Thirty Years' War

The Thirty Years' War was fought between 1618 and 1648, principally on the territory of today's Germany, also involving most of the major European continental powers. Although it was from its outset a religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics, the rivalry between the Habsburg dynasty and other powers was also a central motive, as shown by the fact that Catholic France even supported the Protestant side, extending the France-Habsburg rivalry.

The impact of the Thirty Years' War and related episodes of famine and disease was devastating. The war may have lasted for 30 years, but conflicts continued for 300 more years. In the decades after the war, while Austria and its German allies were defending against the Ottoman Empire in the Great Turkish War (Battle of Vienna etc.), France under King Louis XIV used the occasion for aggressive expansion on both sides of the Rhine. The biography of Ezechiel du Mas, Comte de Melac illustrates the French atrocities in Southern Germany (Burn the Palatinate!). The memories of these events that define the history of most cities in the area, along with lasting French annexions of e.g. the Alsace and the repetition of the occupation in the Napoleonic Wars, led to the so-called French-German enmity and ultimately played a part in the origin of two World Wars.

The war ended with the Treaty of Westphalia.

Origins of the war

The Peace of Augsburg (1555) confirmed the result of the 1526 Diet of Speyer and ended the violence between the Lutherans and the Catholics in Germany.

It said that:

German Princes (numbering 225) could choose the religion (Lutheranism or Catholicism) for their realms according to their conscience (the principle of cuius regio eius religio).
Lutherans living in an ecclesiastical state (under the control of a bishop) could remain Lutherans.
Lutherans could keep the territory that they had captured from the Catholic Church since the Peace of Passau (1552).
The ecclesiastical leaders of the Catholic Church (bishops) that converted to Lutheranism had to give up their territory (archbishops/bishops).

Political and economic tensions grew among many of the powerful nations of Europe in the early 17th century.

Spain was interested in the German states because it held the territories of the Spanish Netherlands on the western border of the German states;
France was interested in the German states because they were the weakest neighbors, compared to the Habsburgs realms which surrounded France on land;
Sweden and Denmark were interested in gaining control over northern German states bordering the Baltic Sea.

Religious tensions were growing throughout the second half of the 16th Century as well. The Peace of Augsburg was unraveling throughout the second half of the century as some converted bishops had not given up their bishoprics; as Calvinism was spreading throughout Germany, adding a third major religion to the region; and as certain Catholic rulers in Spain and Eastern Europe sought to restore the power of Catholicism in the region.

Much to the consternation of their Spanish ruling cousins, the Habsburg emperors who followed Charles V (especially Ferdinand I and Maximilian II, but also Rudolf II, and his successor Matthias) were supportive towards their subjects' religious choices, being aware of the deathly evils and turmoil England had suffered due to official religious intolerance starting in 1534 under King Henry VIII and his successors. They avoided religious wars within the empire by allowing the different religions to spread there, which upset those who wanted religious uniformity. Sweden and Denmark, meanwhile, were both Lutheran kingdoms and sought to assist the Protestant cause in the empire as well as to gain political and economic influence.

These tensions broke into violence in the German free city of Donauwörth in 1606. The Lutheran majority barred the Catholic residents of the Swabian town from holding a procession, causing a violent riot to break out. This prompted foreign intervention by Duke Maximilian of Bavaria (1573–1651) on behalf of the Catholics. After the violence ceased, the Calvinists in Germany (who were still in their infancy and quite a minority) felt the most threatened, so they banded together in the League of Evangelical Union, created in 1608 under the leadership of the Palatine elector Frederick IV (1583–1610), (whose son, Frederick V, married Elizabeth Stuart, the daughter of James I of England). He had control of the Rhenish Palatinate, one of the very states along the Rhine River that Spain wanted to acquire. This provoked Catholics to band together in the Catholic League (created in 1609) under the leadership of the aforementioned Duke Maximilian.

Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor and the King of Bohemia, died without descendants in 1619, and his lands went to his nearest male relative, his cousin Ferdinand of Styria. Ferdinand, who became King of Bohemia and Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor, was a staunch Catholic who had been educated by the Jesuits and who wanted to restore Catholicism. He was therefore unpopular in primarily Hussite Bohemia, whose rejection of Ferdinand launched the Thirty Years' War, which can be divided into four major phases: the Bohemian Revolt, Danish intervention, Swedish intervention, and the French intervention.

