Thirty Years' War
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The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) was one of the most
destructive conflicts in European history. The war was
fought primarily (though not exclusively) in Germany and
at various points involved most of the countries of
Europe. Naval warfare also reached overseas and shaped
the colonial formation of future nations.
The origins of the conflict and goals of the
participants were complex and no one cause can
accurately be described as the main reason for the
fighting. Initially the war was fought largely as a
religious conflict between Protestants and 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. 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 Habsburg powers,
and less specifically about religion.
A major impact of the Thirty Years' War was the
extensive destruction of entire regions, denuded by the
foraging armies. Episodes of famine and disease
significantly decreased the populace of the German
states and 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
contributions from the local regions: in other words,
whatever they could take. 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 Treaty of Münster, a part of the wider Peace of
Westphalia.
The
Recruitment of Troops
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 German Lutherans and
Catholics.
The Peace of Augsburg stated that:
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 that 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 a
party.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 a protracted 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 Margraviate of Brandenburg, the Palatinate,
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.
The Hanging
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.
Dying soldiers by the roadside
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 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. 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-Elector Frederick IV (1583–1610), (whose son,
Frederick V, married Elizabeth Stuart, the daughter of
James I of England). The establishment of the League
prompted the Catholics into banding together to form the
Catholic League in 1609, under the leadership of Duke
Maximilian.
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.
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 couple
of years would seem to suffer unrecoverable reverses.
The Protestant cause seemed to wax toward a quick
overall victory.
The war can be divided into four major phases: The
Bohemian Revolt, the Danish intervention, the Swedish
intervention and the French intervention.
The Battle
Phases
The Bohemian Revolt
1618–1620
Without heirs, 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 they would
be losing the religious rights granted to them by
Emperor Rudolf II in his letter of majesty. They
preferred the Protestant Frederick V, elector of the
Palatinate (successor of Frederick IV, the creator of
the League of Evangelical Union). However, other
Protestants supported the stance taken by the
Catholics, and in 1617, Ferdinand was duly elected
by the Bohemian estates to become the Crown Prince, and
automatically upon the death of Matthias, the next King
of Bohemia.
The king-elect then sent two Catholic councillors (Vilem
Slavata of Chlum and Jaroslav Borzita of Martinice) as
his representatives to Hradčany castle in Prague in May
1618. Ferdinand had wanted them to administer the
government in his absence. According to legend, the
Bohemian Hussites suddenly seized them, subjected them
to a mock trial, and threw them out of the palace
window, which was some 50 feet off the ground.
Remarkably, they survived unharmed; they landed in a
pile of manure, which saved their lives. This event,
known as the (Second) Defenestration of Prague, started
the Bohemian Revolt. Soon afterward the Bohemian
conflict spread through all of Greater Bohemia, which
was effectively Bohemia, Silesia, Lusatia and Moravia.
Moravia was already embroiled in a conflict between
Catholics and Protestants. The religious conflict
eventually spread across the whole continent of Europe,
involving France, Sweden, and a number of other
countries.
Had the Bohemian rebellion remained a local conflict,
the war could have been over in fewer than thirty
months. However, the death of Emperor Matthias
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 Matthias) 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 into the Protestant
Union, which was led by their original candidate for the
Bohemian throne, the Calvinist Frederick V, Elector
Palatine. The Bohemians hinted that Frederick 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 these
duplicities public. This unraveled much of the
support for the Bohemians, particularly in the court of
Saxony. The rebellion initially favoured the Bohemians.
They were joined in the revolt by much of Upper Austria,
whose nobility was then chiefly Lutheran and Calvinist.
Lower Austria revolted soon after and in 1619, Count
Thurn led an army to the walls of Vienna itself.
The Strappado
Ottoman support
In the east, the Protestant Prince of Transylvania
Bethlen Gabor led a spirited campaign into Hungary with
the support of the Ottoman Sultan, Osman II. Fearful of
the Catholic policies of Ferdinand II, Bethlen Gabor
requested a protectorate by Osman, so that "the Ottoman
Empire became the one and only ally of great-power
status which the rebellious Bohemian states could muster
after they had shaken off Habsburg rule and had elected
Frederick V as a Protestant king".
