The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) was one of the most destructive conflicts inEuropean history. The war was fought primarily in what is now Germany, and at various points involved most countries in Europe.
The origins of the conflict and goals of the participants were complex, and no single cause can accurately be described as the main reason for the fighting. Initially, the war was fought largely as a religious conflict between Protestantsand Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire, although disputes over the internal politics and balance of power within the Empire played a significant part. Gradually, the war developed into a more general conflict involving most of the European powers.[8][9] In this general phase, the war became more a continuation of the Bourbon–Habsburg rivalry for European political pre-eminence, and in turn led to further warfare between France and the Habsburgpowers, and less specifically about religion.[10]
A major impact of the Thirty Years' War was the extensive destruction of entire regions, denuded by the foraging armies (bellum se ipsum alet). Episodes of famine and disease significantly decreased the populace of the German states,Bohemia, the Low Countries and Italy, while bankrupting most of the combatant powers. While the regiments within each army were not strictly mercenary in that they were not guns for hire that changed sides from battle to battle, the individual soldiers that made up the regiments for the most part probably were. The problem of discipline was made more difficult still by the ad hoc nature of 17th-century military financing. Armies were expected to be largely self-funding from loot taken or tribute extorted from the settlements where they operated. This encouraged a form of lawlessness that imposed often severe hardship on inhabitants of the occupied territory. Some of the quarrels that provoked the war went unresolved for a much longer time. The Thirty Years' War was ended with the treaties of Osnabrück and Münster, part of the wider Peace of Westphalia.[11]
Origins of the War
The Peace of Augsburg (1555), signed by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, confirmed the result of the 1526 Diet of Speyer, ending war between GermanLutherans and Catholics.[12]
- Rulers of the 225 German states could choose the religion (Lutheranism or Catholicism) of their realms according to their consciences, and compel their subjects to follow that faith (the principle of cuius regio, eius religio).
- Lutherans living in a prince-bishopric (a state ruled by a Catholic bishop) could continue to practice their faith.
- Lutherans could keep the territory they had captured from the Catholic Church since the Peace of Passau in 1552.
- Those prince-bishops who had converted to Lutheranism were required to give up their territories (the principle called reservatum ecclesiasticum).
Although the Peace of Augsburg created a temporary end to hostilities, it did not solve the underlying religious conflict. In addition, Calvinism spread quickly throughout Germany in the years that followed. This added a third major faith to the region, but its position was not recognized in any way by the Augsburg terms, to which only Catholicism and Lutheranism were parties.[13][14]
The rulers of the nations neighboring the Holy Roman Empire also contributed to the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War:
- Spain was interested in the German states because it held the territories of the Spanish Netherlands on the western border of the Empire and states within Italy which were connected by land through the Spanish Road. The Dutch revolted against the Spanish domination during the 1560s, leading to aprotracted war of independence that led to a truce only in 1609.
- France was nearly surrounded by territory controlled by the two Habsburg states (Spain and the Holy Roman Empire), and was eager to exert its power against the weaker German states; this dynastic concern overtook religious ones and led to Catholic France's participation on the otherwise Protestant side of the war.
- Sweden and Denmark were interested in gaining control over northern German states bordering the Baltic Sea.
The Holy Roman Empire was a fragmented collection of largely independent states. The position of Holy Roman Emperor was mainly titular, but the emperors, from the House of Habsburg, also directly ruled a large portion of Imperial territory (the Archduchy of Austria, as well as Bohemia and Hungary). The Austrian domain was thus a major European power in its own right, ruling over some eight million subjects. The Empire also contained several regional powers, such as Bavaria, Electoral Saxony, the Margravate of Brandenburg, thePalatinate, Hesse, the Archbishopric of Trier and Württemberg (containing from 500,000 to one million inhabitants). A vast number of minor independent duchies,free cities, abbeys, prince-bishoprics, and petty lordships (whose authority sometimes extended to no more than a single village) rounded out the Empire. Apart from Austria and perhaps Bavaria, none of those entities was capable of national-level politics; alliances between family-related states were common, due partly to the frequent practice of splitting a lord's inheritance among the various sons.
Religious tensions remained strong throughout the second half of the 16th century. The Peace of Augsburg began to unravel, as some converted bishops refused to give up their bishoprics, and as certain Habsburg and other Catholic rulers of the Holy Roman Empire and Spain sought to restore the power of Catholicism in the region. This was evident from the Cologne War (1583–88), a conflict initiated when the prince-archbishop of the city, Gebhard Truchsess von Waldburg, converted to Calvinism. As he was an imperial elector, this could have produced a Protestant majority in the College that elected the Holy Roman Emperor – a position that had always been held by a Catholic.
In the Cologne War, Spanish troops expelled the former prince-archbishop and replaced him with Ernst of Bavaria, a Roman Catholic. After this success, the Catholics regained pace, and the principle of cuius regio, eius religio began to be exerted more strictly in Bavaria,Würzburg and other states. This forced Lutheran residents to choose between conversion or exile. Lutherans also witnessed the defection of the lords of the Palatinate (1560), Nassau (1578), Hesse-Kassel (1603) and Brandenburg (1613) to the new Calvinist faith. Thus, at the beginning of the 17th century, the Rhine lands and those south to the Danube were largely Catholic, while Lutherans predominated in the north, and Calvinists dominated in certain other areas, such as west-central Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands. However, minorities of each creed existed almost everywhere. In some lordships and cities, the number of Calvinists, Catholics, and Lutherans were approximately equal.
