Thirty Years' War
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| Thirty Years' War | |||||||
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 Map of Europe in 1648. The grey area represents small German states within the Holy Roman Empire. |
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| Combatants | |||||||
 Sweden Bohemia Denmark-Norway Dutch Republic France Scotland England |
 Holy Roman Empire(Catholic League)  Spain Austria Bavaria |
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| Commanders | |||||||
| Frederick V Gustav II Adolf † Cardinal Richelieu Christian IV of Denmark Johann Georg I of Saxony |
Johann Tzerclaes, count of Tilly Albrecht von Wallenstein Ferdinand II Ferdinand III Count-Duke Olivares Maximilian I |
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| Primarily, the war was fought about religion - the Evangelian (Protestant) union versus the Catholic League - but later, profits dominated the battlefields (France sponsored and subsequently joined the Protestants to weaken the Habsburgs) | |||||||
| Thirty Years' War |
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| Plzeň – Záblati – Dolní Věstonice – White Mountain – Wiesloch – Wimpfen – Höchst – Fleurus – Stadtlohn – Dessau Bridge – Lutter am Barenberge – Stralsund – Wolgast – Frankfurt – Magdeburg – Werben – 1st Breitenfeld – Rain – Fürth – Alte Veste – Lützen – Oldendorf – Nördlingen – Wittstock – Rheinfelden – Breisach – Chemnitz – Honnecourt – 2nd Breitenfeld – Rocroi – Tuttlingen – Freiburg – Jüterbog – Jankov – Mergentheim – Nördlingen – Zusmarshausen – Lens – Prague |
The Thirty Years' War was fought between 1618 and 1648, principally on the territory of today's Germany, and involved most of the major European continental powers. Although it was from the 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, increasing 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 the conflicts that triggered it continued unresolved for a much longer time.
The war ended with the Treaty of Westphalia.
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[edit] Origins of the War
The Peace of Augsburg (1555), hastily signed by Charles V, confirmed the result of the 1526 Diet of Speyer and ended the violence between the Lutherans and the Catholics in Germany.
It stated 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 (the principle called reservatum ecclesiasticum).
However, though granting peace at the moment, the settlement did not solve the question raised by the religious wars and differences. Both parties interpreted it at their convenience, the Lutherans in particular considering it only a momentary agreement. Further, Calvinism spread quickly throughout Germany, adding a third major religion to the region, but its position was not supported in any way by the Augsburg terms, since Catholicism and Lutheranism were the only permitted creeds.
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. The Netherlands revolted against the Spanish domination, gaining independence in a series of wars which was halted by a truce only in 1609.
- France was interested in the German states because of their status as weak 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.
The Holy Roman Empire, encompassing Germany and most of the neighbouring lands, was a fragmented collection of independent states ranging from superpowers like the Austrian House of Habsburg (including also Bohemia and Hungary, with some 8 millions subjects); national states like Bavaria, electoral Saxony, Brandenburg, Palatinate, Hesse, the archbishopric of Trier and Württemberg (500,000 to one million inhabitants); to a wide series of minor independent duchies, free cities, abbeys, bishoprics, up to petty lords whose authority extended to no more than a single village. Apart from Austria and perhaps Bavaria, not one of those entities was capable of national-level politics; alliances between family-related states were common, due also to the practice of often splitting between the various sons the inheritage of lords.
Religious tensions were growing throughout the second half of the 16th century as well. The Peace of Augsburg was unraveling as some converted bishops had not given up their bishoprics, and as certain Catholic rulers in Spain and Eastern Europe sought to restore the power of Catholicism in the region. This was evident from the Cologne War (1582–83) onwards. This occurred when the prince-archbishop of that city converted to Calvinism. Being an imperial elector, this could have created a majority of votes for the Lutherans in the College that elected the Holy Roman Emperor. The Emperor had always been a Catholic until that time. Therefore the prince-archbishop was expelled by Spanish troops and replaced by Ernst of Bavaria. 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 the Lutherans to choose between conversion or exile. The Lutherans also saw the defection of the lords of Palatinate (1560), Nassau (1578), Hesse-Kassel (1603) and Brandenburg (1613), who had all adhered to Calvinism. Thus at the beginning of the 17th century the situation was the following: the Rhein lands and those south to the Danube were largely Catholic, while the Lutherans were the majority in the north, and Calvinists were predominant in some areas such as the Central part of Western 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,[citation needed] 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. They were aware[citation needed] of the deadly evils and turmoil that England had suffered because of the official religious intolerance that had commenced in 1534 under King Henry VIII and his successors. Thus these rulers avoided religious wars within the empire by allowing the different religions to spread there. This angered those who wanted religious uniformity. Meanwhile, Sweden and Denmark, which were both Lutheran kingdoms, sought to assist the Protestant cause in the Empire. They 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. The Lutheran majority barred the Catholic residents of the Swabian town from holding a procession which caused a 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 were a minority) felt the most threatened. They banded together and formed the League of Evangelical Union. The League was 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). Incidentally, the Prince-Elector had control of the Rhenish Palatinate, one of the very states along the Rhine River that Spain wanted to acquire. The creation of the League provoked the Catholics into banding together to form the Catholic League (created in 1609) under the leadership of the aforementioned Duke Maximilian.