The Bohemian Revolt

Period: 1618–1625

Being without descendants, Emperor Matthias sought to assure an orderly transition during his lifetime by having his dynastic heir (the fiercely Catholic, Ferdinand of Styria, later Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor) elected to the separate royal thrones of Bohemia and Hungary. Some of the Protestant leaders of Bohemia feared losing the religious rights granted to them by Emperor Rudolf II in his letter of majesty and so preferred the Protestant Frederick V, elector of the Palatinate (successor of Frederick IV, the creator of the League of Evangelical Union). But other Protestants supported the position also taken by the Catholic forces and so in 1617 Ferdinand was duly elected by the Bohemian Estates to become crown prince, and automatically, upon the death of Matthias, the next King of Bohemia. When the king-elect sent two Catholic councillors (Wilhelm Grav Slavata and Jaroslav Borzita Graf Von Martinicz) as his representatives to Hradčany castle in Prague in May 1618 to administer the government in his absence, the Bohemian Calvinists seized them, subjected them to a mock trial, and threw them out of a palace window 50 feet high. The Catholic version of the story claims that angels appeared and carried them to safety. The Protestant version says that they landed in manure which spared their lives.

This event, known as the Second Defenestration of Prague, began the Bohemian Revolt. Soon the Bohemian conflict erupted in the entirety of Greater Bohemia, effectively Bohemia, Silesia, Lusatia and Moravia, which was already dealing with conflict between Catholics and Protestants. This confrontation was to find many facets and mirrors across the continent of Europe with the involvement of France, Sweden, among others.

Had the Bohemian rebellion remained a local conflict, the war could have been over in fewer than thirty months, but the death of Emperor Mathias in 1619 emboldened the rebellious Protestant leaders who had been on the verge of a settlement. The weaknesses of both Ferdinand (now officially on the throne after the death of Emperor Mathias) and of the Bohemians themselves led to the spread of the war to western Germany. Ferdinand was compelled to call on his nephew, King Philip IV of Spain for assistance.

The Bohemians, desperate for allies against the Emperor, applied to be admitted to the Protestant Union, led by their original candidate for the Bohemian throne, the Calvinist Frederick V, Elector Palatine. The Bohemians hinted that the Palatine Elector would become King of Bohemia if he allowed them to join the Union and come under its protection — however, similar offers were made by other members of the Bohemian Estates to the Duke of Savoy, the Elector of Saxony, and the Prince of Transylvania. The Austrians, who seemed to have intercepted every letter leaving Prague, made public these duplicities, and unraveled much support for the Bohemians, particularly in the court of Saxony.

The rebellion initially favoured the Bohemians. They were joined in revolt by much of Upper Austria whose nobility was Lutheran and Calvinist (a fact that would swiftly change in the coming years.) Lower Austria revolted soon after and in 1619, Count Thurn led an army to the walls of Vienna itself. In the East, the Protestant Prince of Transylvania, Gabriel Bethlen, led a spirited campaign into Hungary with the blessings of the Turkish Sultan. The Emperor, who had been preoccupied with the Uzkok War, hurried to reform an army to stop the Bohemians and their allies from entirely overwhelming his country. Count Bucquoy, the commander of the Austrian army, defeated the forces of the Protestant Union at the Battle of Sablat, led by Count Mansfeld, on 10 June 1619. This cut off Count Thurn's communications with Prague, and he abandoned his siege of Vienna at once. Sablat also cost the Protestants an important ally — Savoy, long an opponent of Habsburg expansion, had already sent considerable sums to the Protestants and even troops to garrison fortresses in the Rhineland. The capture of Mansfeld's field chancery revealed the Savoyards' plot, and forced the embarrassed duke to leave the war.

In spite of Sablat, Count Thurn's army continued to exist as an effective force, and Mansfeld managed to reform his army further north in Bohemia. The Estates of Upper and Lower Austria, still in revolt, signed an alliance with the Bohemians in early August, and on 22 August 1620 Ferdinand was officially deposed as King of Bohemia, replaced by the Palatine Elector, Frederick V. In Hungary, even though the Bohemians had reneged on their offer of their crown, the Transylvanians continued to make surprising progress, driving the Emperor's armies from that country by 1620.

