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Thirty
Years' War
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Thirty
Years' War, series of European conflicts lasting from 1618
to 1648, involving most of the countries of western Europe,
and fought mainly in Germany. At first the struggle was primarily
based on the profound religious antagonism engendered among
Germans by the events of the Protestant Reformation. Religious
animosity, especially among non-German adherents of the contending
Protestant and Roman Catholic factions, broadened the war
and was a substantial factor in its later stages. As the struggle
gained momentum, however, its direction and character were
decisively influenced by various other issues, including the
dynastic rivalries of ambitious German princes and the determination
of certain European powers, notably Sweden and France, to
curb the power of the Holy Roman Empire, then the chief political
instrument of Austria and the ruling Habsburg family. The
religious hatreds that flared into the Thirty Years' War had
smouldered for more than half a century before 1618. In large
measure, this situation had resulted from the weaknesses of
the Peace of Augsburg, an agreement concluded in 1555 between
the Holy Roman emperor and the Lutheran princes of Germany.
The war, which was one of the most destructive conflicts in
European history, may be divided into four phases, usually
styled and dated as follows: Palatine-Bohemian (1618-25),
Danish (1625-29), Swedish (1630-35), and French (1635-48).
Palatine-Bohemian Phase
Religious tensions were seriously aggravated in Germany during
the reign (1576-1612) of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. Protestant
churches in many parts of Germany were destroyed, restrictions
were placed on the rights of Protestants to worship freely,
and the emperor's officials made the Treaty of Augsburg the
basis for a general resurgence of Roman Catholic power. With
the establishment (1608) of the Evangelical Union, a Protestant
defensive alliance of princes and cities, and of the Catholic
League (1609), a similar organisation of Roman Catholics,
a violent solution to the crisis became inevitable. The Bohemian
section of the Evangelical Union struck the first blow. Outraged
by the aggressive policies of the Roman Catholic hierarchy
in Bohemia, the Bohemian Protestants, a majority of the population,
demanded that Ferdinand II, then king of Bohemia, intervene.
The king, an ardent Roman Catholic and the Habsburg heir presumptive,
ignored the Protestant appeal. On May 23, 1618, the Protestants
of Prague invaded the royal palace, seized two of the king's
ministers, and threw them out a window. This act, known as
the Defenestration of Prague, was the beginning of a national
Protestant uprising.
Under the leadership of Count Heinrich Matthias von Thurn,
the Protestant forces achieved numerous initial successes,
and the rebellion swiftly spread to other parts of the Habsburg
dominions. For a brief period early in 1619 even Vienna, the
Habsburg capital, was threatened by Evangelical Union armies.
Later in 1619 the Bohemians bestowed the crown of the deposed
Ferdinand on Frederick V, elector of the Palatinate. Several
sections of the Evangelical Union, which consisted chiefly
of Lutherans, thereupon withdrew from the struggle, because
Frederick was a Calvinist. Taking advantage of Protestant
dissensions—particularly a declaration of war against
Bohemia by Lutheran Saxony, and a Spanish invasion of the
Upper, or Bavarian, Palatinate—Ferdinand, who had become
Holy Roman emperor in August 1619, quickly assumed the offensive.
On November 8, 1620, a Catholic League army, commanded by
the German soldier Johann Tserclaes, graf von Tilly, routed
the Bohemians at Weisserberg (White Mountain), near Prague.
Bloody reprisals were inflicted on the Protestants of Bohemia
after this victory, and Protestantism was outlawed. Although
the Evangelical Union disintegrated, Frederick and a few allies
continued the struggle in the Palatinate. The Protestants
defeated Tilly's army at Wiesloch in April 1622 but thereafter
met with successive disasters. By the end of 1624 the Palatinate,
which was awarded to Maximilian I, duke of Bavaria, had been
forcibly returned to the Roman Catholic fold.
Danish Phase
The second phase of the war assumed international proportions
when various German Protestant states sought foreign assistance
against resurgent Catholicism. England, France, and other
western European powers were alarmed at the increasing might
of the Habsburgs, but France and England, then allies against
Spain, refrained from immediate intervention in the war because
of domestic difficulties. Christian IV, king of Denmark and
Norway, however, came to the aid of the German Protestants.