Ambassadors were
exchanged, with Heinrich Bitter visiting Istambul in
January 1620, and Mehmed Aga visiting Prague in July
1620. The Ottomans offered a force of 60,000 cavalry to
Frederick and plans were made for an invasion of Poland
with 400,000 troops in exchange for the payment of an
annual tribute to the Sultan. These negotiations
triggered the Polish–Ottoman War of 1620-21. The
Ottomans defeated the Poles, which were supporting the
Habsburgs in the Thirty Years' War, at the Battle of Cecora in September-October 1620,
but were not able to further intervene efficiently
before the Bohemian defeat at the Battle of the White
Mountain in November 1620.
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 Imperial army,
defeated the forces of the Protestant Union led by Count
Mansfeld at the Battle of Sablat, on 10 June 1619. This
cut off Count Thurn's communications with Prague, and he
was forced to abandon his siege of Vienna. The Battle of
Sablat also cost the Protestants an important ally —
Savoy, long an opponent of Habsburg expansion. Savoy had
already sent considerable sums of money to the
Protestants and even troops to garrison fortresses in
the Rhineland. The capture of Mansfeld's field chancery
revealed the Savoyards' involvement and they were forced
to bow out of 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. On 17
August 1619 Ferdinand was officially deposed as King of
Bohemia and was 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.
They succeeded in driving the Emperor's armies from that
country by 1620.
Scene of pillage
1620–1625
The Spanish sent an army from Brussels under Ambrogio
Spinola to support the Emperor. In addition, the Spanish
ambassador to Vienna, Don Íñigo Vélez de Oñate,
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. Oñate
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's army (which included René Descartes in its
ranks) pacified Upper Austria, while the Emperor's
forces pacified Lower Austria. The two armies united and
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 becoming
Catholic, Bohemia would remain in Habsburg hands for
nearly three hundred years. This defeat led to the
dissolution of the League of Evangelical Union and the
loss of Frederick V's holdings. Frederick was outlawed
from the Holy Roman Empire and his territories, the
Rhenish Palatinate, were given to Catholic nobles. His
title of elector of the Palatinate was given to his
distant cousin Duke Maximilian of Bavaria. Frederick,
now landless, made himself a prominent exile abroad and
tried to curry support for his cause in Sweden,
Netherlands and Denmark.
The peasants avenge themselves
This was a serious blow to Protestant ambitions in
the region. As the rebellion collapsed, the widespread
confiscation of property and suppression of the Bohemian
nobility ensured that the country would return to the
Catholic side after more than two centuries of Hussite
and other religious dissent. The Spanish, seeking to
outflank the Dutch in preparation for renewal of the
Eighty Years' War, took Frederick's lands, the Rhine
Palatinate. The first phase of the war in eastern
Germany ended 31 December 1621, when the Prince of
Transylvania and the Emperor signed the Peace of
Nikolsburg, which gave Transylvania a number of
territories in Royal Hungary.
Some historians regard the period from 1621–1625 as a
distinct portion of the Thirty Years' War, calling it
the "Palatinate phase". With the catastrophic defeat of
the Protestant army at White Mountain and the departure
of the Prince of Transylvania, greater Bohemia was
pacified. However, the war in the Palatinate continued:
Famous mercenary leaders - such as, particularly, Count
Ernst von Mansfeld - helped Frederick V to defend his
countries, the Upper and the Rhine Palatinate. This
phase of the war consisted of much smaller battles,
mostly sieges conducted by the Spanish army. Mannheim
and Heidelberg fell in 1622, and Frankenthal was taken
two years later, thus leaving the Palatinate in the
hands of the Spanish.
