Introduction
Let me just
say that while this was an incredible book, I do not recommend it to anyone who
unless you are extremely invested in deeply learning about the Thirty Years
War. This was a very interesting book, but extremely detailed and I wish I had
chosen something half as long. I felt like I was not able to learn as much as I
could have because I was just overloaded with so any details it was impossible
to keep track of all the characters, the armies, and the places. What follows
is my best understanding of the war from the book and a little bit of
Wikipedia.
The Legacy of the War
The Thirty
Years War was an unprecedented catastrophe in Germany that would not be matched
until the 20th century. I had no idea of this. Wilson writes that Albert Speer,
Nazi architect and armaments minister, announced on May 4, 1945, as Germany was
laid waste by Allied forces, that “the destruction that has been inflicted on
Germany can only be compared to that of the Thirty Years War. The decimation of
our people through hunger and deprivation must not be allows to reach the
proportion of that epoch.” And for that reason, the Nazis surrendered. Wilson
writes that surveys in the 1960s found that Germans listed the Thirty Years War
as Germany’s greatest disaster, ahead of the world wars, the Holocaust, and the
Bubonic Plague. He writes that Germany was more devastated during the Thirty
Years War than any other time in its history, even the calamities of the 20th
century.
The Holy Roman Empire and its Organization
The Holy
Roman Empire at the dawn of the Thirty Years War was ruled by Habsburg emperors
and 50-60,000 noble families. Most of them were “territorial nobles” who just
owned some land under the jurisdiction of lords with imperial fiefs of whom
there were 180 lay fiefs and 130 spiritual fiefs. The Habsburgs themselves
controlled over 40% of the land in the Empire, governing 7 million of the HRE’s
24 million subjects. This gave them a virtual monopoly over the title of
emperor from 1438 until the fall of the empire in 1806, as very few other lords
had more than 100,000 subjects.
Questions Unanswered by the Peace of Augsburg
The Peace of Augsburg in 1555 gave
lords the right to choose the religion of their lands and laid the legal
groundwork for toleration of both Lutheranism and Catholicism. While it was
written to be ambiguous, not even using the term “Lutherans,” and speaking in
euphemisms, there was no major war for another 63 years after the treaty, with
only localized conflicts. However, there was diverging interpretation over
three items, known as The Three Dubia.
First, could there be
Protestant bishops ruling fiefs in the HRE? The emperor dodged the issue by
calling them administrators instead of bishops, and their rulers were given
essentially secular authorities. In the late 16th century, more ecclesiastical
territories fell to Protestants, putting pressure on the Catholic majority in
the Reichstag, the HRE parliament. The second issue was what to do with
ecclesiastical property that was within the jurisdiction of a Lutheran ruler
that had not already been incorporated into his territorial church property. It
was a point of controversy how much power Lutheran rulers could exercise over
those institutions. The third and final issue was what the religious freedoms
of the subjects were. This was especially contentious in territories where the
lord was Catholic ruling over Lutherans and vice versa. This question also grew
more pressing in the late 16th century when Catholic rulers tried to enforce
religious conformity to prove loyalty.
The State of Religion Before the Thirty Years War
After the 1555 agreement,
Catholicism came under intense pressure in the late 16th century. Nine in ten
Lower Austrian nobles embraced Lutheranism as well as 85% of those in Upper
Austria, where three in four urban-dwellers and half of the peasants were
Protestants as well. 70% of Inner Austria was also Protestant and only five out
of 135 Styrian nobles remained Catholic. The Habsburgs, who remained Catholic,
were forced to recognize the rights of their lords to be Lutherans and gave
them assurances of religious freedom. Nobles were allowed to worship in their
own town houses, which became de facto churches. In many regions, nobles paid
off Habsburg debts in exchange for assurances of religious freedom, such as the
Pacification of Bruck, which seems to come up a lot in the early part of the book.
Catholics were a minority in Croatia and Tyrol, but no Protestant religion
gained complete acceptance.
