From Bohemia to the Thirty Years War 253added up to a potential major shift in the balance of power in Europe.
The leading countries had been used to a divided Empire, preoccupied
with its internal disputes and unwilling or unable to exercise much
influence in international affairs, so that Habsburg domination would
create a new, and for some a threatening, situation, particularly in view
of the Spanish connection.
The continuing Spanish occupation of the Lower Palatinate west of
the Rhine gave emphasis to the latter point, and it was as unwelcome to
France as it was to the Dutch. The old French obsession about being
surrounded by Habsburg but more particularly by Spanish territory
remained, and the Palatinate added one more link to the chain. More-
over the Palatinate had previously had close connections with France,
notably during the time of Henri IV, so that Spanish presence in what
had been a French sphere of influence was an affront as well as a threat.
Political implications extended even to Scandinavia, not only because
of the proximity of Tilly’s army to the Danish borders in 1623, but also
in relation to Gustavus Adolphus’s continuing conflict with his cousin,
the king of Poland. Catholic Poland was a natural ally of the Austrian
Habsburgs, and had more than once assisted them against the Turks and
Bethlen Gabor, so that the possibility of reciprocal help on the Baltic was
a matter of concern for Sweden too.
Other, in principle unrelated, international political events also began
to exercise an influence. As noted in Chapter 1, Spain had seized and
occupied the Valtelline in 1620 in order to secure the route through the
Alps from their Italian provinces into the Tyrol, which they needed as an
alternative to the old Spanish Road. At the time the French had been too
preoccupied with their internal problems to intervene, but by 1622 they
were looking outwards once more, and they formed an alliance with
Savoy and Venice which had several essentially anti-Habsburg objec-
tives. One of these was to free the Valtelline on behalf of its rulers,
the Swiss Graubünden, who had been allies of France and theoretically
under its protection for the last twenty years. War was avoided for a time
by Spanish acceptance of a face-saving withdrawal under papal auspices
in early 1623, but the tension in northern Italy remained as a source
of future conflict, while France later sought to add to Spanish problems
by sending money and men by sea to reinforce Mansfeld on the Dutch
border in Ostfriesland.^44
Also in early 1623, relations between Spain and England cooled
sharply when James I’s long-running attempt to establish a concord
based on a marriage between his son Charles and a Spanish princess
reached a breaking point. Confronted by Charles in person on a