The Spanish sent an army from Brussels under Ambrosio Spinola to support the Emperor, and the Spanish ambassador in Vienna, Don Inigo Onate, persuaded Protestant Saxony to intervene against Bohemia in exchange for control over Lusatia. The Saxons invaded, and the Spanish army in the West prevented the Protestant Union's forces from assisting. Onate conspired to transfer the electoral title from the Palatinate to the Duke of Bavaria in exchange for his support and that of the Catholic League. Under the command of General Tilly, the Catholic League army (which included René Descartes in its ranks) pacified Upper Austria, while the Emperor's forces pacified Lower Austria; united, the two moved north into Bohemia. Ferdinand II decisively defeated Frederick V at the Battle of White Mountain, near Prague on 8 November 1620. In addition to making it Catholic, Bohemia would remain in Habsburg hands for three hundred years.

That defeat caused the dissolution of the League of Evangelical Union and the destruction of Frederick V's holdings. Frederick V was outlawed from the Holy Roman Empire and his territories, the Rhenish Palatinate, were given to Catholic nobles, while his title of elector of the Palatinate was given to his distant cousin Duke Maximilian of Bavaria. Frederick V, although landless, made himself a prominent exile abroad, and tried to curry support for his cause in the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden.

It was a serious blow to Protestant ambitions in the region. The rebellion collapsed and widespread confiscations of property and suppression of the Bohemian nobility ensured that the country would return to the Catholic fold after more than two centuries of Hussite and other religious dissent. The Spanish, seeking to outflank the Dutch in preparation for the soon-to-be-renewed Eighty Years' War, took Frederick's lands, the Rhine Palatinate. The first phase of the war in Eastern Germany ended when Gabriel Bethlen of Transylvania signed the Peace of Nikolsburg with the Emperor on December 31 1621, gaining a number of territories in Royal Hungary.

Some historians regard the period from 1621–1625 as a separate phase of the Thirty Years' War, calling it the Palatinate phase. The catastrophic defeat of the Protestant army at White Mountain and the departure of Gabriel Bethlen meant the pacification of greater Bohemia. The war in the West, Palatinate, consisted of much smaller battles than the Bohemian and Hungarian campaigns and a much greater use of siege. Mannheim and Heidelberg fell in 1622, and Frankenthal in 1623. The Palatinate was in the hands of the Spanish.

The remnant Protestant armies, led by Mansfeld and Christian of Brunswick, fled for new paymasters in Holland. Although their arrival did lift the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom, the Dutch could not long abide this rabble. They cashiered them and sent them off to occupy neighboring East Friesland. Mansfeld remained there, but Christian wandered off to "assist" his kin in the Lower Saxon Circle, attracting the attentions of Tilly. With news that Mansfeld would not be supporting him, Christian's army then began a steady retreat toward the safety of the Dutch border. On August 6, 1623 Tilly's more disciplined army caught up with them 10 miles short of the Dutch border and here at the Battle of Stadlohn, he inflicted a catastrophic defeat to Christian and wiped out over four-fifths of his army, some 15,000 strong. Faced with this news, Frederick V, already in exile in The Hague and under growing pressure from his father-in-law James I of England to end his involvement in the war, was forced to abandon any hope of launching further campaigns. With the Protestant rebellion rooted in Bohemia now crushed, peace briefly fell upon the Holy Roman Empire.

Danish intervention

Period: 1625–1629

The Danish Period began when Christian IV of Denmark (1577–1648), King of Denmark, himself a Lutheran and, as Duke of Holstein, an Imperial nobleman, helped the Lutheran rulers of neighboring Lower Saxony by leading an army against the Holy Roman Empire, fearing that Denmark's sovereignty as a Protestant nation was being threatened. Christian IV had profited greatly from his policies in northern Germany (in 1621 Hamburg had been forced to accept Danish sovereignty and Christian's second son was made bishop of Bremen.) As an administrator, Christian IV had done remarkably well, obtaining for his kingdom a level of stability and wealth that was virtually unmatched elsewhere in Europe, paid for by tolls on the Oresund and extensive war reparations from Sweden. The only country in Europe with a comparably strong financial position was, ironically, Bavaria. It also helped that the French First Minister Cardinal Richelieu, together with the Dutch and English agreed that they would help subsidize the war. Christian had himself appointed war leader of the Lower Saxon Circle and raised a mercenary army of 20,000 men.

