What are the causes of the 30 year war. Thirty Years' War: Religious and Political Causes. course of the Thirty Years' War. Briefly
Causes of the Thirty summer war
Emperor Matthew (1612-1619) was just as incapable a ruler as his brother Rudolph, especially in the tense state of affairs in Germany, when an inevitable and cruel struggle threatened between Protestants and Catholics. The struggle was accelerated by the fact that the childless Matthew appointed his cousin Ferdinand of Styria as his successor in Austria, Hungary and Bohemia. The steadfast character and Catholic jealousy of Ferdinand were well known; Catholics and Jesuits rejoiced that their time had come; Protestants and Hussites (Utraquists) in Bohemia could not expect anything good for themselves. The Bohemian Protestants built two churches for themselves on the monastic lands. The question arose - do they have the right to do so or not? The government decided that it was not, and one church was locked up, another was ruined. defenders, granted to the Protestants by the “Letter of Majesty”, gathered and sent a complaint to Emperor Matthew in Hungary; the emperor refused and forbade the defenders to gather for further meetings. This terribly annoyed the Protestants; they attributed such a decision to the imperial advisers who ruled Bohemia in the absence of Matthew, they were especially angry with two of them, Martinitz and Slavat, distinguished by Catholic zeal.
In the heat of irritation, the Hussite deputies of the state Bohemian ranks armed themselves and, under the leadership of Count Thurn, went to Prague Castle, where the board met. Entering the hall, they began to speak in large words with the advisers and soon turned from words to deeds: they seized Martinitz, Slavat and the secretary Fabricius and threw them out of the window “according to the good old Czech custom,” as one of those present put it (1618). By this act, the Czechs broke with the government. The ranks seized the government into their own hands, expelled the Jesuits from the country and put up an army under the leadership of Turn.
Periods of the Thirty Years' War
Czech period (1618–1625)
The war began in 1619 and began happily for the insurgents; Thurn was joined by Ernst von Mansfeld, the daring leader of the mob squads; the Silesian, Lusatian and Moravian ranks raised the same banner with the Czechs and drove the Jesuits away from them; the imperial army was forced to clear Bohemia; Matthew died, and his successor, Ferdinand II, was besieged in Vienna itself by the troops of Thurn, with whom the Austrian Protestants joined.
In this terrible danger, the steadfastness of the new emperor saved the throne of the Habsburgs; Ferdinand held on tight and held out until bad weather, lack of money and provisions forced Thurn to lift the siege of Vienna.
Count Tilly. Van Dyck painter, c. 1630
In Frankfurt, Ferdinand II was proclaimed emperor, and at the same time the ranks of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia broke away from the House of Habsburg and elected the head of the Protestant union, Elector Frederick V of the Palatinate, as king. Frederick accepted the crown and hurried to Prague for the coronation. The nature of the main rivals had an important influence on the outcome of the struggle: against the smart and firm Ferdinand II, the empty, unrestrained Frederick V stood. In addition to the emperor, the Catholics also had Maximilian of Bavaria, strong in personal and material means; on the side of the Protestants, Maximilian corresponded to the elector John George of Saxony, but the correspondence between them was limited to material means alone, for John George bore the not very honorable title of the beer king; there was a rumor that he said that the animals that inhabited his forests were dearer to him than his subjects; finally, John George, as a Lutheran, did not want to have anything to do with the Calvinist Frederick V and sided with Austria when Ferdinand promised him the land of the puddles (Lusatia). Finally, the Protestants, beside the incapable princes, did not have capable generals, while Maximilian of Bavaria accepted into his service the famous general, the Dutchman Tilly. The fight was uneven.
Frederick V arrived in Prague, but from the very beginning he behaved badly in his affairs, he did not get along with the Czech nobles, not allowing them to participate in the affairs of government, obeying only his Germans; he pushed away the passion for luxury and entertainment from himself, also by Calvin iconoclasm: all the images of saints, paintings and relics were taken out of the Prague Cathedral Church. Meanwhile, Ferdinand II concluded an alliance with Maximilian of Bavaria, with Spain, attracted the Elector of Saxony to his side, and brought Austrian officials into obedience.
The troops of the emperor and the Catholic League, under the command of Tilly, appeared near Prague. In November 1620, a battle took place between them and the troops of Frederick at the White Mountain, Tilly won. Despite this misfortune, the Czechs did not have the means to continue the struggle, but their king Frederick completely lost his spirit and fled from Bohemia. Deprived of a leader, unity and direction of movement, the Czechs could not continue the struggle, and in a few months Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia were again subdued under the power of the House of Habsburg.
Bitter was the fate of the vanquished: 30,000 families had to leave the fatherland; instead of them, a population alien to the Slavs and Czech history appeared. Bohemia was considered to have 30,000 inhabited places; only 11,000 remained after the war; before the war there were over 4 million inhabitants; in 1648 no more than 800,000 remained. A third of the land was confiscated; the Jesuits rushed to the booty: in order to break the closest connection of Bohemia with its past, in order to inflict the heaviest blow on the Czech people, they began to destroy books on Czech as heretical; one Jesuit boasted that he had burned over 60,000 volumes. It is clear what fate must have awaited Protestantism in Bohemia; two Lutheran pastors remained in Prague, whom they did not dare to expel, for fear of arousing the indignation of the Saxon elector; but the papal legate of Caraffa insisted that the emperor give the order to expel them. “The matter is going on,” said Caraffa, “not about two pastors, but about freedom of religion; as long as they are tolerated in Prague, not a single Czech will enter the bosom of the Church.” Some Catholics, the king of Spain himself, wanted to moderate the jealousy of the legate, but he did not pay attention to their ideas. “The intolerance of the House of Austria,” said the Protestants, “forced the Czechs to revolt.” “Heresy,” said Caraffa, “ignited a rebellion.” Emperor Ferdinand II expressed himself more strongly. "God himself," he said, "incited the Czechs to rebellion in order to give me the right and the means to destroy the heresy." The Emperor tore up the Letter of Majesty with his own hands.
The means for the destruction of heresy were as follows: Protestants were forbidden to engage in any kind of skill, they were forbidden to marry, make wills, bury their dead, although they had to pay the cost of burial to the Catholic priest; they were not allowed into hospitals; soldiers with sabers in their hands drove them into churches, in the villages the peasants were driven there with dogs and whips; the soldiers were followed by Jesuits and Capuchins, and when a Protestant, in order to save himself from a dog and a whip, announced that he was converting to the Roman Church, he first of all had to declare that this conversion was made voluntarily. The imperial troops allowed themselves terrible cruelties in Bohemia: one officer ordered the killing of 15 women and 24 children; a detachment consisting of Hungarians burned seven villages, and all living things were exterminated, the soldiers chopped off the hands of babies and pinned them to their hats in the form of trophies.