Then Matthias Holy Roman Emperor and the King of Bohemia, died without descendants in 1619. His lands went to his nearest male relative, his cousin Ferdinand of Styria. He thus became King of Bohemia and Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor. Ferdinand having been educated by the Jesuits was a staunch Catholic who wanted to restore Catholicism to his lands. This made him highly unpopular in primarily Hussite Bohemia. The rejection of Ferdinand is what launched the Thirty Years' War. The War can be divided into four major phases: the Bohemian Revolt, the Danish intervention, the Swedish intervention, and the French intervention.
[edit] The Bohemian Revolt
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 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 position taken by the Catholics and so 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 (Wilhelm Grav Slavata and Jaroslav Borzita Graf Von Martinicz) as his representatives to Hradčany castle in Prague in May 1618. Ferdinand had wanted them to administer the government in his absence. Suddenly, the Bohemian Calvinists seized them, subjected them to a mock trial, and threw them out of the palace window which was some 50 feet off the ground. The Catholic version of the story claims that angels appeared and carried them to safety, while the Protestant version says that they landed in a pile of manure which saved their lives.
This event, known as the Second Defenestration of Prague, is what started the Bohemian Revolt. Soon after the Bohemian conflict erupted in the entirety of Greater Bohemia which was effectively Bohemia, Silesia, Lusatia and Moravia. Moravia was already dealing with a conflict between Catholics and Protestants. This conflict was to find many facets and mirrors across the continent of Europe and eventually involved France and Sweden, among others.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 sent troops to garrison fortresses in the Rhineland. The capture of Mansfeld's field chancery revealed the Savoyards' plot 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 August 17 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.
The Spanish sent an army from Brussels under Ambrosio Spinola to support the Emperor. Also the Spanish ambassador to 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 Leagues' 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 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. His title of elector of the Palatinate was given to his distant cousin Duke Maximilian of Bavaria. Frederick V, now landless, made himself a prominent exile abroad and tried to curry support for his cause in the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden.
This was also a serious blow to Protestant ambitions in the region. As the rebellion collapsed the 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 which gave the Transylvanians 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 that greater Bohemia was pacified. However, the war in the Palatinate consisted of much smaller battles that were mostly sieges while the Bohemian and Hungarian campaigns were much larger. Mannheim and Heidelberg fell in 1622, and Frankenthal in 1623. Finally, the Palatinate was in the hands of the Spanish.
The remnants of the Protestant armies, led by Mansfeld and Christian of Brunswick, fled for a new group of paymasters in Holland. Although their arrival did lift the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom, the Dutch could not long abide with this rabble. They paid them off and sent them to occupy neighboring East Friesland. Mansfeld remained in Holland, but Christian wandered off to "assist" his kin in the Lower Saxon Circle which attracted 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. The battle that ensued was known as the Battle of Stadtlohn. In this battle Tilly's army inflicted a catastrophic defeat upon Christian and wiped out over four-fifths of his army which was 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, which was rooted in Bohemia, now crushed peace briefly fell upon the Holy Roman Empire.
[edit] Danish intervention
The Danish Period began when Christian IV of Denmark (1577–1648), King of Denmark, who was Lutheran and was also the Duke of Holstein helped the Lutheran rulers of neighboring Lower Saxony by leading an army against the Holy Roman Empire. Denmark had feared that her sovereignty as a Protestant nation was being threatened. 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.) As an administrator, Christian IV had done remarkably well. He 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. 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 English had 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 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 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 that this one battle 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. Wallenstein was without a fleet and neither the Hanseatic ports nor the Poles would allow an Imperial fleet to be built in the Baltic. He then pressed a siege against Stralsund which was the only belligerent port on the Baltic which had the facilities to build a fleet large enough to take the Danish islands. However, the cost of continuing the war was exorbitant compared to what could possibly be gained from conquering the rest of Denmark.