Much to the consternation of their Spanish ruling cousins, the Habsburg emperors who followed Charles V (especially Ferdinand I andMaximilian II, but also Rudolf II, and his successor Matthias) were content for the princes of the Empire to choose their own religious policies. These rulers avoided religious wars within the empire by allowing the different Christian faiths to spread without coercion. This angered those who sought religious uniformity.[15] Meanwhile, Sweden and Denmark, both Lutheran kingdoms, sought to assist the Protestant cause in the Empire, and also wanted to gain political and economic influence there, as well.
Religious tensions broke into violence in the German free city of Donauwörth in 1606. There, the Lutheran majority barred the Catholic residents of the Swabian town from holding a procession, which provoked a riot. This prompted foreign intervention by Duke Maximilian of Bavaria (1573–1651) on behalf of the Catholics. After the violence ceased, Calvinists in Germany (who remained a minority) felt the most threatened. They banded together and formed the League of Evangelical Union in 1608, under the leadership of the Palatine Prince-ElectorFrederick IV (1583–1610), (whose son, Frederick V, married Elizabeth Stuart, the daughter of James I of England).[16] The establishment of the League prompted the Catholics into banding together to form the Catholic League in 1609, under the leadership of Duke Maximilian.
Tensions escalated further in 1609, with the War of the Jülich succession, which began when John William, Duke of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, the ruler of the strategically important United Duchies of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, died childless.[17] There were two rival claimants to the duchy: (1) Duchess Anna of Prussia, daughter of Duke John William's eldest sister, Marie Eleonore of Cleves, and who was married to John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg; and (2) Wolfgang William, Count Palatine of Neuburg, who was the son of Duke John William's second eldest sister, Anna. Duchess Anna of Prussia claimed Jülich-Cleves-Berg as the heir to the senior line, while Wolfgang William, Count Palatine of Neuburg claimed Jülich-Cleves-Berg as Duke John William's eldest male heir. Both claimants were Protestants. In 1610, to prevent war between the rival claimants, the forces of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor occupied Jülich-Cleves-Berg until the dispute was decided by the Aulic Council (Reichshofrat). However, several Protestant princes feared the Emperor, a devout Catholic, intended to keep Jülich-Cleves-Berg for himself to prevent the United Duchies falling into Protestant hands.[17] Representatives of Henry IV of France and the Dutch Republic gathered forces to invade Jülich-Cleves-Berg, but these plans were cut short by the assassination of Henry IV. Hoping to gain an advantage in the dispute, Wolfgang William, Count Palatine of Neuburg converted to Catholicism;John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg, on the other hand, converted to Calvinism (althoughDuchess Anna of Prussia stayed Lutheran).[17] The dispute was settled in 1614 with the Treaty of Xanten, by which the United Duchies were dismantled: Jülich and Berg were awarded to Wolfgang William, while the Elector of Brandenburg gained Cleves, Mark, and Ravensberg.[17]
The background of the Dutch Revolt is also necessary to understanding the events leading up to the Thirty Years' War. It was widely known that the Twelve Years' Truce was set to expire in 1621, and throughout Europe it was recognized that at that time, Spain would attempt to reconquer the Dutch Republic. At that time, forces underAmbrogio Spinola, 1st Marquis of the Balbases, theGenoese commander of the Spanish army, would be able to pass through friendly territories to reach the Dutch Republic; the only hostile state that stood in his way was the Electoral Palatinate.[18] (Spinola's preferred route would take him through theRepublic of Genoa, the Duchy of Milan, through the Val Telline, around hostile Switzerlandbypassing along the north shore of Lake Constance, then through Alsace, the Archbishopric of Strasbourg, then through the Electoral Palatinate, and then finally through the Archbishopric of Trier, Jülich and Berg and on to the Dutch Republic).[18] The Electoral Palatinate thus assumed a strategic importance in European affairs out of all proportion to its size. This explains why the Protestant James I of England arranged for the marriage of his daughter Elizabeth Stuart toFrederick V, Elector Palatine in 1612, in spite of the social convention that a princess would only marry another royal.
By 1617, it was apparent that Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia, would die without an heir, with his lands going to his nearest male relative, his cousin Archduke Ferdinand II of Austria, heir-apparent and Crown Prince of Bohemia. With the Oñate treaty, Philip III of Spainagreed to this succession.
Ferdinand, having been educated by the Jesuits, was a staunch Catholic who wanted to impose religious uniformity on his lands. This made him highly unpopular in Protestant (primarily Hussite) Bohemia. The population's sentiments notwithstanding, the added insult of the nobility's rejection of Ferdinand, who had been elected Bohemian Crown Prince in 1617, triggered the Thirty Years' War in 1618, when his representatives were thrown out of a window into a pile of horse manure. The so-called Defenestration of Prague provoked open revolt in Bohemia, which had powerful foreign allies. Ferdinand was quite upset by this calculated insult, but his intolerant policies in his own lands had left him in a weak position. The Habsburg cause in the next few years would seem to suffer unrecoverable reverses. The Protestant cause seemed to wax toward a quick overall victory.
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