After the battle of White Mountain, three Protestant princes continued to fight the league: Duke Christian of Brunswick, Ernst Mansfeld, already known to us, and Margrave Georg Friedrich of Baden-Durlach. But these defenders of Protestantism acted in exactly the same way as the champions of Catholicism: unfortunate Germany now had to experience what Russia experienced shortly before in Time of Troubles and once tested France in its troubled times under Charles VI and Charles VII; the troops of the Duke of Brunswick and Mansfeld consisted of prefabricated squads, completely similar to our Cossack squads of the Time of Troubles or the French Arminaks; people of different classes, who wanted to live merrily at the expense of others, flocked from everywhere under the banner of these leaders, not receiving salaries from the latter, lived by robbery and, like animals, raged against the peaceful population. German sources, in describing the horrors that Mansfeld's soldiers allowed themselves, almost repeat the news of our chroniclers about the ferocity of the Cossacks.
Danish period (1625–1629)
The Protestant partisans could not stand against Tilly, who triumphed everywhere, and Protestant Germany showed a complete incapacity for self-defence. Ferdinand II declared Frederick V deprived of the electoral dignity, which he transferred to Maximilian of Bavaria. But the strengthening of the emperor, the strengthening of the House of Austria, was to arouse fear in the powers and force them to support the German Protestants against Ferdinand II; at the same time, the Protestant powers, Denmark, Sweden intervened in the war, besides political, and from religious motives, while Catholic France, ruled by the cardinal of the Roman Church, began to support the Protestants from purely political goals in order to prevent the House of Habsburg from gaining dangerously for her.
The first to intervene in the war was Christian IV, the Danish king. Emperor Ferdinand, who until now was dependent on the league, triumphant through Tilly, the commander Maximilian of Bavaria, now set his army against the Danish king, his commander: it was the famous Wallenstein (Waldstein) Wallenstein was a Czech of humble noble origin; Born in Protestantism, he entered as an orphan as a child into the house of a Catholic uncle, who converted him to Catholicism, gave him up to the Jesuits, and then enrolled him in the service of the Habsburgs. Here he distinguished himself in Ferdinand's war against Venice, then in the Bohemian war; having made a fortune for himself in his youth by a profitable marriage, he became even richer by buying up confiscated estates in Bohemia after the Battle of Belogorsk. He suggested to the emperor that he would recruit 50,000 troops and support him, without demanding anything from the treasury, if he was given unlimited power over this army and rewarded from the conquered lands. The emperor agreed, and Wallenstein fulfilled his promise: 50,000 people really gathered around him, ready to go wherever there was prey. This huge Wallenstein squad brought Germany to the last stage of disaster: having captured some terrain, Wallenstein's soldiers began by disarming the inhabitants, then indulged in systematic robbery, sparing neither churches nor graves; having plundered everything that was in sight, the soldiers began to torture the inhabitants in order to force out an indication of hidden treasures, they managed to invent tortures, one more terrible than the other; finally, the demon of destruction took possession of them: without any benefit to themselves, out of a single thirst for extermination, they burned houses, burned utensils, agricultural implements; they stripped men and women naked and let hungry dogs on them, which they took with them for this hunt. The Danish War lasted from 1624 to 1629. Christian IV could not resist the forces of Wallenstein and Tilly. Holstein, Schleswig, Jutland were deserted; Wallenstein had already announced to the Danes that they would be treated like slaves if they did not elect Ferdinand II as their king. Wallenstein conquered Silesia, expelled the Dukes of Mecklenburg from their possessions, which he received in fief from the emperor, the Duke of Pomeranian was also forced to leave his possessions. Christian IV of Denmark, in order to preserve his possessions, was forced to make peace (in Lübeck), pledging not to interfere anymore in German affairs. In March 1629, the emperor issued the so-called Restorative edict, according to which all her possessions, captured by the Protestants after the Treaty of Passava, were returned to the Catholic Church; apart from the Lutherans of the Augsburg Confession, the Calvinists and all other Protestant sects were excluded from the religious world. The Restorative Edict was issued to please the Catholic League; but soon this league, i.e., its leader Maximilian of Bavaria, demanded something else from Ferdinand: when the emperor expressed a desire that the league withdraw its troops from there to facilitate Franconia and Swabia, Maximilian, in the name of the league, demanded that the emperor himself dismiss Wallenstein and dissolve him an army that, with its robberies and cruelties, seeks to completely devastate the empire.
Portrait of Albrecht von Wallenstein
The imperial princes hated Wallenstein, an upstart who, from a simple nobleman and leader of a huge band of robbers, became a prince, insulted them with his proud address and did not hide his intention to place the imperial princes in the same relation to the emperor, in which the French nobility was to their king; Maximilian of Bavaria called Wallenstein "dictator of Germany". The Catholic clergy hated Wallenstein because he did not care at all about the interests of Catholicism, about spreading it in the areas occupied by his army; Wallenstein allowed himself to say: “One hundred years have already passed since Rome was last sacked; now he must be much richer than in the time of Charles V. Ferdinand II had to give in to the general hatred against Wallenstein and took away his command over the army. Wallenstein retired to his Bohemian estates, waiting for a more favorable time; he did not wait long.
Swedish period (1630–1635)
Portrait of Gustav II Adolf
France, ruled by Cardinal Richelieu, could not indifferently see the strengthening of the House of Habsburg. Cardinal Richelieu first tried to oppose Ferdinand II with the strongest Catholic prince of the empire, the head of the league. He presented to Maximilian of Bavaria that the interests of all German princes required resistance to the growing power of the emperor, that the best remedy to maintain German freedom consists in taking the imperial crown from the House of Austria; the cardinal urged Maximilian to take the place of Ferdinand II, to become emperor, vouching for the help of France and its allies. When the head of the Catholic League did not succumb to the seductions of the cardinal, the latter turned to the Protestant sovereign, who alone was willing and able to fight against the Habsburgs. It was the Swedish king Gustavus Adolf, son and successor of Charles IX.
Energetic, gifted, and highly educated, Gustavus Adolphus, from the very beginning of his reign, waged successful wars with his neighbors, and these wars, by developing his military abilities, strengthened his desire for a role greater than the modest role played in Europe by his predecessors. He ended the war with Russia with the Peace of Stolbov, beneficial to Sweden, and considered himself entitled to announce to the Swedish Senate that the dangerous Muscovites were driven away from the Baltic Sea for a long time. On the Polish throne sat his cousin and mortal enemy Sigismund III from whom he took Livonia. But Sigismund, as a zealous Catholic, was an ally of Ferdinand II, therefore, the power of the latter strengthened and Polish king and threatened Sweden with great danger; relatives of Gustav-Adolf, the dukes of Mecklenburg, were deprived of their possessions, and thanks to Wallenstein, Austria was established on the shores of the Baltic Sea. Gustavus Adolphus understood the basic laws of European political life and wrote to his Chancellor Oxenstierna: “All European wars are one huge war. It is more profitable to transfer the war to Germany than to be forced to defend oneself in Sweden later. Finally, religious convictions imposed on the Swedish king the obligation to prevent the destruction of Protestantism in Germany. That is why Gustav-Adolf willingly accepted Richelieu's proposal to act against the House of Austria in alliance with France, which meanwhile tried to settle peace between Sweden and Poland and thus untied Gustav-Adolf's hands.