To fight him off, Ferdinand II employed the military help of Albrecht von Wallenstein, a Bohemian nobleman who had made himself rich from the confiscated estates of his countrymen. Wallenstein pledged his army of between 30,000 and 100,000 soldiers to Ferdinand II in return for the right to plunder the captured territories. Christian, who knew nothing of Wallenstein's existence when he invaded, was forced to retire before the combination of Wallenstein and Tilly. Christian's poor luck struck him again when all the allies he thought he had were forced aside: England was weak and internally divided, and France was in civil war, Sweden was at war with Poland, and neither Brandenburg nor Saxony were interested in changes to the tenuous peace in eastern Germany. Wallenstein defeated Mansfeld's army at the Battle of Dessau Bridge (1626) and General Tilly defeated the Danes at the Battle of Lutter (1626). Mansfeld died some months later of illness in Dalmatia, exhausted and ashamed of the battle which had cost him half his army.

Wallenstein's army marched north, occupying Mecklenburg, Pomerania, and ultimately Jutland itself. However, he was unable to take the Danish capital on the island of Zealand without a fleet and neither the Hanseatic ports nor the Poles would allow an Imperial fleet to be built in the Baltic. He pressed a siege against Stralsund, the only belligerent port on the Baltic which had the facilities to build a fleet to take the Danish islands. However, the cost of continuing to support Wallenstein was exorbitant, particularly compared to what could possibly be gained from the war with Denmark.

This led to the Treaty of Lübeck (1629), in which Christian IV abandoned his support for the Protestants in order to keep his control over Denmark. In the following two years more land was subjugated by Catholic powers.

At this point, the war could have been concluded, but the Catholic League persuaded Ferdinand II to take back the Lutheran holdings that were, according to the Peace of Augsburg, rightfully the possession of the Catholic Church. Described in the Edict of Restitution (1629), these included two Archbishoprics, sixteen bishoprics, and hundreds of monasteries. Mansfeld and Gabriel Bethlen, the first officers of the Protestant cause, were dead in the same year. Only the port of Stralsund held out against Wallenstein and the Emperor, with the assistance first of the Danes and then of the Swedes.

Swedish intervention

Period: 1630–1635

Some within Ferdinand II's court believed that Wallenstein wanted to take control of the German Princes and thus gain influence over the Emperor. Ferdinand II dismissed Wallenstein in 1630. He was to later recall him after the Swedes, led by King Gustaf II Adolf (Gustavus II Adolphus), attacked the Empire and prevailed in a number of significant battles.

Gustavus Adolphus, like Christian IV before him, came to aid the German Lutherans, to forestall Catholic aggression against their homeland and to obtain economic influence in the German states around the Baltic Sea. In addition to those reasons, Gustavus was also concerned about the growing power of the Holy Roman Empire. Also like Christian IV, Gustavus Adolphus was subsidized by Richelieu, the Chief Minister of King Louis XIII of France and by the Dutch. From 1630–1634, they drove the Catholic forces back and regained much of the occupied Protestant lands.

After he dismissed Albrecht von Wallenstein, Ferdinand II depended on the Catholic League. At the Battle of Breitenfeld (1631), Adolphus' forces defeated the Catholic League led by General Tilly. A year later, they met again, and this time General Tilly was killed (1632). The upper hand had now switched from the league to the union, led by Sweden. In 1630, Sweden had paid at least 2,368,022 daler for its army at 42,000 men. In 1632, they paid only one-fifth of that (476,439 daler) for an army three times as large (149,000 men). The main explanation was economic aid from France, and that prisoners (mainly from Breitenfeld) were recruited into the Swedish army.

With General Tilly dead, Ferdinand II turned to the aid of Wallenstein and his large army.