The remnants of the Protestant armies, led by Count
Ernst von Mansfeld and Duke Christian of Brunswick,
withdraw into Dutch service. Although their arrival in
the Netherlands did help to lift the siege of
Bergen-op-Zoom (October 1622), the Dutch could not
provide permanent shelter for them. They were paid off
and sent to occupy neighboring East Friesland. Mansfeld
remained in the Dutch Republic, but Christian wandered
off to "assist" his kin in the Lower Saxon Circle,
attracting the attentions of Tilly. With the news that
Mansfeld would not be supporting him, Christian's army
began a steady retreat toward the safety of the Dutch
border. On 6 August 1623, Tilly's more disciplined army
caught up with them 10 miles short of the Dutch border.
The battle that ensued was known as the Battle of
Stadtlohn. In this battle Tilly decisively defeated
Christian, wiping out over four-fifths of his army,
which had been some 15,000 strong. After this
catastrophe, Frederick V, already in exile in The Hague,
and under growing pressure from his father-in-law James
I to end his involvement in the war, was forced to
abandon any hope of launching further campaigns. The
Protestant rebellion had been crushed.
Plundering a large farmhouse
Huguenot rebellions
(1620-1628)
In France, the Protestant Huguenots, mainly located
in southwestern France, revolted against the central
Royal power of the French government. The uprising
followed the death of Henry IV, who, himself originally
a Huguenot before converting to Catholicism, had
protected Protestant throught the Edict of Nantes. The
new ruler however, Louis XIII, under the regency of his
Italian Catholic mother Marie de' Medici, became more
intolerant of the Protestant religion. The Huguenots
tried to respond by defending themselves, establishing
independent political and military structures,
establishing diplomatic contacts with foreign powers,
and openly revolting against central power. The Huguenot
rebellions came after two decades of internal peace
under Henry IV, following the intermittent French Wars
of Religion of 1562–1598. The rebellion led to major
military encounters, which ended in defeat for the
Huguenots: the Siege of Montauban, the Naval battle of
Saint-Martin-de-Ré on 27 October 1622, the Capture of Ré
island in 1625, and the Siege of La Rochelle in
1627-1628 which became an International conflict with
the involvement of England in the Anglo-French War
(1627-1629). After this defeat, England disinvolved
itself from European affairs to the dismay of Protestant
forces on the continent.
The Firing squad
Danish intervention
Period: 1625–1629
Peace in the Empire was short-lived, however, as conflict resumed at the initiation of Denmark. Danish involvement began when Christian IV of Denmark, a Lutheran who was also the Duke of Holstein, a duchy within the Holy Roman Empire, helped the Lutheran rulers of neighbouring Lower Saxony by leading an army against the Imperial forces. Denmark had feared that its sovereignty as a Protestant nation was threatened by the recent Catholic successes. Christian IV had also profited greatly from his policies in northern Germany. For instance, in 1621, Hamburg had been forced to accept Danish sovereignty and Christian's second son was made bishop of Bremen. Christian IV had obtained for his kingdom a level of stability and wealth that was virtually unmatched elsewhere in Europe. This stability and wealth was paid for by tolls on the Oresund and also by extensive war reparations from Sweden. Denmark's cause was aided by France which, together with England, had agreed to help subsidize the war. Christian had himself appointed war leader of the Lower Saxon Circle and raised an army of 20,000 mercenaries and a national army 15,000 strong.
To fight him, 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, which
numbered 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 forces when he invaded, was forced to
retire before the combined forces of Wallenstein and
Tilly. Christian's poor luck was with him again when all
of the allies he thought he had were forced aside:
England was weak and internally divided, France was in
the midst of a civil war, Sweden was at war with the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 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, apparently tuberculosis, in Dalmatia.
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. Wallenstein lacked a fleet, and neither the
Hanseatic ports nor the Poles would allow an Imperial
fleet to be built on the Baltic coast. He then laid
siege to Stralsund, the only belligerent Baltic port
with the facilities to build a large fleet. However, the
cost of continuing the war was exorbitant compared to
what could possibly be gained from conquering the rest
of Denmark, and so Wallenstein decided to make
peace.