In June 1630, Gustavus Adolphus landed on the shores of Pomerania and soon cleared this country of imperial troops. The religiosity and discipline of the Swedish army was in striking contrast to the predatory character of the army of the league and the emperor, so the people in Protestant Germany received the Swedes very cordially; from the princes of Protestant Germany, the Dukes of Lüneburg, Weimar, Lauenburg and the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel took the side of the Swedes; but the electors of Brandenburg and Saxony were very reluctant to see the entry of the Swedes into Germany and remained inactive to the last extreme, despite the exhortations of Richelieu. The cardinal advised all German princes, Catholics and Protestants, to take advantage of Swedish war, connect and force the emperor to have peace that would ensure their rights; if they now split up, some will become for the Swedes, others for the emperor, then this will lead to the final destruction of their fatherland; having one interest, they must act together against a common enemy.
Tilly, who now commanded the troops of the league and the emperor together, spoke out against the Swedes. In the autumn of 1631, he met with Gustavus Adolf at Leipzig, was defeated, lost 7,000 of his best troops and retreated, giving the winner an open road to the south. In the spring of 1632, the second meeting of Gustav-Adolf with Tilly took place, which was strengthened at the confluence of the Lech into the Danube. Tilly could not defend the Lech crossings and received a wound from which he soon died. Gustavus Adolphus occupied Munich, while the Saxon troops entered Bohemia and captured Prague. In such an extreme case, Emperor Ferdinand II turned to Wallenstein. He forced himself to beg for a long time, finally agreed to again create an army and save Austria on the condition of unlimited disposal and rich land rewards. As soon as the news spread that the Duke of Friedland (the title of Wallenstein) had resumed his activities, seekers of prey rushed to him from all sides. Having ousted the Saxons from Bohemia, Wallenstein moved to the borders of Bavaria, fortified not far from Nuremberg, repulsed the attack of the Swedes on his camp and rushed into Saxony, still devastating everything in its path like locusts. Gustavus Adolf hurried after him to save Saxony. On November 6, 1632, the Battle of Lützen took place: the Swedes won, but lost their king.
The behavior of Gustavus Adolf in Germany after the Leipzig victory aroused the suspicion that he wanted to establish himself in this country and receive imperial dignity: for example, in some areas he ordered the inhabitants to swear allegiance to him, did not return the Palatinate to his former Elector Frederick, persuaded the German princes to join the Swedish service; said that he was not a mercenary, that he could not be satisfied with money alone, that Protestant Germany should separate from Catholic Germany under a special head, that the organization German Empire it is outdated that the empire is a decrepit building fit for rats and mice, not for man.
The strengthening of the Swedes in Germany particularly alarmed Cardinal Richelieu, who, in the interests of France, did not want Germany to have a strong emperor, Catholic or Protestant. France wanted to take advantage of the present turmoil in Germany to increase her possessions and let Gustavus Adolf know that she wanted to regain the heritage of the Frankish kings; to this the Swedish king replied that he had come to Germany not as an enemy or a traitor, but as a patron, and therefore could not agree that at least one village should be taken away from her; he also did not want to allow the French army to enter German soil. That is why Richelieu was very happy about the death of Gustavus Adolphe and wrote in his memoirs that this death delivered Christianity from many evils. But by Christianity we must understand here France, which really gained a lot from the death of the Swedish king, having received the opportunity to interfere directly in the affairs of Germany and get more than one village from her.
After the death of Gustavus Adolphus, the government of Sweden, after the infancy of his only daughter and heiress Christina, passed to the State Council, which decided to continue the war in Germany and entrusted its conduct to Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna, the famous state mind. The strongest Protestant sovereigns of Germany, the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, shied away from the Swedish alliance; Oxenstierna managed to conclude an alliance in Heilbronn (in April 1633) only with the Protestant ranks of Franconia, Swabia, the Upper and Lower Rhine. The Germans inspired Oxenstierna not a very favorable opinion of themselves. “Instead of going about their business, they only get drunk,” he told a French diplomat. Richelieu in his notes says about the Germans that they are ready to betray their most sacred obligations for money. Oxenstierna was appointed director of the Heilbronn League; command over the army was entrusted to Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar and the Swedish General Gorn; France helped with money.
Meanwhile, Wallenstein, after the Battle of Lützen, began to show much less energy and enterprise than before. For a long time he remained inactive in Bohemia, then went to Silesia and Lusatia and after minor battles concluded a truce with enemies and entered into negotiations with the Electors of Saxony, Brandenburg and Oxenscherna; these negotiations were conducted without the knowledge of the Vienna court and aroused strong suspicion here. He freed Count Thurn, the implacable enemy of the House of Habsburg, from captivity, and instead of expelling the Swedes from Bavaria, he again settled in Bohemia, which suffered terribly from his army. From everything it was clear that he was looking for the death of his implacable enemy, Maximilian of Bavaria, and, knowing the intrigues of his enemies, he wanted to ensure himself from a second fall. Numerous opponents of him and envious people spread rumors that he wants to With help the Swedes to become an independent Bohemian king. The emperor believed these suggestions and decided to get rid of Wallenstein.
Three of the most important generals in the army of the Duke of Friedland plotted against their commander in chief, and Wallenstein was killed at the beginning of 1634 in Jaeger. Thus perished the most famous ataman of a rabble gang, which, fortunately for Europe, no longer appeared in it after the Thirty Years' War. The war, especially at the beginning, was of a religious nature; but the soldiers of Tilly and Wallenstein did not rage out of religious fanaticism at all: they exterminated Catholics and Protestants alike, both their own and others. Wallenstein was a complete representative of his soldiers, was indifferent to faith, but believed in the stars, diligently studied astrology.
After the death of Wallenstein, the emperor's son Ferdinand assumed command of the imperial army. In the autumn of 1634, the imperial troops united with the Bavarian troops and utterly defeated the Swedes at Nördlingen, Horn was captured. The elector of Saxony concluded a separate peace with the emperor in Prague, Brandenburg and other German princes followed his example; only Hesse-Kassel, Badei and Wirtemberg remained in the Swedish alliance.
Franco-Swedish period (1635–1648)
France took advantage of the weakening of the Swedes after the Battle of Nördlingen to clearly intervene in the affairs of Germany, restore balance between the fighting parties and receive a rich reward for this. Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, after the Nördlingen defeat, turned to France with a request for help; Richelieu concluded an agreement with him, according to which Bernhard's army was to be kept at the expense of France; Oxenstierna went to Paris and received a promise that a strong French corps would act in concert with the Swedes against the emperor; finally, Richelieu made an alliance with Holland against the Spanish, allies of the emperor.
In 1636, military happiness again went over to the side of the Swedes, who were commanded by General Baner. Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar also happily fought on the Upper Rhine. He died in 1639, and the French took advantage of his death: they captured Alsace, which they had previously promised to Bernhard, and took his army for themselves as a mercenary. The French army appeared in southern Germany to act here against the Austrians and Bavarians. On the other hand, the French were active in the Spanish Netherlands: the young Prince of Conde began his brilliant career with a victory over the Spaniards at Rocroix.
