254 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
romantic venture to Madrid in February 1623, the Spanish presented
conditions which were not only unacceptable but almost certainly
known to be so, and although diplomatic contacts continued for some
months the terms were finally rejected by the English privy council in
January 1624. On the one hand this removed one of James’s main rea-
sons for refraining from actively assisting Friedrich, and on the other
it set in train a search for a French match for Charles instead. By the
spring of 1624 France and England were discussing an alliance to inter-
vene in Germany on behalf of Friedrich, although privately the French
target was principally the ejection of Spain from the Palatinate, and in
June the former French–Dutch alliance was re-established, with French
subsidies once again supporting the latter’s war against the Spanish.
Ultimately the French–English alliance came to nothing, as arch-
Catholics in France forced an abrupt change of policy away from
cooperation with Protestant powers, leading the new chief minister, Car-
dinal Richelieu, to turn attention back to Italy instead. The first result
was a new clash with Spain in the Valtelline, which France occupied in
the autumn of 1624, before going on to join Savoy in besieging Spain’s
ally Genoa in 1625. Although not immediately or directly relevant to the
conflict in Germany, these developments marked a significant change in
the international political climate, creating the conditions for a wider
European involvement in the war in the Empire.
Although James I had censured Friedrich’s involvement in Bohemia
from the outset, he was by no means indifferent to his son-in-law’s
subsequent fate, and he had endeavoured to assist as far as possible
within the constraints imposed by his efforts to strengthen links with
Spain. Thus he had allowed recruitment in England on behalf of the
Palatinate, so that some English troops fought in Bohemia and more
defended the fortress of Frankenthal later, and he had also been instru-
mental in securing loans for Friedrich from Christian IV of Denmark.
Nevertheless James’s main aim had been to promote a peaceable settle-
ment which would extricate Friedrich from Bohemia but allow him to
recover and retain his own lands, an objective to which he had devoted
considerable diplomatic effort. Ferdinand’s sequestration and distribu-
tion of the Palatinate to his supporters finally persuaded James that more
than diplomacy was required, so that in addition to his endeavours with
France he also engaged Mansfeld to start recruiting a force on his behalf.
However his own resources were limited, and other allies were needed
before any effective action could be undertaken.
Assembling a suitable coalition was not an easy matter, as the fail-
ure of the Segeberg conference in 1621 had shown. Christian IV of