Christian's intervention was substantially motivated by nonreligious
considerations, mainly territorial ambitions in northwestern
Europe and a determination to end Habsburg control of the
Danish duchy of Holstein, Germany.
Supported by Lutheran and Calvinist German princes, Christian
mobilized a large army in the spring of 1625 and invaded Saxony.
The Protestant expedition encountered little effective resistance
until a year later. In the meantime Albrecht von Wallenstein,
duke of Friedland, had created a powerful army of mercenaries
and entered the service of Ferdinand II, whose only other
available force was that of the Catholic League under Tilly.
Wallenstein's mercenaries won their first victory at Dessau,
Germany, in April 1626. On August 27, 1626, Tilly completely
defeated the main body of Christian's army at Lutter am Barenberge,
Germany. The combined imperial armies subsequently overran
all of northern Germany, leaving numerous pillaged towns and
villages in their wake. With Wallenstein in pursuit, Christian
retreated (1627) into the Jutland Peninsula. Total victory
for the imperial cause was signaled on March 6, 1629, when
Ferdinand issued the Edict of Restitution. This document nullified
Protestant titles to all Roman Catholic property expropriated
since the Peace of Augsburg. On May 22, 1629, King Christian
accepted the Treaty of Lübeck, which deprived him of
numerous small holdings in Germany.
Swedish Phase
Ferdinand's successes in the second phase of the war sharpened
the anti-Habsburg orientation of the French cardinal and statesman
Richelieu, chief minister of King Louis XIII. Because of recurring
internal crises, Richelieu was unable to intervene directly
in Germany, but he made overtures to Gustav II Adolph of Sweden.
A zealous Lutheran, Gustav had already received appeals from
the hard-pressed North German Protestants. Because of this
circumstance, as well as the promise of French support and
Swedish ambitions for hegemony in the Baltic region, Gustav
entered the conflict. In the summer of 1630 he landed a well-trained
army on the coast of Pomerania. The rulers of Pomerania, Brandenburg,
and Saxony vacillated on whether to participate in the Swedish
venture, seriously delaying the start of the campaign. While
Gustav marked time, Tilly, who had been given command of Wallenstein's
army, laid siege to Magdeburg, Germany, which was then in
a state of insurrection against the Holy Roman Empire. The
imperial armies captured and sacked the city on May 20, 1631,
and massacred the Protestant inhabitants. Much of the city
was destroyed by fires that spread during the fighting and
pillaging.
Tilly was repulsed by the Swedes on three occasions in the
following summer. In the last of these battles, fought at
Breitenfeld, Germany (now Leipzig), on September 17, Gustav
was supported by the Saxon army (see BREITENFELD, BATTLE OF).
The Saxons broke ranks and fled at the first charge, exposing
Gustav's left flank and nearly costing him the battle; but
he regrouped his forces and routed Tilly's troops, about 6000
of whom were killed or captured. After the Battle of Breitenfeld
the Swedish army moved into southern Germany for the winter.
The spring campaign brought numerous victories, notably the
defeat (April 14, 1632) of Tilly, who was mortally wounded
on the banks of the Lech River, and the capture of Munich,
Germany. Faced with complete disaster, Ferdinand had meanwhile
recalled Wallenstein to command the imperial war effort. Wallenstein,
hurriedly recruiting a new army of mercenaries, invaded Saxony
in the fall of 1632. The Swedish army followed and on November
16 attacked the imperial force, then entrenched at Lützen,
Germany. The ensuing battle cost Gustav his life, but at the
end Wallenstein's army was forced to withdraw. Bernhard, duke
of Saxe-Weimar, who succeeded to Gustav's command at Lützen,
overran Bavaria after this victory, but during 1633 Wallenstein
struck repeated blows against the Swedish strongholds in Silesia.