Peace of Westphalia 1648
Meanwhile, in February 1637, Emperor Ferdinand II died, and under his son, Ferdinand III, peace negotiations began in Westphalia in 1643: in Osnabrück between the emperor and the Catholics on the one hand, and between the Swedes and Protestants on the other; in Munster - between Germany and France. The latter was then more powerful than all the states of Europe, and its claims aroused just fears. The French government did not hide its plans: according to Richelieu, two works were written (Dupuy and Cassan), which proved the rights of the French kings to various kingdoms, duchies, counties, cities and countries; it appeared that Castile, Arragon, Catalonia, Navarre, Portugal, Naples, Milan, Genoa, the Netherlands, England must belong to France; imperial dignity belongs to the French kings as the heirs of Charlemagne. The writers reached the ridiculous, but Richelieu himself, without demanding Portugal and England, interpreted Louis XIII about "natural boundaries" France. “It is not necessary,” he said, “to imitate the Spaniards, who are always trying to spread their possessions; France must think only about how to strengthen itself in itself, it is necessary to establish itself in Maine and reach Strasbourg, but at the same time it is necessary to act slowly and carefully; one can also think of Navarre and Franche-Comte.” Before his death, the cardinal said: “The purpose of my ministry was to return to Gaul its ancient borders assigned to it nature compare the new Gaul in everything with the ancient. It is not surprising, therefore, that during the Westphalian negotiations, the Spanish diplomats began to curry favor with the Dutch, even ventured to tell the latter that the Dutch waged a just war against Spain, for they defended their freedom; but it would be highly imprudent of them to help France to grow stronger in their neighbourhood. Spanish diplomats promised two Dutch commissioners 200,000 thalers; the king of France wrote to his representatives whether it was possible to persuade the Dutch to his side by some gift.
In October 1648, the negotiations ended. France received the Austrian part of Alsace, Sundgau, Breisach, with the preservation for the imperial cities and the owners of their former relations with the empire. Sweden received most of Pomerania, the island of Rügen, the city of Wismar, the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden, also with the preservation of their former relations with Germany. Brandenburg received part of Pomerania and several bishoprics; Saxony - the lands of the puddles (Lausitz); Bavaria - Upper Palatinate and retained the electoral dignity for her duke; The Lower Palatinate, with the newly established eighth electoral dignity, was given to the son of the unfortunate Frederick. Switzerland and the Netherlands were recognized as independent states. Regarding Germany, it was decided that the legislative power in the empire, the right to collect taxes, declare war and conclude peace belongs to the diet, consisting of the emperor and members of the empire; princes received supreme power in their possessions with the right to conclude alliances among themselves and with other states, but not against the emperor and the empire. The imperial court, which decided the disputes of the ranks with each other and with their subjects, was to consist of judges of both confessions; at the Diets, the imperial cities received equal voting rights with the princes. Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists were granted complete religious and liturgical freedom and equality of political rights.
Results of the Thirty Years' War
The consequences of the Thirty Years' War were important for Germany and for the whole of Europe. In Germany, the imperial power has completely drooped, and the unity of the country has remained only in name. The empire was a motley mixture of heterogeneous possessions, which had the weakest connection with each other. Each prince ruled independently in his domain; but since the empire still existed in name, since there was a general authority in name, which was obliged to look after the welfare of the empire, and meanwhile there was no force that could compel this general authority to cooperate, the princes considered themselves entitled to postpone any care for the affairs of the common fatherland and have unlearned to take its interests to heart; their glances, their feelings have been reduced; They could not act separately because of their impotence, the insignificance of their means, and they completely lost the habit of any general action, not being very accustomed to it before, as we have seen; consequently they had to bow before every power. Since they lost consciousness of the highest governmental interests, the only goal of their aspirations was to feed themselves at the expense of their possessions and feed themselves as satisfyingly as possible; for this, after the Thirty Years' War, they had every opportunity: during the war they were accustomed to collecting taxes without asking with ranks; they did not abandon this habit even after the war, especially since the terribly devastated country, which required a long rest, could not put up forces that would have to be reckoned with; during the war, the princes arranged for themselves an army, it remained with them after the war, strengthening their power. Thus, the restriction of princely power by ranks that existed before disappeared, and the unlimited power of princes with bureaucracy was established, which could not be useful in small possessions, especially in the above-mentioned character adopted by the princes.
In general, in Germany, material and spiritual development was stopped for a certain time by the terrible devastation caused by the gangs of Tilly, Wallenstein and the Swedish troops, who, after the death of Gustavus Adolf, also began to be distinguished by robberies and cruelties, which our Cossacks did not invent in the Time of Troubles the throat of the most disgusting filth was known under the name of the Swedish drink. Germany, especially in the south and west, represented the desert. In Augsburg, out of 80,000 inhabitants, 18,000 remained; in Frankenthal, out of 18,000, only 324; in the Palatinate, only a fiftieth of the total population remained. In Hesse, 17 cities, 47 castles and 400 villages were burned.
For the whole of Europe Thirty Years' War, weakening the House of Habsburg, crushing and finally weakening Germany, thereby raised France, made it the preeminent power in Europe. The consequence of the Thirty Years' War was also the fact that Northern Europe, represented by Sweden, took an active part in the fate of other states and was an important member of the European system. Finally, the Thirty Years' War was the last religious war; The Peace of Westphalia, proclaiming the equality of the three confessions, put an end to the religious struggle generated by the Reformation. The dominance of secular interests over spiritual ones is very noticeable during the Peace of Westphalia: spiritual possessions are taken away from the Church in a multitude, secularized, pass to secular Protestant lords; it was said that in Münster and Osnabrück the diplomats played with bishoprics and abbeys, as children play with nuts and dough. The pope protested against peace, but no one paid any attention to his protest.
Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) is a pan-European war that resulted from the confrontation between France and the coalition of the Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs.
Features of the Thirty Years' War:
1) The first war of a pan-European scale
2) Became a leading factor in determining the foreign policy interests and priorities of all European states
3) The collision of two lines of political development of Europe:
medieval political tradition, embodied in the desire to create a single pan-European Christian monarchy (Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs)
the principle of creating strong states on a national basis (England, France, Holland and Sweden). In the named centralized states, except for France, the Protestant religion prevailed.
Background of the Thirty Years' War:
In 1608-1609, two military-political unions of German princes on a confessional basis arose in Germany - the Evangelical Union and the Catholic League, each of which received the support of foreign states.
Reasons for the war:
Confrontation between France and the coalition of the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs. It was in France's interests to keep the empire fragmented and to prevent unity of action between the two Habsburg monarchies. She had territorial claims in Alsace, Lorraine, the Southern Netherlands, Northern Italy, and territories bordering Spain. France was ready to support the Evangelical League despite the difference in confessions. The Republic of the United Provinces saw the Evangelical League as a natural ally against the Habsburgs.
Denmark and Sweden tried to protect themselves from competition on the northern sea routes. England constantly fought with Spain at sea, and for her the anti-Habsburg policy seemed natural. But, at the same time, it competed in foreign trade with the countries of the anti-Habsburg coalition.
The specific interests of different European countries and their common desire to stop the hegemonic goals of the Habsburgs determined the participation of each of them in the war in its various periods.
