ABSTRACT
Peace had been talked about since Mazarin first came to France. As early as 1641 Swedish and French envoys had met at Hamburg to discuss preliminaries. The French maintained that the Emperor Ferdinand III 1 was insincere in his professions; the same could be said about them. A typical pretext for delay was the French demand for a title for duchess Christina of Savoy. When the Danes, as intermediaries, produced a solution, both the emperor and Richelieu were annoyed: neither side could however repudiate it. The Austrians then proceeded to ratify the preliminaries in a document so vague that the French could not accept it. It would seem that Ferdinand had more to gain from negotiation than his opponents: since his defeat at the second battle of Breitenfeld in November 1642, Maximilian had been able to call the tune – and he could not be relied on to be loyal. Even more serious, with effects the opposite to those of the close entente earlier in the war, was the drifting apart of the two Habsburg partners.
