The three decades of complex and complicated warfare, centred around about Germany but involving most of the western European polities from 1618-48. It ended with the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia (24 Oct 1648) at the end of the Congress of Westphalia (which ran 1643-48); it was attended by representatives from 194 European rulers. Though the war left Germany in ruins—its loss of lives and material was proportionately greater than the Second World War—it ended the hold of the Holy Roman Emperor on her and brought her both political and religious freedom (though her political influence over the rest of Europe would diminish until her unification under Bismarck in the 19th Cent.). More importantly, the war ended significantly the pope's political influence and "helped to remove religion as a likely precipitant of political conflict" from the West European theatre. Though the European nations would continue to war against one another in the centuries to come, it would never be for the cause of religion.
The spark for the war came in Bohemia, one of the elector states of the Holy Roman Empire, where the zealously Catholic Emperor-Elect Ferdinand II (he was crowned in 1619)—keen to regain grounds lost to the Catholic Church—began supressing the religious freedom granted to the non-Catholics by the reigning Emperor Matthias. The Protestants called for a meeting to object to new orders that would restrict them into their worship. When the Emperor's representatives declared the meeting illegal, the Protestants forced themselves into the council chamber on 23 May 1618 and threw two of the representatives, and their secretary, out of the window in protest, an event that had since acquired the name the "defenestration". (The three survived, falling on a deep compost heap.) If this was not enough to outrage Ferdinand, their next move did.
Matthias died in March 1619. In August Ferdinand was elected emperor. Just at the time, the Bohemian non-Catholics invited the leading Calvinist Frederick V, Prince Elector of Palatinate, to be their king. But this meant more than the fact that they were essentially deposing the Emperor from the domain. The Emperor was elected by seven electors (see Holy Roman Emperor); at that time three of them (the Palatinate, Bradenburg, and Saxony) were in the hands of Protestants. If Frederick accepted the throne of Bohemia (also one of the electors), he would have two votes in his hands, giving the Protestant the deciding voice in the Emperor's election. For better or worse, when Frederick saw it as God's calling to fill the Bohemian throne; the lots for war was cast. On 8 Nov 1620 the Bohemian Protestants were annihilated at the Battle of the White Mountain. Bohemia was subject to rigorous re-conversion and confiscation of Protestant properties and estates. The following year Ferdinand gave Frederick's electoral title to Maximillian, his Bavarian ally and cousin, whose commander then overran the Palatinate and partitioned it between Bavaria and Spain. Frederick was forced to flee, a wandering fugitive until he was given asylum by the Dutch. Even his father-in-law, James I of England, would do little for him.
The Battle of White Mountain
Ferdinand's gift of the Palatinate to Maximillian, however, caused outrage in Germany; it went against the principles of the Golden Bull and undermined a cornerstone against arbitrary rule. Also, having tasted success, Ferdinand wanted more: to retake as much of Europe that had been taken by the Protestants back into Catholic control. In his ambitions, however, he overstretched. It drove the Lutherans and Calvinists at last to speak of 'toleration' and to find ways to work together. Nor did it go well with the other monarchs of Europe, who saw this as another burst of characteristically Habsburgian thirst for power. This handed the Palatinate exiles a golden opportunity to garner international support and sympathy for Frederick and his cause. In 1630 Gastuv Aldolf, the king of Lutheran Sweden, brought his army south to fight the Habsburg, doing well enough to restore Frederick to his homeland, even if only for a short while (within a year, however, Frederick would die of the plague). Others, on one side or the other—Denmark, France (despite being Catholic, she fought on the side of Sweden and the German Protestants), Spain, Italy, as well as the Papacy and every polity that make up the Holy Roman Empire—piled into the frying-pan. Over the next three decades, wars were won and lost, peace made and broken, until exhausted, they began to seek a way out of the futile melee. The peace effort, that came to be called the Congress of Westphalia, went on for five years in the two major cites of the region, Munster and Osnabruck because so many internal and conflicting issues and interests had to be dealt with in the effort to find some overarching resolution. Both cities continue to claim the title of 'City of Peace,' since the final Treaty was also signed in both of them.
Media Resources:
Peter Wilson, "The 30 Years' War (1618-48) and the Second Defenestration of Prague" Gresham College. 2018. 44.58 mins.
Video/Youtube N (Open on Phone)
Bibliography:
G. Benecke, ed., Germany in the Thirty Years' War. New York: St. Martin's, 1929.
Herbert Langer, The Thirty Years' War. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1980.
G. Pages, The Thirty Years' War. 1970.
Geoffrey Parker, ed., The Thirty Year's War. 2nd ed., rev. London/New York: Routledge, 1997.
S. H. Steinberg, The Thirty Years' War and the Conflict for European Hegemony, 1600-1660. 1966.
Theodore K. Rabb, ed., The Thirty Years' War. 2nd ed. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1981.
C. V. Wedgwood, The Thirty Years' War. London: J. Cape, 1938.
D. MacCulloch, Reformation. Europe's House Divided 1490-1700. London: Penguin, 2004. ("1618-48. Decision and Destruction," pp.485-501."
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