Thirty Years' War - Origins of the War, The Bohemian Revolt, Danish intervention, Swedish intervention, Swedish–French intervention
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| Thirty Years' War | |||||||
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Map of Europe in 1648. |
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| Combatants | |||||||
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Anti-Imperialists (Protestants): Sweden Bohemia Denmark Dutch Republic France Scotland England and smaller German states |
Imperialists (Catholics): Catholic League Holy Roman Empire Spain Austria Bavaria, and smaller German states |
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| Commanders | |||||||
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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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| Strength | |||||||
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About 50,000 Swedes and Finns, 40,000 Danes and Norwegians, 50,000 Saxons and another 100,000 German mercenaries, later (with France) above 400,000 |
Some 100,000 German-Austrian imperialists, maybe 60,000 Spaniards, mercenaries and Italians; perhaps 300,000 |
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| Casualties | |||||||
| Millions (counting civilians) | Millions (and some civilians) | ||||||
| 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 – Prague – Lens – Arras – Valenciennes – Dunes |
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 conflicts continued for 300 more years.
The war ended with the Treaty of Westphalia.
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).However, though granting peace at the moment, the settlement did not solve the question raised by the religious wars and differences.
Political and economic tensions grew among many of the powerful nations of Europe in the early 17th century. 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.
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);
Religious tensions were growing throughout the second half of the 16th century as well. This was evident from the Cologne War (1582–83) onwards.
Much to the consternation of their Spanish ruling cousins, the Habsburg emperors who followed Charles V (especially Ferdinand I and Maximilian II, but also Rudolf II, and his successor Matthias) were supportive towards their subjects' religious choices. Thus these rulers avoided religious wars within the empire by allowing the different religions to spread there.
Religious tensions broke into violence in the German free city of Donauwörth in 1606.
Then Matthias Holy Roman Emperor and the King of Bohemia, died without descendants in 1619. He thus became King of Bohemia and Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor. 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.
The Bohemian Revolt
Period: 1618–1625
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.
This event, known as the Second Defenestration of Prague, is what started the Bohemian Revolt.
Had the Bohemian rebellion remained a local conflict, the war could have been over in fewer than thirty months. 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.
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 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. The Emperor, who had been preoccupied with the Uzkok War, hurried to reform an army to stop the Bohemians and their allies from entirely overwhelming his country. Count Bucquoy, the commander of the Austrian army, defeated the forces of the Protestant Union led by Count Mansfeld at the Battle of Sablat, on 10 June 1619. 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 Spanish sent an army from Brussels under Ambrosio Spinola to support the Emperor. The Saxons invaded, and the Spanish army in the West prevented the Protestant Union's forces from assisting. 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. Ferdinand II decisively defeated Frederick V at the Battle of White Mountain, near Prague on 8 November 1620.
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.
This was also a serious blow to Protestant ambitions in the region. 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.
The remnants of the Protestant armies, led by Mansfeld and Christian of Brunswick, fled for a new group of paymasters in Holland. 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.
Danish intervention
Period: 1625–1629
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. This stability and wealth was paid for by tolls on the Oresund and also by extensive war reparations from Sweden. 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. 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).
Wallenstein's army marched north, occupying Mecklenburg, Pomerania, and ultimately Jutland itself. 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.
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.
Swedish intervention
Period: 1630–1635
Some within Ferdinand II's court believed that Wallenstein wanted to take control of the German Princes and thus gain influence over the Emperor. He was to later recall him after the Swedes, led by King Gustaf II Adolf (Gustavus II Adolphus), attacked the Empire and prevailed in a number of significant battles.
Gustavus Adolphus, like Christian IV before him, came to aid the German Lutherans, to forestall Catholic aggression against their homeland and to obtain economic influence in the German states around the Baltic Sea.
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.
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. 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.
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).This treaty failed, however, to satisfy France, because of the renewed strength it granted the Habsburgs. France then launched the last period of the Thirty Years' War.
Swedish–French intervention
Period: 1636–1648
France, though a largely Catholic country, was a rival of the Holy Roman Empire and Spain, and now entered the war on the Protestant side.
France therefore allied itself with the Dutch and the Swedes.
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.
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.
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.
Casualties and disease
The devastation caused by the war has long been a subject of controversy among historians. 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. 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. 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). 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. In the last decades of the war, both typhus and dysentery had become endemic in Germany.
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.
The Thirty Years' War rearranged the previous structure of power. Meanwhile, Spain was finally forced to accept the independence of the Dutch Republic in 1648, ending the Eighty Years' War.
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.
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 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 Origins of the Thirty Years' War", Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 18, No. 4. "The Economic and Social Consequences of the Thirty Years' War", Past and Present, No. 39. Scotland and the Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648 Brill, 2001 Parker, Geoffrey. "The Thirty Years' War", Past and Present, No. 6. "The Thirty Years' War and the Crises and Revolutions of Seventeenth-Century Europe", Past and Present, No. 39.
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