History of the Thirty Years' War:
Czech (1618-1623)
Danish (1625-1629)
Swedish (1630-1635)
· Franco-Swedish (1635-1648). In the first three periods, the advantage was on the side of the Habsburg bloc. The latter led to the defeat of the empire and its allies.
The results of the war:
Mutual attrition of the opposing sides, the absolute ruin of the population of Germany
· Growing social tension in the warring countries themselves.
Thirty Years' War - concept and types. Classification and features of the category "Thirty Years' War" 2017, 2018.
Youth Wallenstein, Albrecht von Albrecht (Vojtech Wenceslas) von Wallenstein (Waldstein) (German Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Waldstein (Wallenstein), Czech Albrecht (Vojtech) Václav z Vald&... .
At the time when Richelieu was the first minister (1624-1642), the threat of a new strengthening of the Habsburgs again hung over France. By the end of the 16th century, the pressure of the Turks on the possessions of the Habsburgs weakened: the Habsburgs again turned their eyes to Germany, hoping to restore their influence there and ....
XX. Requirements for the placement of weapons, the equipment of weapons rooms, storages, warehouses, premises for displaying, demonstrating or trading in weapons, shooting galleries and shooting ranges RESOLUTION OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION OF JULY 21, 1998 No. 814 BASIC ....
When, in 1618, an uprising broke out in Moravia and Bohemia, Wallenstein saved the state treasury from Olmutz, participated with the cuirassier regiment formed by him in suppressing the uprising and cleared the whole country of Protestant troops, for which he was promoted to major general with ...
We all know that world wars that affected the interests of several states at once occurred in the 20th century. And we will be right. However, if you dig a little deeper into European history, then we will find the fact that 300 years before the world wars, Europe has already experienced something similar - maybe not on such a scale, but nonetheless suitable for a world war. This is a 30-year war that took place in the 17th century.
Prerequisites
As early as the end of the 16th century, Europe experienced a painful clash between religious groups - Catholics and Protestants. The Roman Catholic Church lost more and more parishioners every year - European countries one after another abandoned the old religion and adopted a new one. In addition, countries gradually began to move away from the enormous power of the Pope and accepted the power of a local ruler. Absolutism was born. During this period, a real dynastic boom began - the princes of the blood entered into marriages with representatives of other states to strengthen both countries.
The Catholic Church sought by all means to regain its former influence. The role of the Inquisition increased - waves of bonfires, torture and executions swept across Europe. Spies of the Vatican - the Jesuit order - thanks to its special proximity to Rome, strengthened its position. Germany most zealously defended its position on freedom of religion. Despite the fact that the Habsburg dynasty that ruled there was Catholic, the representatives had to stand above all strife. A wave of uprisings and rebellions swept across the country. Religious disputes eventually turned into a war, which became a long stage for many European states. Starting as a religious dispute, it eventually turned into a political and territorial conflict between the countries of Europe.
The reasons
Among the many causes of war, some of the most significant can be distinguished:
- the beginning of the counter-reformation - attempts by the Catholic Church to regain their former positions -
- The Habsburg dynasty, which ruled in Germany and Spain, aspired to complete dominance in Europe under its rule.
- the desire of Denmark and Sweden to control the Baltic and trade routes
- the interests of France, which also saw itself as the sovereign of Europe
- Throwing England in one direction or the other
- inciting Russia, Turkey to participate in the conflict (Russia supported the Protestants, and Turkey supported France)
- the desire of some petty princelings to snatch some piece for themselves as a result of the division of European states
Start
The uprising in Prague in 1618 served as a direct cause for war. Local Protestants rebelled against the policy of King Ferdinand of the Holy German Nation because he allowed foreign officials to come to Prague in huge numbers. It is worth noting here that Bohemia (the territory of the present Czech Republic) was ruled directly by the Habsburgs. Ferdinand's predecessor, King Rudolph, granted the locals freedom of religion and tolerance. Having ascended the throne, Ferdinand abolished all liberties. The king himself was a devout Catholic, brought up by the Jesuits, which, of course, did not suit the local Protestants. But they haven't been able to do anything serious yet.
Before his death, Emperor Matthias suggested that the German rulers choose their successor, thus joining those dissatisfied with the policies of the Habsburgs. Three Catholic bishops had the right to vote, three Protestants - the princes of Saxony, Brandenburg and the Palatinate. As a result of the vote, almost all votes were cast for the representative of the Habsburgs. Prince Frederick of the Palatinate offered to cancel the results and become King of Bohemia himself.
Prague began to rebel. Ferdinand did not tolerate this. Imperial troops entered Bohemia in order to root out the uprising. Of course, the result was predictable - the Protestants lost. Since Spain helped the Habsburgs in this, she also snatched a piece of German land for herself in honor of the victory - she got the land of Electoral Hall. This circumstance gave Spain the opportunity to continue another conflict with the Netherlands, which had begun years earlier.
In 1624, France, England and Holland make an alliance against the Empire. This agreement was soon joined by Denmark and Sweden, rightly fearing that the Catholics would extend their influence to them. Over the next two years, local skirmishes between the troops of the Habsburgs and the Protestant rulers took place on the territory of Germany, and the victory was for the Catholics. In 1628, the army of General Wallenstein, the leader of the Catholic League, captured the Danish island of Jutland, forcing Denmark to withdraw from the war and sign a peace treaty in 1629 in the city of Lübeck. Jutland was returned with the condition that Denmark would no longer interfere in hostilities.
Continuation of the war
However, not all countries were afraid of the Danish defeat. Already in 1630, Sweden entered the war.
A year later, an agreement was concluded with France, according to which Sweden pledged to provide its troops on German lands, and France to pay the costs. This period of the war is characterized as the most fierce and bloody. Catholics and Protestants mixed up in the army, no one remembered why the war started. Now everyone had only one goal - to profit from the devastated cities. Whole families died, entire garrisons were destroyed.
In 1634, Wallenstein was killed by his own bodyguards. A year earlier, the Swedish king Gustavus Adolf had died in battle. Local rulers leaned one way or the other.
In 1635, France finally decided to enter the war in person. The Swedish troops, who had previously suffered mostly defeats, perked up again and defeated the imperial troops at the battle of Wittstock. Spain fought on the side of the Habsburgs as best it could, but the king had something to do, except for the military arena - in 1640, a coup took place in Portugal, as a result of which the country achieved independence from Spain.
Results
For the past few years, wars have been fought throughout Europe.
Already not only Germany and the Czech Republic were the main arena of battles - clashes took place in the Netherlands, the Baltic Sea, France (the province of Burgundy). The Europeans were tired of the incessant fighting and sat down at the negotiating table in 1644 in the cities of Münster and Osanbrück. As a result of 4 years of negotiations, agreements were reached that took the form of the Peace of Westphalia.
- German rulers received autonomy from the empire
- France received the lands of Alsace, Metz, Verdun, Toul
- Sweden - a monopoly in the Baltic
- The Netherlands and Switzerland gained independence.
Speaking of losses, this war can be compared to the world wars - about 300,000 people on the Protestant side, and about 400,000 on the imperial side in a few battles. This is only a small part - in just 30 years, almost 8 million people died on the battlefield. For Europe of that time, not very densely populated - a huge figure. And whether the war was worth such sacrifices - who knows.