Negotiations were concluded with the Treaty of Lübeck in
1629, which stated that Christian IV could keep his
control over Denmark if he would abandon his support for
the Protestant German states. Thus, in the following two
years more land was subjugated by the Catholic powers.
At this point, 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. Enumerated in the
Edict of Restitution (1629), these possessions included
two Archbishoprics, sixteen bishoprics, and hundreds of
monasteries. The same year, Gabriel Bethlen, the
Calvinist Prince of Transylvania, died. Only the port of
Stralsund continued to hold out against Wallenstein and
the Emperor.
Destruction of a convent
Swedish intervention
Period: 1630–1635
Some within Ferdinand II's court did not trust
Wallenstein, believing that he sought to join forces
with 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 Adolphus), had invaded the
Holy Roman Empire with success and turned the tables on
the Catholics. His contributions made Sweden the
continental leader of Protestantism until the Swedish
Empire collapsed in 1721.
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, Gustavus was concerned about
the growing power of the Holy Roman Empire. No one knows
the exact reason for Gustavus to enter the war and this
has been widely argued. Like Christian IV, Gustavus
Adolphus was subsidized by Cardinal Richelieu, the Chief
Minister of Louis XIII of France, and by the Dutch.
From 1630 to 1634, Swedish-led armies drove the Catholic
forces back, regaining much of the lost Protestant
territory. During his campaign he managed to conquer
half of the Imperial kingdoms.
Swedish forces entered the Holy Roman Empire via the
Duchy of Pomerania, which served as the Swedish
bridgehead since the Treaty of Stettin (1630). After
dismissing Wallenstein in 1630, Ferdinand II became
dependent on the Catholic League. France and Bavaria
signed the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau (1631), but
this was rendered irrelevant by Swedish attacks against
Bavaria. At the Battle of Breitenfeld (1631), Gustavus
Adolphus's forces defeated the Catholic League led by
General Tilly. A year later they met again in
another Protestant victory, this time accompanied by the
death of Tilly. 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 of 42,000
men. In 1632, it contributed only one-fifth of that
(476,439 daler) towards the cost of an army more than
three times as large (149,000 men). This was possible
due to subsidies from France, and the recruitment of
prisoners (most of them taken at the Battle of
Breitenfeld) into the Swedish army. The majority of
mercenaries recruited by Gustavus II Adolphus were
German but Scottish mercenaries were also common.
With Tilly dead, Ferdinand II returned to the aid of
Wallenstein and his large army. Wallenstein marched up
to the south, threatening Gustavus Adolphus's supply
chain. Gustavus Adolphus knew that Wallenstein was
waiting for the attack and was prepared, but found 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, lacking his leadership, were defeated
at the First Battle of Nördlingen.
The Hospital
Ferdinand II's suspicion of Wallenstein resumed 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 when he attempted to contact the Swedes in the town
hall of Eger (Cheb) on 25 February 1634.
After that, the two sides met for negotiations, producing the Peace of Prague (1635), which entailed a delay in the 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, but not those of the south and west (whose lands had been occupied by the Imperial or League armies prior to 1627). The treaty also provided for the union of the army of the Emperor and the armies of the German states into a single 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). Finally, German princes were forbidden from establishing alliances amongst themselves or with foreign powers, and amnesty was granted to any ruler who had taken up arms against the Emperor after the arrival of the Swedes in 1630.
This treaty failed to satisfy France, however,
because of the renewed strength it granted the
Habsburgs. France then entered the conflict, beginning
the final period of the Thirty Years' War.
Plundering and burning a village
French intervention
Period: 1636–1648
France, although overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, was a
rival of the Holy Roman Empire and Spain. Cardinal
Richelieu, the Chief Minister of King Louis XIII of
France, felt that the Habsburgs were too powerful, since
they held a number of territories on France's eastern
border, including portions of the Netherlands. Richelieu
had already begun intervening indirectly in the war in
January 1631, when the French diplomat Hercules de
Charnace signed the Treaty of Bärwalde with Gustavus
Adolphus, by which France agreed to support the Swedes
with 1,000,000 livres each year in return for a Swedish
promise to maintain an army in Germany against the
Habsburgs. The treaty also stipulated that Sweden would
not conclude a peace with the Holy Roman Emperor without
first receiving France's approval.