This led to the Treaty of Lübeck in (1629). The Treaty stated that Christian IV would abandon his support for the Protestants so that he could keep control over Denmark. Thus, in the following two years more land was subjugated by the Catholic powers.
At this point, the war should have been concluded. However 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 possessions included two Archbishoprics, sixteen bishoprics, and hundreds of monasteries. Also Mansfeld and Gabriel Bethlen, the first officers of the Protestant cause, died in the same year. Only the port of Stralsund held out against Wallenstein and the Emperor, and only due to the assistance of the Danes and later the Swedes.
[edit] Swedish intervention
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, to help fellow Protestants 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 Wallenstein 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.
[edit] French intervention
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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.
[edit] The Peace of Westphalia
Main article: Peace of Westphalia
French General Louis II de Bourbon, 4th Prince de Condé, Duc d'Enghien, The Great 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] Political consequences
One result of the war was the enshrinement of 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 (since 1580)—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 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.
[edit] See also
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- Gunpowder warfare
- Rise of Sweden as a Great Power
- Magnate wars in Moldavia
- Smolensk War
- Thirty Years' War and Norway
- Compare: Hundred Years' War
[edit] Bibliography
- Åberg, A., "The Swedish army from Lützen to Narva", in M. Roberts (ed.), Sweden’s Age of Greatness, 1632-1718 (1973).
- Benecke, G. Germany in the Thirty Years War (1978).
- Gutmann, Myron P. "The Origins of the Thirty Years' War", Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 18, No. 4. (Spring, 1988), pp. 749–770. in JSTOR
- Kamen, Henry. "The Economic and Social Consequences of the Thirty Years' War", Past and Present, No. 39. (Apr., 1968), pp. 44–61. in JSTOR
- Kennedy, Paul. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (1988).
- Langer, Herbert. The Thirty Year's War. Poole, England: Blandford Press, 1980.
- McKay, John P.; Hill, Benneta; Buckler, John. A History of Western Society. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003 (ISBN 0-618-27074-4), pp. 498–502. textbook
- Steve Murdoch; Scotland and the Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648 Brill, 2001
- Parker, Geoffrey. The Thirty Years' War. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984. recent scholarly synthesis
- Polišenský, J.V. "The Thirty Years' War", Past and Present, No. 6. (Nov., 1954), pp. 31–43. in JSTOR
- Polišenský, J.V. "The Thirty Years' War and the Crises and Revolutions of Seventeenth-Century Europe", Past and Present, No. 39. (Apr., 1968), pp. 34–43. in JSTOR
- Prinzing, Friedrich. "Epidemics Resulting from Wars." Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1916.
- Roberts, Michael. Gustavus Adolphus: A History of Sweden, 1611-1632 (2 vols, 1953, 1958).
- A. W. Ward, ed. The Cambridge Modern History, vol 4: The Thirty Years War 1902. 1006 pp online; older essays by scholars
- Wedgwood, C.V.; Kennedy, Paul. Thirty Years War. New York: The New York Review of Books, Inc., 2005 (ISBN 1-59017-146-2).
[edit] 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.
- The Last Valley (1971, 15). A film starring Michael Caine & Omar Sharif, who discover a temporary haven from the Thirty Years War. Written by James Clavell, the author of Shogun.
- Michael Moorcock's novel, The War Hound and the World's Pain has as its central character Ulrich von Bek, a mercenary who took part in the sack of Magdeburg.
- Bertolt Brecht's play Mother Courage and Her Children, an anti-war theatre piece, is set during the Thirty Years War.
[edit] External links
- The Thirty Years War - The Catholic Encyclopedia
- The Thirty Years War LearningSite
- Thirty Years War Timeline
- Project "Peace of Westphalia" (among others with Essay Volumes of the 26th Exhibition of the Council of Europe "1648: War and Peace in Europe", 1998/99)
- History of the Thirty Years' War by Friedrich von Schiller at Project Gutenberg
- Erik Ringmar, Identity, Interest & Action: A Cultural Explanation of Sweden's Intervention in the Thirty Years' War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)
- The Thirty Years War
