. Composition did not seem to be an issue for him here. He endeavoured to make life difficult for the Viennese Protestants by taking legal action. He took part in the „silent war“ against the concessions made to the Protestants in the treatys called Kapitulationsresolution and Majestätsbrief. In his last years as a minister-favourite, an increasingly conciliatory streak became noticeable in his state policy. However, there is no evidence that he exerted any influence to pacify the conflict in Bohemia before the defenestration. His reluctance to react militarily was due to his awareness of the imperial weakness. The lack of Spanish aid also meant that he lacked the necessary assurances that it would not turn into a debacle. Khlesl did not make any concrete offers for an amicable solution to the disputes. He could not have afforded that.
Ambitious imperial policy
The Roman-German Empire suffered from acute organ failure. However, the Habsburgs needed a functioning Reichstag and a college of electors capable of making decisions. Imperial funds and the election of a Habsburg as Roman-German king seemed indispensable in order to maintain the ramparts of Christendom. What was needed was a common denominator so that the apparently irreconcilable could act together again.
Khlesl initially favoured a new Turkish war. The revitalised common enemy in the south-east was intended to cover up the internal rifts and enable a successful Reichstag. Khlesl probably shared the vision that it was better to wage a war against Non-Christians than among Christians. However, the goal of his imperial policy was probably not the battlefield. With his initiative, he first and foremost resorted to a tried and tested policy to get the imperial institutions afloat. This, the chances of financial aid for the military frontier and the reassurance of the strong war party at the imperial court were probably all that Khlesl had in mind when he started campaigning for a Turkish war. Experience from the ‚Long Turkish War‘ did not favour a triumphal march towards the Bosporus, even if the necessary financial backers played along. In view of his reserved attitude towards uncertain war policy, it was easy for him to quickly switch to peace negotiations with Constantinople when a military consensus could not be reached either with the Estates of the Empire or with those of the Habsburg Monarchy. His construction of the Turkish peace documents his attitude towards divisive visions such as a Catholic Roman-German Empire or a victory over the Ottoman Empire. He tried to organise coexistence in the best possible way, as if the divisive long-term goal did not exist. The gift of not needing to lead the conviction of success to quick success, his emotional intelligence granted him room for manoeuvre as a general reformer and as a minister-favourite.
The cow on the ice
Khlesl was committed to an imperial policy in favour of functioning imperial institutions and against the path to escalation. He showed the courage to take the initiative in the most difficult of circumstances. He entered the Reichstag 1613 with the initial aim of getting the judiciary and imperial institutions back on track. Beforehand, Khlesl wanted to set an example with the Magdeburg Indult. The intention was to show the Protestants that he was prepared to make concessions. His imperial political trick was to understand the imperial legal regulations for the coexistence of the confessional camps – first and foremost the Peace of Religion – as political regulations. Freed from religious conscience, they allowed for compromises. Allegedly, Khlesl’s policies showed only the „most miserable traces“ of a willingness to compromise. But even the Magdeburg case seemed more than puny to contemporaries. The struggle of the Catholic camp against the concession testifies to the explosive power of this initiative. Khlesl endeavoured to dissolve the confessional alliances and rally their members around the emperor as the supra-confessional head of the empire. At the Reichstag, he initiated separate negotiations between the German Master and the correspondents in order to find a way out. However, the camps could not be moved. After the Reichstag, he made various attempts to get the cow off the ice. In view of the hardened fronts, his efforts may seem unrealistic in the wisdom of the historian. However, his only options were to seek a settlement or resign himself. For he considered it unrealistic that the emperor would be able to hold his own in an imperial war of the expected European calibre. Retreat and thus insignificance were not his thing. He had proved this in the course of his career.
1613 was a decisive year for a major coup in the Roman-German Empire. It failed. The Catholic camp prevented any sign of willingness to engage in dialogue in the run-up to the Reichstag. The correspondents did not enter into any constructive negotiations at the Reichstag. There was obviously no party that Khlesl could rely on. The neutrality of the Electorate of Saxony, with its leaning towards the Catholic camp, offered no approach to the correspondents. Any kind of comparison with the Electoral Palatinate party found no supporters in the Catholic camp, nor did it strengthen the emperor’s position. The emperor’s lack of funds further restricted the room for manoeuvre of his minister-favourite. A poor emperor could do nothing either in the Donauwörth case or in disputes over Jülich-Kleve-Berg. Khlesl’s course of strengthening the emperor’s position lacked allies, power and money.
Goal Emperor Ferdinand II.
Khlesl’s policy of de-escalation had an elementary handicap. It had to work towards the rule of Ferdinand II. At the Impirial Diet of 1608, he had made it clear to the imperial estates where he was heading. He interpreted the Peace of Religion in the same way as the Catholic League. The threat of restitution of the confiscated church property was in the air. The imperial period of Matthias had something of a reprieve, which was granted with the help of the reformed electoral votes. Matthias was a transitional emperor. The handing over of the baton to another Habsburg line was foreseeable. The change to a different type of ruler was obvious. Could he be the emperor of an empire with Calvinists and unresolved issues – without war? Khlesl tried to persuade Archduke Ferdinand to adopt a moderate policy. He endeavoured to arrange a marriage with a Protestant princess. He assured the Elector of Saxony that Ferdinand II would adhere to Matthias‘ policy of reconciliation. However, there was no sign of the Elector of Graz giving in before Khlesl’s fall. Of course, Ferdinand II need not have become another. He was quite prepared to make concessions to Protestants in times of need. He soon proved this. By then the threat had taken on military proportions. The pistol on his chest caused the Jesuit pupil to become compliant, contrary to what Catholic legends about him would have you believe.