Wallenstein marched up to the south, threatening Gustavus Adolphus' supply chain. Gustavus Adolphus knew that Wallenstein was waiting for the attack and was prepared, but there was no other option. Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus clashed in the Battle of Lützen (1632), where the Swedes prevailed, but Gustavus Adolphus was killed. In 1634 the Protestant forces, minus the leadership of Gustavus Adolphus, were defeated at the First Battle of Nördlingen.

Ferdinand II's suspicions of Wallenstein flared up again in 1633, when Wallenstein attempted to arbitrate the differences between the Catholic and Protestant sides. Ferdinand II may have feared that Wallenstein would switch sides and arranged for his arrest after removing him from command. One of Wallenstein's soldiers, Captain Devereux, killed him as he attempted to contact the Swedes in the townhouse in Cheb (Eger in German) (February 25,1634).

After that, the two sides met for negotiations, and they ended the Swedish Period with the Peace of Prague (1635), which:

Delayed enforcement of the Edict of Restitution for 40 years and allowed Protestant rulers to retain secularized bishoprics held by them in 1627. This protected the Lutheran rulers of northeastern Germany at the expense of those in the south and west (whose lands had been occupied by the Imperial or League armies well before 1627)

United army of the emperor and armies of German states to one army of the Holy Roman Empire (although Johann Georg of Saxony and Maximillian of Bavaria kept, as a practical matter, independent command of their forces, now nominally components of the "Imperial" army).

Forbade German princes to have alliances between them or with foreign powers.

Gave amnesty to any ruler who took up arms against the Emperor after the arrival of the Swedes in 1630.

This treaty failed, however, to satisfy France, because of the renewed strength it granted the Habsburgs. France then launched the last period of the Thirty Years' War.

Swedish-French intervention

Period: 1636–1648

France, though a largely Catholic country, was a rival of the Holy Roman Empire and Spain, and now entered the war on the Protestant side. Cardinal Richelieu, the Chief Minister of King Louis XIII of France, felt that the Habsburgs were still too powerful, since they held a number of territories on France's eastern border and had influence in the Netherlands.

France therefore allied itself with the Dutch and the Swedes. Spain, in retaliation, invaded French territory. The Imperial general Johann von Werth and Spanish commander Cardinal Ferdinand Habsburg ravaged the French provinces of Champagne and Burgundy and even threatened Paris in 1636 before being repulsed by Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar. Bernhard's victory in the Battle of Compiegne pushed the Habsburg armies back towards the borders of France. Widespread fighting ensued, with neither side gaining an advantage. In 1642, Cardinal Richelieu died. A year later, Louis XIII died, leaving his five-year-old son Louis XIV on the throne. His chief minister, Cardinal Mazarin, began to work for peace.

In 1645, the Swedish marshal Lennart Torstensson defeated the Imperial army at the Battle of Jankau near Prague, and Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé defeated the Bavarian army in the Second Battle of Nördlingen. The last talented commander of the Catholics, Count Franz von Mercy, died in the battle.

On March 14 1647 Bavaria, Cologne, France and Sweden signed the Truce of Ulm. In 1648 the Swedes (commanded by Marshal Carl Gustaf Wrangel) and the French (led by Turenne and Conde) defeated the Imperial army at the Battle of Zusmarshausen and Lens. These results left only the Imperial territories of Austria safely in Habsburg hands.

The Peace of Westphalia

Main article: Peace of Westphalia

French General Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé defeated the Spanish at the Battle of Rocroi in 1643, which led to negotiations. At them were Ferdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor, the French, the Spanish, the Dutch, the Swiss, the Swedes, the Portuguese and representatives of the Pope. The Peace of Westphalia of 1648 was the result.

Casualties and disease

The devastation caused by the war has long been a subject of controversy among historians. Estimates of civilian casualties of up to thirty percent of the population of Germany are now treated with caution. The mortality rate was perhaps closer to 15 to 20 percent, with deaths due to armed conflict, famine and disease. Much of the destruction of civilian lives and property was caused by the cruelty and greed of mercenary soldiers. It is certain that the war caused serious dislocation to both the economy and population of central Europe, but may have done no more than seriously exacerbate changes that had begun earlier.