After the Swedish rout at Nördlingen in September 1634
and the Peace of Prague in 1635, as Sweden's ability to
continue the war alone appeared doubtful, Richelieu made
the decision to enter into direct war against the
Habsburgs. France declared war on Spain in May 1635 and
the Holy Roman Empire in August 1636, opening offensives
against the Habsburgs in Germany and the Low Countries.
French military efforts met with disaster, and the
Spanish counter-attacked, invading French territory. The
Imperial general Johann von Werth and Spanish commander
Cardinal Ferdinand Habsburg ravaged the French provinces
of Champagne, Burgundy and Picardy, and even threatened
Paris in 1636 before being repulsed by Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar.
Bernhard's victory in the Battle of Compiègne 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, facing the domestic crisis of the Fronde
beginning in 1645, began working to end the war.
In 1645, the Swedish marshal Lennart Torstenson 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 Catholic commander of note, Baron Franz von
Mercy, died in the battle.
On 14 March 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 Condé) defeated the Imperial army at the
Battle of Zusmarshausen and Lens. These results left
only the Imperial territories of Austria safely in
Habsburg hands.
Attack on a coach
The Peace of Westphalia
The Stake
Casualties and disease
So great was the devastation brought about by the war
that estimates put the reduction of population in the
German states at about 15% to 30%. Some regions
were affected much more than others. For example,
the Württemberg lost three-quarters of its population
during the war. In the territory of Brandenburg, the
losses had amounted to half, while in some areas an
estimated two-thirds of the population died. The
male population of the German states was reduced by
almost half. The population of the Czech lands
declined by a third due to war, disease, famine and the
expulsion of Protestant Czechs. Much of the
destruction of civilian lives and property was caused by
the cruelty and greed of mercenary soldiers, many of
whom were rich commanders and poor soldiers. The
Swedish armies alone may have destroyed up to 2,000
castles, 18,000 villages and 1,500 towns in Germany,
one-third of all German towns. The war caused serious
dislocations to both the economies and populations 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. 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
numbers of plague casualties. In the last decades of the
war, both typhus and dysentery had become endemic in
Germany.
Discovery of the criminal soldiers
Political consequences
One result of the war was the balkanization of
Germany into many territories — all of which, despite
their membership in the Empire, won de facto
sovereignty. This limited the power of the Holy Roman
Empire and decentralized German power.
The Thirty Years' War rearranged the European power
structure. The conflict made Spain's military and
political decline visible. While Spain was fighting in
France, Portugal — which had been under personal union
with Spain for 60 years — acclaimed John IV of Braganza
as king in 1640, and the House of Braganza became the
new dynasty of Portugal, for further information).
Meanwhile, Spain was forced to accept the independence
of the Dutch Republic in 1648, ending the Eighty Years'
War. With Spain weakened, France started to replace
Spain as the dominant European power, an outcome
confirmed by its victories in the subsequent
Franco-Spanish War, War of Devolution and Franco-Dutch
War and by the late 1600s, Bourbon France under the
leadership of Louis XIV had surpassed Habsburg Spain in
influence.
From 1643–45, during the last years of the Thirty Years'
War, Sweden and Denmark fought 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 also has a few more subtle consequences. The
Thirty Years' War marked the last major religious war in
mainland Europe, ending the large-scale religious
bloodshed accompanying the Reformation, in 1648. There
were other religious conflicts in the years to come, but
no great wars. Also, the destruction caused by
mercenary soldiers defied description. 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.
The war also had consequences abroad, as the European
powers extended their fight via naval power to overseas
colonies. In 1630, a Dutch fleet of 70 ships had taken
the rich sugar-exporting areas of Pernambuco, Brazil
from the Spanish. Their expulsion from Brazil by the
Portuguese and Brazilians in 1654 was a formative event
of Brazilian national identity. Fighting also took place
in Africa and Asia.