Catholic princes of Germany, papacy) with the anti-Habsburg coalition (Protestant princes of Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Holland and France).
The cause of the war was the great-power policy of the Habsburgs and the desire of the papacy and Catholic circles to restore the power of the Roman Church in that part of Germany, where in the first half of the 16th century. the Reformation won.
The unstable balance established after the Augsburg religious peace of 1555, which fixed the split of Germany along religious lines, was threatened in the 1580s: in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII (1572–1585) and Emperor Rudolf II of Habsburg (1576–1611) forcibly prevented the secularization of the Archbishopric of Mainz , one of the seven electors of the German Empire; in 1586 the Protestants were expelled from the Bishopric of Würzburg, and in 1588 from the Archbishopric of Salzburg. At the very end of the XVI - beginning of the XVII century. Catholic pressure on Protestants intensified: in 1596 Archduke Ferdinand Habsburg, the ruler of Styria, Carinthia and Kraina, forbade his subjects to profess Lutheranism and destroyed all Lutheran churches; in 1606 Duke Maximilian of Bavaria occupied the Protestant city of Donauwert and converted its churches into Catholic ones. This forced the Protestant princes of Germany to create in 1608 for the "protection of the religious world" the Evangelical Union, headed by Elector Frederick IV of the Palatinate; supported them french king Henry IV. In response, in 1609 Maximilian of Bavaria formed the Catholic League, entering into an alliance with the main spiritual princes of the Empire.
In 1609, the Habsburgs, taking advantage of the dispute between two Protestant princes (Elector of Brandenburg and Count Palatine of Neuburg) over the inheritance of the duchies of Jülich, Cleve and Berg, tried to establish control over these strategically important lands in northwestern Germany. Holland, France and Spain intervened in the conflict. However, the assassination in 1610 of Henry IV prevented the war. The conflict was settled by the Xanten Agreement of 1614 on the division of the Jülich-Cleve inheritance.
In the spring of 1618, an uprising broke out in Bohemia against the rule of the Habsburgs, caused by the destruction of several Protestant churches and the violation of local liberties; On May 23, 1618, the citizens of Prague threw three representatives of Emperor Matthew (1611–1619) out of the windows of Prague Castle (Defenestration). Moravia, Silesia and Lusatia joined the rebellious Bohemia. This event marked the beginning of the Thirty Years' War, which went through four stages: Czech, Danish, Swedish and Franco-Swedish.
Emperor Matthew of Habsburg (1612–1619) tried to reach a peace agreement with the Czechs, but the negotiations were interrupted after his death in March 1619 and the election to the German throne of the implacable enemy of the Protestants, Archduke Ferdinand of Styria (Ferdinand II). The Czechs entered into an alliance with the Transylvanian prince Bethlen Gabor; his troops invaded Austrian Hungary. In May 1619, Czech troops under the command of Count Matthew Turn entered Austria and laid siege to Vienna, the residence of Ferdinand II, but were soon due to the invasion of Bohemia by the imperial general Bukua. At the General Landtag in Prague in August 1619, representatives of the rebellious regions refused to recognize Ferdinand II as their king and elected in his place the head of the Union, Elector Frederick V of the Palatinate. However, by the end of 1619, the situation began to take shape in favor of the emperor, who received large subsidies from the pope and military assistance from Philip III of Spain. In October 1619, he concluded an agreement on joint actions against the Czechs with the head of the Catholic League, Maximilian of Bavaria, and in March 1620, with Elector Johann-Georg of Saxony, the largest Protestant prince in Germany. The Saxons occupied Silesia and Lusatia, Spanish troops invaded the Upper Palatinate. Taking advantage of the disagreements within the Union, the Habsburgs obtained from her an obligation not to provide assistance to the Czechs. In early September 1620, the combined army of the emperor (imperials) and the League (ligists) under the command of Tilly launched an offensive in Bohemia and on November 8 at the White Mountain near Prague utterly defeated the troops of Frederick V; the uprising was put down. Frederick V fled to Holland, the Union actually broke up, and Bethlen Gabor in January 1622 made peace with Ferdinand II in Nikolsburg. The only ally of Frederick V in Germany was the Margrave Georg-Friedrich of Baden-Durlach; however, thanks to the financial assistance of the Dutch government, Frederick V was able to win over two of Germany's largest mercenary commanders - Christian of Brunswick and Ernst von Mansfeld. On April 16, 1622, Mansfeld defeated Tilly at Wiesloch and united with the Margrave of Baden. But, having received reinforcements from the Spaniards, Tilly defeated his opponents on May 6, 1622 at Wimpfen and on June 22 at Hoechst, and then captured the Lower Palatinate. On August 29, 1622, he defeated Mansfeld and Christian of Brunswick near Fleurus and drove them into Holland. In February 1623, Ferdinand II deprived Frederick V of the elector's dignity and part of his possessions (Upper Palatinate), which were transferred (for life) to Maximilian of Bavaria. In 1623, Frederick V suffered another fiasco: Tilly thwarted the invasion of Christian Brunswick in Northern Germany, defeating it on August 9, 1623 at Stadtlon.
The attempt of the Habsburgs to establish themselves in Westphalia and Lower Saxony and carry out a Catholic restoration there threatened the interests of the Protestant states of Northern Europe - Denmark and Sweden. In the spring of 1625, Christian IV of Denmark, supported by England and Holland, began hostilities against the emperor. Together with the troops of Mansfeld and Christian of Brunswick, the Danes launched an offensive in the Elbe basin. To repel it, Ferdinand II granted emergency powers to the new commander-in-chief of the Czech Catholic nobleman Albrecht Wallenstein. He gathered a huge mercenary army and on April 25, 1626 defeated Mansfeld near Dessau. On August 27, Tilly defeated the Danes at Lutter. In 1627, the Imperials and Ligists captured Mecklenburg and all of Denmark's mainland possessions (Holstein, Schleswig, and Jutland). But plans to create a fleet to capture the island part of Denmark and attack Holland fell through due to opposition Hanseatic League. In the summer of 1628, Wallenstein, seeking to put pressure on the Hansa, besieged the largest Pomeranian port of Stralsund, but failed. In May 1629, Ferdinand II concluded the Treaty of Lübeck with Christian IV, returning to Denmark the possessions taken from her in exchange for her obligation not to interfere in German affairs.
Encouraged by the victories, Wallenstein put forward the idea of an absolutist reform of the Empire, the elimination of the autocracy of the princes and the strengthening of the power of the emperor, but Ferdinand II chose the policy of restoring Catholicism in Germany and issued a Restorative Edict on March 6, 1629, which returned to the Church of Rome all the lands and property lost by it in the Protestant principalities after 1555. Wallenstein's unwillingness to put the edict into effect and the complaints of the Catholic princes about his arbitrariness forced the emperor to dismiss the commander.