Toward the close of 1633 Wallenstein initiated a peace movement
among leading circles of the imperial armies. Removed from
his command by Ferdinand on suspicion of treason, Wallenstein
then entered into peace negotiations with the Protestant leaders.
His attempts to end the War aroused the enmity of his own
officers, and on February 25, 1634, he was assassinated. The
imperial armies inflicted a devastating defeat on Duke Bernhard
at Nördlingen, Germany, on September 6, 1634. Dismayed
by this catastrophe, the leaders of the Protestant coalition
swiftly abandoned the struggle. The Peace of Prague (1635),
which formally ended the third phase of the war, provided
for certain concessions to the Saxon Lutherans, particularly
basic modifications of the Edict of Restitution.
French Phase
In its final phase, the war became an imperialist conflict
for hegemony in western Europe between the Habsburgs and France,
which was still under the leadership of Richelieu. Religious
issues were not significant in the final phase, which opened
in May 1635, with France declaring war against Spain, the
chief Habsburg dominion aside from Austria. France, which
was allied with Sweden and various German Protestant leaders,
including Duke Bernhard, was able to quickly overcome serious
difficulties that developed during the first stage of the
fighting. The Swedish general Johan Banér defeated
a combined force of Saxons and Austrians at Wittstock, Germany,
on October 4, 1636, materially damaging the Habsburg position
in Germany. In 1636, Spanish invasions of French territory
were repelled. The Habsburg position in Germany was further
damaged by a defeat inflicted by Duke Bernhard at Rheinfelden,
Germany, on March 2, 1638. After these setbacks the imperial
armies were forced to surrender their European strongholds
one after another. Between 1642 and 1645 the Swedish general
Lennart Torstensson scored numerous triumphs, overrunning
Denmark, which had become allied with the empire, and ravaging
large sections of western Germany and Austria. In the west,
the French, under generals Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, vicomte
de Turenne, and Louis II, prince de Condé, were also
generally successful. Condé routed a Spanish army at
Rocroi, France, on May 18, 1643. During the following November
the French suffered a severe defeat at Tuttlingen, Germany,
but thereafter the Habsburgs were not successful in the war,
except in some minor battles.
The combined armies of Condé and Turenne badly mauled
a Bavarian army at Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, in August
1644. On August 3, 1645, the French commanders defeated an
Austro-Bavarian army near Nördlingen. Representatives
of the empire and the anti-Habsburg coalition began peace
discussions at Münster, Germany, and Osnabrück in
1645, but the negotiations, primarily a concession to the
war-weary peoples of western Europe, remained fruitless for
a protracted period. After central Bavaria was invaded, however,
Maximilian I of Bavaria concluded, on March 14, 1647, the
Truce of Ulm, with Sweden and France.
Despite these and other reverses, Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand
III refused to capitulate. Desultory fighting continued in
Germany, Luxembourg, the Low Countries, Italy, and Spain throughout
the remainder of 1647. In the fall of 1647 Maximilian I reentered
the war on the side of the empire. Another army of Bavarians
and Austrians was defeated in May 1648. This defeat, as well
as the Swedish siege of Prague, the French and Swedish siege
of Munich, and an important French victory (August 20) at
Lens, France, forced Ferdinand, also confronted with the threat
of an assault on Vienna, to agree to the peace conditions
of the victors.
Peace of Westphalia
The Peace of Westphalia, signed at Münster on October
24, 1648, fundamentally influenced the subsequent history
of Europe. In addition to establishing Switzerland and the
Dutch Republic (the Netherlands) as independent states, the
treaty gravely weakened the Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburgs,
ensured the emergence of France as the chief power on the
Continent, and disastrously retarded the political unification
of Germany. See WESTPHALIA, PEACE OF.
The economic, social, and cultural consequences of the war
were vast, with Germany the principal victim. Modern estimates
suggest that the total population of the Holy Roman Empire
fell by between 15 and 20 percent. Villages, as opposed to
fortified towns, suffered the most. Except in port cities
such as Hamburg and Bremen, economic activity went into decline
all across Germany. Uncertainty, fear, disruption, and brutality
marked everyday life and remained a memory in German consciousness
for centuries. |
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