Pestilence of several kinds raged among combatants and civilians in Germany and surrounding lands from 1618 to 1648. Many features of the war spread disease. These included troop movements, the influx of soldiers from foreign countries, and the shifting locations of battle fronts. In addition, the displacement of civilian populations and the overcrowding of refugees into cities led to both disease and famine. Information about numerous epidemics is generally found in local chronicles, such as parish registers and tax records, that are often incomplete and may be exaggerated. The chronicles do show that epidemic disease was not a condition exclusive to war time, but was present in many parts of Germany for several decades prior to 1618.

However, when the Danish and imperial armies met in Saxony and Thuringia during 1625 and 1626, disease and infection in local communities increased. Local chronicles repeatedly referred to "head disease," "Hungarian disease," and a "spotted" disease identified as typhus. After the Mantuan War, between France and the Habsburgs in Italy, the northern half of the Italian peninsula was in the throes of a bubonic plague epidemic (see Italian Plague of 1629-1631). During the unsuccessful siege of Nuremberg, in 1632, civilians and soldiers in both the Swedish and imperial armies succumbed to typhus and scurvy. Two years later, as the imperial army pursued the defeated Swedes into southwest Germany, deaths from epidemics were high along the Rhine River. Bubonic plague continued to be a factor in the war. Beginning in 1634, Dresden, Munich, and smaller German communities such as Oberammergau recorded large number of plague casualties. In the last decades of the war, both typhus and dysentery had become endemic in Germany.

Political consequences

A result of the war, was the enshrinement of a Germany divided among many territories, all of which, despite their membership of the Empire, had de facto sovereignty. This significantly hampered the power of the Holy Roman Empire and decentralized German power. It has been speculated that this weakness was a long-term underlying cause of later militant German Romantic nationalism.

The Thirty Years' War rearranged the previous structure of power. The conflict made Spain's military and political decline visible. While Spain was preoccupied with fighting in France, Portugal — which had been under Spanish control for 60 years — declared itself independent in 1640. The House of Braganza became the new dynasty of Portugal, beginning with King John IV. Meanwhile, Spain was finally forced to accept the independence of the Dutch Republic in 1648, ending the Eighty Years' War. With Spain weakening and Germany fractured and bled dry, France became the dominant power in Europe.

This defeat for Spain and imperial forces also marked the decline of Habsburg power and allowed the emergence of Bourbon dominance.

From 1643–45, during the last years of the Thirty Years' War, Sweden and Denmark fought in the Torstenson War. The result of that conflict and the conclusion of the great European war at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 helped establish post-war Sweden as a force in Europe.

The edicts agreed upon during the signing of the Peace of Westphalia were instrumental in laying the foundations for what are even today considered the basic tenets of the sovereign nation-state. Aside from establishing fixed territorial boundaries for many of the countries involved in the ordeal (as well as for the newer ones created afterwards), the Peace of Westphalia changed the relationship of subjects to their rulers. In earlier times, people had tended to have overlapping political and religious loyalties. Now, it was agreed that the citizenry of a respective nation were subjected first and foremost to the laws and whims of their own respective government rather than to those of neighboring powers, be they religious or secular.

The war had a few other, more subtle consequences:

The Thirty Years' War marked the last major religious war in mainland Europe, ending large scale religious bloodshed in 1648. There were still religious conflicts, specifically in Ireland, but no great wars.
The destruction caused by mercenary soldiers defied description (see Schwedentrunk). The war did much to end the age of mercenaries that had begun with the first landsknechts, and ushered in the age of well-disciplined national armies.
In part because of a desire to avoid destructive wars based on religious differences, separation of church and state was established in the United States Constitution.

References

Langer, Herbert. "The Thirty Year's War." Poole, England: Blandford Press, 1980.
Parker, Geoffrey. "The Thirty Years' War." London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984.
Prinzing, Friedrich. "Epidemics Resulting from Wars." Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1916.
Wedgwood, C. V., Kennedy, Paul. "Thirty Years War." The New York Review of Books, Inc. New York, 2005, ISBN 1590171462

Fiction

Eric Flint's Ring of Fire series of novels deals with a temporally displaced West Virginia town from the early 21st century arriving in the early 1630's war torn Germany.

External links

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