The growth of the power of the Habsburgs in Germany caused serious alarm in France and Sweden. Having concluded a six-year truce with the Commonwealth in Altmark in 1629 through French diplomacy, the Swedish king Gustav II Adolf entered the war, proclaiming himself the defender of the German Protestants. June 26, 1630 he landed on about. Usedom at the mouth of the Oder and occupied Mecklenburg and Pomerania. In January 1631, a Franco-Swedish treaty was signed in Berwald (Neimark), according to which France was obliged to pay an annual subsidy of 1 million francs to the Swedes, and they guaranteed the rights of the Catholic Church in the lands they had occupied. April 13, 1631 Gustav II Adolf took Frankfurt an der Oder. After the terrible defeat by the Legalists on May 20 of Magdeburg, one of the main strongholds of Protestantism in Germany, the Elector Georg-Wilhelm of Brandenburg joined the Swedes; On September 1, Elector Johann Georg of Saxony followed suit. On September 17, at Breitenfeld, the combined Swedish-Saxon army utterly defeated the Leaguers and the Imperials. All of Northern Germany was in the hands of Gustav II Adolf. The Saxons invaded Bohemia and entered Prague on 11 November. At the same time, the Swedes moved into Thuringia and Franconia; in December they captured Mainz and occupied the Lower Palatinate. Ferdinand II had to return Wallenstein to the post of commander in chief, giving him complete independence. In early 1632, Wallenstein ousted the Saxons from Bohemia.
In March 1632 the Swedes launched an offensive in southern Germany. On April 15, they defeated Tilly at the Rine on the river. Leh; Tilly himself was mortally wounded. Gustav II Adolf entered Bavaria and captured Augsburg and Munich in May. Having unsuccessfully attacked Wallenstein's positions at Furte near Nuremberg on August 24, he moved to Vienna, but the invasion of the Imperials in Saxony forced him to rush to the aid of Elector Johann George. November 16, 1632 in the battle of Lützen southwest of Leipzig, the Swedes inflicted a severe defeat on Wallenstein, although they lost their king in the battle. In March 1633 Sweden and the German Protestant principalities formed the Heilbronn League; the fullness of the military and political power in Germany, it passed to an elected council headed by the Swedish chancellor A. Oksensherna. At the end of 1633, Allied troops under the command of Duke Bernhard of Weimar and the Swedish General Horn captured Regensburg and occupied the Upper Palatinate and Bavaria. Despite the orders of Ferdinand II, Wallenstein, entrenched in Bohemia, did not help Maximilian of Bavaria, and in January 1634 in Pilsen he forced the officers of his army to take a personal oath of allegiance to him and entered into negotiations with the Swedes and Saxons. However, on February 24, in Eger, he was killed by agents of the emperor. The new commander-in-chief, Archduke Ferdinand of Hungary, took Regensburg, expelled the allies from Bavaria, defeated them near Nördlingen on September 6, 1634, and captured Franconia and Swabia. The Swedes retained control only over Northern Germany. The Heilbronn League effectively collapsed. In May 1635, Johann-Georg of Saxony concluded the Treaty of Prague with Ferdinand II, having received Lusatia and part of the Archbishopric of Magdeburg for life and pledging to fight together with the emperor against "foreigners"; this treaty was joined by many Protestant and Catholic princes (Duke of Bavaria, Elector of Brandenburg, Prince of Anhalt, etc.); Only the Margrave of Baden, the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel and the Duke of Württemberg remained loyal to the Swedes.
The successes of the Habsburgs forced France to declare war on the emperor and Spain. She involved her allies in Italy - the Duchy of Savoy, the Duchy of Mantua and the Venetian Republic - into the conflict. She managed to prevent (after the expiration of the Altmark Truce) new war between Sweden and the Commonwealth, which allowed the Swedes to transfer significant reinforcements from behind the Vistula to Germany. At the beginning of 1636, the Imperials drove the Swedish army of J. Baner to Mecklenburg, but on October 4 they suffered a heavy defeat from him at Wittstock (Northern Brandenburg). In May 1637, the Imperials and Saxons blocked Banner at Torgau, but the Swedes managed to break out of the encirclement.
From 1638 the war marked a clear turning point in favor of the anti-Habsburg coalition. In January 1638, Bernhard of Weimar crossed the Rhine, on March 2 he defeated the imperial army of Jean de Werth at the Rheinfelden and occupied the Black Forest; at the same time, Baner drove the imperial forces of General Gallas back into Bohemia and Silesia. In 1639, the Swedes invaded Bohemia, the Dutch admiral Tromp destroyed the Spanish fleet at Gravelines and in the Downs Bay (Lamanche), and Bernhard of Weimar captured the strategically important fortress of Breisach in Alsace. In the autumn of 1640, the united Franco-Swedish army made a successful campaign in Bavaria. Due to the uprisings in Portugal and Catalonia in 1640, Spain had to significantly reduce its aid. Austrian Habsburgs. In July 1641, Friedrich Wilhelm, Elector of Brandenburg, concluded a treaty of neutrality with Sweden. On November 2, 1642, the new Swedish commander L. Torstenson defeated the Imperials at Breitenfeld; Leipzig capitulated, and Johann George of Saxony was forced to agree to a truce with the Swedes. Thorstenson occupied Silesia and penetrated into Moravia. In the same year the French captured Jülich on the Lower Rhine; in September they defeated the Spanish at Lleida, took Perpignan and took control of Roussillon. On May 19, 1643, the commander of the French troops, Prince Conde, defeated the Spanish army of Francisco de Melo at Rocroix in the Southern Netherlands.
However, the allies had to suspend the further offensive. The Danish king Christian IV, who feared the establishment of Swedish hegemony in the Baltic, joined the Habsburg camp, which forced Torstensson to withdraw his troops to the north. In November 1643, the Bavarian general Mercy defeated the French at Teitlingen. But soon the anti-Habsburg coalition managed to restore its positions. A new ally of Sweden - the Transylvanian prince Gyorgy Rakosi - invaded Austrian Hungary. In August 1644, Conde defeated the Bavarians at Freiburg and captured Philippsburg and Mainz. Having won a series of victories over the Danes on land and at sea, the Swedes forced Christian IV to conclude a peace treaty in Bremsebru in 1645 and cede to them the islands of Gotland and Esel, as well as several areas in Eastern Norway. At the beginning of March 1645, Torstensson entered Bohemia, defeated the Imperials at Jankovice on March 6-7, joined the Transylvanians and approached Vienna. Only by making concessions to Rakosi and concluding a peace agreement with him, Emperor Ferdinand III (1637–1657) was able to avoid disaster; The Swedes, left without an ally, retreated from Austria. On March 2, the French commander Turenne lost the battle of Mariendal to the Bavarians, but on August 3 he took revenge near Allersheim south of Nuremberg. The loss of strategic initiative by the Imperials and the Liguists prompted Ferdinand III to start peace negotiations at Münster with France and at Osnabrück with Sweden and the German Protestant princes; military operations, however, continued. In March 1647, Maximilian of Bavaria concluded a separate Ulm truce with the allies, which, however, was soon violated by him; in response, Turenne's Franco-Swedish army, having defeated the Imperials at Zusmarshausen, occupied most of Bavaria. In the summer of 1648, the Swedes laid siege to Prague, but in the midst of the siege came news of the signing of the Peace of Westphalia on October 24, 1648, which put an end to the Thirty Years' War. According to its terms, France received Southern Alsace and the Lorraine bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verden, Sweden - Western Pomerania and the Duchy of Bremen, Saxony - Lusatia, Bavaria - Upper Palatinate, and Brandenburg - Eastern Pomerania, the Archbishopric of Magdeburg and the Bishopric of Minden; Dutch independence was recognized. The war between France and Spain continued for another eleven years and ended with the Peace of the Pyrenees in 1659.