As the Reformation went on,
everyday life became more divided by the end of the 16th century. You could
tell by people’s names: Joseph and Maria were especially popular among
Catholics while Calvinists rejected saints’ names and used names from the old
testament like Abraham, Sarah, Rachel, and Daniel. Protestant territories spoke
Luther’s Saxon dialect of German, while the Jesuits taught High German in the
south. Calvinists rejected theater, while Lutherans and Catholics continued to
use it in schools. Catholic sermons focused on Madonna and the saints while
Lutherans and Calvinists focused on morality. Even calendars were different
since Pope Gregory XIII set the date back by ten days on October 15, 1582,
making the new year start on January 1 instead of March 25. Of course
Protestants were very reticent to follow the new, “Catholic” calendar.
“The Way of War”
There is a
great chapter in this book called “The Way of War,” covering military
technology, tactics, and theory at the start of the 17th century. The most
interesting assertion Wilson makes is that the pace of technological change had
slowed from the mid-sixteenth century onward, as “all the basic weapons had
appeared while further developments were restricted by manufacturing problems.”
He uses cannons as an example of weak production. Most interestingly, he
expounds on how all the major weapons of war for the next several centuries had
already been invented in one primitive form or another. Poison gas shells were
used in the Netherlands, and firebombs were already invented by heating shot to
ignite tightly packed buildings. Shells were using flint and steel detonators
and cannons were already being stuffed with antipersonnel round that spread out
on being shot, a sort of massive shotgun. Wilson asserts that further
developments were just refinements on the basics that were all there, as the
modern age of warfare had begun. I won’t go into all the details of this, but
they are fascinating.
Prelude to War
A Weakened House of Austria
Between the
1590s (the start date is controversial) and 1606, the Ottoman Turks and the
Hapsburg HRE fought an indecisive conflict that drained both sides’ resources. It
was fought mostly in Hungary, then a borderland between the two empires.
Although it was a boondoggle for all involved, it had the benefit of weakening
the Ottomans such that they would not compete in the Thirty Years War, although
the Turks would remain a source of anxiety for Habsburg rulers. On the other
hand, the war weakened the Habsburgs so much financially that it may have
contributed to the outbreak of the Thirty Years War by weakening the ruling
dynasty. The Long Turkish War was the largest mobilization of troops in the HRE
in decades, and the soldiers who gained experience as officers became the
preeminent generals of the first half of the Thirty Years War. The war did at
least manage to end the annual tribute the Habsburgs had been paying to the sultan,
so that was nice.
Wilson
writes that “the ensuing ‘Brothers’ Quarrel’ compounded the damage” of the Long
Turkish War. Rudolf, the emperor, and his brothers, Matthias, Maximilian, and
Albert basically engaged in politicking against each other after the war that
resulted in Rudolf abandoning plans to fight the Turks again and relinquishing
power in Hungary to Matthias while granting greater autonomy Bohemia (modern
Czechia). After the war and the subsequent loss of central power, the Austrian
monarch Rudolph II was significantly weakened
The Powerful Spanish Habsburgs
Meanwhile,
the Spanish Habsburgs were at their strongest. They were discovering silver in
their possessions in the western hemisphere and conquering territory. However, after
the death of Philipp II, the empire was on autopilot under his weaker, less
able son, Philipp III. For reference, Philipp II is the uncle of the brothers
discussed above and Philipp III is their cousin. Philipp III is also the
brother-in-law of Albert, who married II’s daughter and III’s sister. Philipp
III also married their cousin from another branch, Margarethe. I know, what the
fuck were these guys doing. Anyway, Wilson is a little defensive of Philipp
III. He notes that historians have been really critical of him, calling him the
laziest ruler Spain has ever had. His own father is quoted as saying, “God, who
has given me so many kingdoms, has denied me a son capable of ruling them.” I
wonder if Philipp III ever heard him say that. However, Wilson writes that Philipp
III attended meetings of council daily from age 15 and retained the final
decision on all important matters. It sounds like he was a bad ruler who looked
even worse because his father was maybe the greatest ruler in Spanish history.
Spanish
crown, had been in revolt. That is ten years before Philipp III was even born.
It would end up going on for 80 years, until the end of the Thirty Years War.
It drew Spain into continental politics, since the Spanish used a route called
the Spanish Road to reach the Netherlands.