Khlesl did not succeed in emphasising the seriousness of the situation – the foreseeable disaster – due to the lack of funds on the Habsburg side. For the warring parties at the Habsburg courts, the lack of money did not stand in the way of a war against the Turks, a war in Friuli, campaigns against Bethlen Gabor or the war plans of a German Master and the President of the Imperial Aulic Court. Khlesl seemed to be fighting a losing battle. At the same time, the Electoral Palatinate’s conviction of imperial weakness on the one hand and the Electoral Palatinate’s and Bavaria’s belief in their own strength and the support of their allies on the other grew. In addition, pugnacious courtiers pushed their way to the top at the Spanish court. The desire to force a decision in the dispute over faith and power spread. Khlesl was at least able to pass on his willingness to take this inability into account and his imperial eye for political requirements. His protégé Maximilian von Trauttmansdorff, who supported Khlesl’s imperial policy, later experienced his heyday as a peace politician. At that time, at least the most important decision-makers in the Imperial-Spanish camp knew of no other way out of exhaustion and disaster than peace with many concessions, the Peace of Westphalia.
Strategy, tactics and coincidence
Contrary to what Angermeier believed, Khlesl’s strategy did not work. His attempts to strengthen the imperial authority and reanimate the imperial institutions lacked time. What remained of the strategy was a composition reduced to the Electors‘ Diet The failure to find a fundamental solution to the imperial crisis before 1618 does not, of course, have to answer the question of whether the „war of wars“, the Thirty Years‘ War, was preventable or inevitable. Even if Khlesl’s failure reveals the lack of sustainable and peaceful visions of the future and their ambassadors, the empire did not have to collapse as a result.
As a tactician, Khlesl could possibly have been the right man in the right place if the right window of opportunity had opened up. The big opportunity that Khlesl was banking on was an electors‘ convention with settlement talks. He had created the conditions. The invitation to the Electors‘ Diet was kept open. At the meeting, Khlesl should have succeeded in doing what was feared in Stuttgart: Elector Frederick V would agree to a deal in return for some concessions and an agreement was reached with Ferdinand II. Were the Electoral Palatinate’s signals about the composition merely a cover-up for the desired war over faith and Bohemia? Or was the chief strategist Christian von Anhalt playing high stakes? Was he leaving a loophole open in his high-flying plans? Were there possibilities for an accepted draw? Would Elector Frederick V have been man enough to accept a settlement against the supporters of a European war among his counsellors? Would Ferdinand II have agreed to a compromise without enemy troops at his door? Would Khlesl have succeeded in convincing Ferdinand – manipulating him in the eyes of the Dévots? Ferdinand’s father-in-law had warned him to stay away from Khlesl.
He even knew how to win over Jesuits to his ideas. Would the Jesuits have declared this deal to be the lesser of two evils and thus prevented a blockage of conscience in Ferdinand’s mind? These interesting hypothetical questions must remain unanswered here. However, as they arise from the course of history, they at least call into question the inevitability of the escalation.
Khlesl’s calculation was to create the chances of approval in the Electors‘ Diet he was striving for without shackles. It would then have been up to him to use his negotiating skills and oratory skills to seize the favour of the hour to secure promises. The personal meeting between the elector, emperor and king should not be underestimated. In 1611, the Imperial Archchancellor had demonstrated what could be achieved in dialogue between electors. If the deal had succeeded, Khlesl’s plan to rely on the small forum of the Electors‘ Diet would have worked. The Electoral Palatinate, which in its forward strategy had driven the correspondents before it, would have been at least partially and temporarily bridled. Frederick V’s vote in favour of Ferdinand II – in the presence of the old emperor and the electors – would probably have kept him out of the disputes in the Habsburg Monarchy. This would have been a more efficient way of de-escalation than the grand solution of the former imperial penny master Zacharias Geizkofler. At least time would have been gained for the revitalisation of the imperial institutions. However, the defenestration came a year too early for this hypothetical solution.
All too late?
However, the missing year did not necessarily mean the start of the Thirty Years‘ War. Did the warlike trial of strength in Bohemia and Austria create new opportunities for an imperial policy that the formal route via an Electors‘ Diet during Matthias‘ lifetime did not offer? The defenestration sealed Khlesl’s fall. This could well have been conducive to peace. Matthias had to rule himself and the search for reconciliation lost the stigma of being Khlesl’s machination. In 1618, things looked extremely bad for the Habsburgs militarily at times and the Bohemian estates felt the cost of their uprising. This, the peace-loving emperor’s desire to remain at the helm and the weight of realpolitik among the imperial advisors played into the hands of the Electoral Saxony’s peace initiative. At the same time, the Spanish Council of State did not yet want to go the whole hog during the time of Emperor Matthias. Did Matthias die a few months too early to settle the conflict in Bohemia and thus limit it to Bohemia? Could the Emperor’s chief negotiator Karl von Liechtenstein have proved himself once again to be a successful realpolitiker?
Khlesl’s merit for the peace of the empire would have been his persuasiveness towards Matthias. As a minister-favourite, Khlesl had managed to keep Matthias on the path to peace against the efforts of his family. Was it twice bad luck that the dynamics driven by the extreme forces led to the escalation that those very forces were striving for? Was it a coincidence that Khlesl’s exceptional individual abilities also lost out to structures and tendencies in this case? The failure that fundamentally distinguished him from the legendary statesman Richelieu was not necessarily predetermined in every case. Khlesl’s career, despite the disadvantages of origin, circumstances and power structures, showed this.