The Peace of Westphalia marked the end of the era of Habsburg dominance in Europe. The leading role in European politics passed to France. Sweden became one of the great powers, establishing hegemony in the Baltic. The international position of Holland has strengthened. The political fragmentation of Germany was consolidated; within it, the importance of Saxony, Brandenburg and Bavaria increased.
Ivan Krivushin
Thirty Years' War(1618-1648) - the first military conflict in the history of Europe, affecting to one degree or another almost all European countries (including Russia). The war began as a religious clash between Protestants and Catholics in Germany, but then escalated into a struggle against Habsburg hegemony in Europe. The last significant religious war in Europe, which gave rise to the Westphalian system of international relations.
Since the time of Charles V, the leading role in Europe belonged to the House of Austria - the Habsburg dynasty. At the beginning of the 17th century, the Spanish branch of the house, in addition to Spain, also owned Portugal, the Southern Netherlands, the states of Southern Italy and, in addition to these lands, had at its disposal a huge Spanish-Portuguese colonial empire. The German branch - the Austrian Habsburgs - secured the crown of the Holy Roman Emperor, were the kings of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Croatia. The hegemony of the Habsburgs tried in every possible way to weaken other major European powers. Among the latter, the leading position was occupied by France, which was the largest of the nation-states.
In Europe, there were several explosive regions where the interests of the warring parties intersected. The greatest number of contradictions accumulated in the Holy Roman Empire, which, in addition to the traditional struggle between the emperor and the German princes, was split along religious lines. Another knot of contradictions, the Baltic Sea, was also directly related to the Empire. Protestant Sweden (and partly also Denmark) sought to turn it into their inland lake and gain a foothold on its southern coast, while Catholic Poland actively resisted the Swedish-Danish expansion. Other European countries advocated the freedom of Baltic trade.
The third disputed region was the fragmented Italy, over which France and Spain fought. Spain had its opponents - the Republic of the United Provinces (Holland), which defended its independence in the war of 1568-1648, and England, which challenged Spanish dominance at sea and encroached on the colonial possessions of the Habsburgs.
The brewing of war
The Peace of Augsburg (1555) ended for a while the open rivalry between Lutherans and Catholics in Germany. Under the terms of the peace, the German princes could choose the religion (Lutheranism or Catholicism) for their principalities at their own discretion. At the same time, the Catholic Church wanted to win back the lost influence. The Vatican in every possible way pushed the remaining Catholic rulers to eradicate Protestantism in their possessions. The Habsburgs were ardent Catholics, but their imperial status obliged them to adhere to the principles of religious tolerance. Religious tension grew. For an organized rebuff to the growing pressure, the Protestant princes of South and West Germany united in the Evangelical Union, created in 1608. In response, the Catholics united in the Catholic League (1609). Both alliances were immediately supported by foreign states. The reigning emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and King Matthias of Bohemia had no direct heirs, and in 1617 he forced the Czech Sejm to recognize as his successor his nephew Ferdinand of Styria, an ardent Catholic and a pupil of the Jesuits. He was extremely unpopular in the predominantly Protestant Czech Republic, which was the reason for the uprising, which escalated into a long conflict.
The Thirty Years' War is traditionally divided into four periods: Czech, Danish, Swedish and Franco-Swedish. On the side of the Habsburgs were: Austria, most of the Catholic principalities of Germany, Spain, united with Portugal, the Holy See, Poland. On the side of the anti-Habsburg coalition - France, Sweden, Denmark, the Protestant principalities of Germany, the Czech Republic, Transylvania, Venice, Savoy, the Republic of the United Provinces, supported by England, Scotland and Russia. The Ottoman Empire (traditional opponent of the Habsburgs) in the first half of the 17th century was occupied with wars with Persia, in which the Turks suffered several serious defeats. In general, the war turned out to be a clash of traditional conservative forces with growing nation-states.
Periodization:
Czech period (1618-1623). Revolts in the Czech Republic against the Habsburgs. The Jesuits and a number of senior officials of the Catholic Church in the Czech Republic were expelled from the country. The Czech Republic came out from under the rule of the Habsburgs for the second time. When in 1619 Ferdinand 2 replaced Matthew on the throne, the Czech Sejm, in opposition to him, chose Frederick of the Palatinate, the leader of the Evangelical Union, as king of the Czech Republic. Ferdinand was deposed shortly before his coronation. At the beginning, the uprising developed successfully, but in 1621 Spanish troops invaded the Palatinate, helping the emperor, who brutally suppressed the uprising. Friedrich fled from the Czech Republic, and then from Germany. The war continued in Germany, but in 1624 the final victory of the Catholics seemed inevitable.
Danish period (1624-1629). The troops of the emperor and the Catholic League were opposed by the north German princes and the Danish king, who relied on the help of Sweden, Holland, England and France. The Danish period ended with the occupation of Northern Germany by the troops of the emperor and the Catholic League, with the exit from the war of Transylvania and Denmark.
Swedish (1630-1634). During these years, the Swedish troops, together with the Protestant princes who joined them and with the support of France, occupied most of Germany, but were still defeated by the combined forces of the emperor and the Catholic League.
Franco - Swedish period 1635-1648. France enters an open struggle against the Habsburgs. The war takes on a protracted character and lasts until the participants are completely exhausted. France opposed Germany and Spain, having numerous allies on its side. On her side were Holland, Savoy, Venice, Hungary (Transylvania). Poland declared its neutrality, friendly to France. Military operations were conducted not only in Germany, but also in Spain, the Spanish Netherlands, in Italy, on both banks of the Rhine. The Allies were unsuccessful at first. The composition of the coalition was not strong enough. Allied actions were little coordinated. Only in the early 40s. the preponderance of forces was clearly determined on the side of France and Sweden. In 1646 The French-Swedish army invaded Bavaria. It became increasingly clear to the Viennese court that the war was lost. The imperial government of Ferdinand 3 was forced to negotiate peace.
Results:
over 300 small German states received de facto sovereignty, while nominally subject to the Holy Roman Empire. This situation continued until the end of the first empire in 1806.
The war did not lead to the automatic collapse of the Habsburgs, but changed the balance of power in Europe. Hegemony passed to France. The decline of Spain became evident.
Sweden became a great power for a period of about half a century, significantly strengthening its position in the Baltic. However, by the end of the 17th century, the Swedes lost a number of wars to Poland and Prussia, and North War 1700-1721 finally broke the Swedish power.
Adherents of all religions (Catholicism, Lutheranism, Calvinism) gained equal rights in the empire. The main result of the Thirty Years' War was a sharp weakening of the influence of religious factors on the life of European states. Them foreign policy began to be based on economic, dynastic and geopolitical interests.