The “road” actually started with a journey by sea from Spain’s
Mediterranean coast to Genoa, where men marched to Milan, and joined with
troops from Spain’s Italian possessions. Then, they crossed through the
territories of the Duke of Savoy across the Alps and then along the Rhone River
through Franche-Comte. Then they moved north through the Duchy of Lorraine into
Luxembourg before arriving in the Low Countries. Sea travel would have been
much faster, but the overland route was safer. Wilson writes that Spain sent
over 123,000 men this way between 1567 and 1620, as opposed to 17,600 by sea. The
map shows Spanish possessions in orange, Austrian possessions in green, and
Spanish dependencies in purple.
The Northern Powers
While Spain
and Austria (Austria also controlling most of Germany) were stagnating, Denmark
and Sweden were emerging from civil wars and growing stronger, while the Polish
Lithuanian Commonwealth was entering its golden age.
Denmark,
although newly stable, was still poor. Wilson calls the monarchy of Denmark at
the time a “domain state,” meaning that it was heavily reliant on income from
crown lands, which made up 67% of revenue in 1608. The economy was based on
barter, and taxes were usually paid in food. Some of the food fed the royal
court, and the rest was sold at market for cash. However, Denmark was entering an economic
boom at the start of the 17th century. Revenue rose year after year and
Christian IV of Denmark, who would rule until 1648 became the third-richest man
in Europe, after Duke Maximilian of Bavaria and his own mother, who died in
1632. This made him the unusual creditor-king, allowing him to maintain the
loyalty of his courtiers and subjects through debt. This is the opposite of the
usual situation in Europe at the time in which monarchs constantly had to
borrow from the nobles. However, the wealth of Christian IV was not very stable
because it allowed him to engage in foreign adventures that would impoverish
the crown, and could not last long enough to sustain a long war, say one that
would last for thirty years…
Upon the
death of his father, Charles IX, in 1611, the seventeen-year-old prince
Gustavus Adolphus became King of Sweden. The build-up for this guy in the book
is amazing. He is supposedly the ideal king, able to converse with peasant and
noble alike without losing his royal bearing yet still seeming relatable. He
had a loyal chancellor who was his partner and the two were a sort of John and
Paul of their time, making Sweden briefly an extremely important player in
European affairs. In their first six years, they focused on getting the country
out of Charles IX’s conflicts. Then, they turned to domestic reforms. In 1621,
when Gustavus Adolphus was just 27, he went to war with Poland (until 1629),
finally intervening in Germany in 1630 before dying two years later as a hero
of the Protestant side of the Thirty Years War. He would be succeeded by his
daughter Christina, later considered one of the most leaned women of her time.
But that is all in the future. What is important at the dawn of the Thirty
Years War is that Sweden was making military reforms that would last until the
20th century because they were so successful, and his intervention in 1630 will
significantly impact the war.
Factionalism in Germany
Two paths
emerged for the Protestants of the Holy Roman Empire. Saxony (northern Germany)
led the moderate path, trying to work within the Reichstag to chart a course
for Protestants in the Empire. The Palatinate (southwestern Germany on the
Rhine) led a more radical path, pushing for the development of a formal group
outside the Empire’s power. In the 1580s, most princes of the Empire preferred
the Saxon way. The Saxon-aligned princes included Hessen-Kassel, Wurttemberg,
Pomerania, Mecklenburg, and the Ernestine line of the house of Wettin, which
controlled much of Thuringia in central Germany. Saxony later extended its
alliances in 1614 to include Brandenburg in the northeast.
With great
power in the Saxon elector’s hands, things changed when Christian I took power
in Saxony after the death of his father. He opened negotiations with the
Palatinate in 1590, resulting in the Union of Torgau in 1591, an agreement
intended to unite the two political branches of German Protestantism, and, in
Christian I’s mind, make the Palatinate more moderate. But the alliance was
fragile, and when Christian I died young and unexpectedly, rumors swirled that
he was poisoned by the Saxon Lutheran establishment for getting too close to
the Calvinist Palatinate. Christian II ascended to the throne at eight years
old, and Saxony became politically passive, as his mother aligned the duchy
with the Catholic Habsburgs. One privy councilor wrote in 1610, “politically
we’re papists.” With Saxony weak, the Palatinate took a starring role in the
partnership.
Fourteen
months later, the Catholics realized they needed to do the same, now known as
the Catholic League. Many of the most powerful Catholic electors and dukes did
not want to create a sectarian alliance. Mainz preferred to negotiate with Saxony
(a dead end). The electors of Trier and Cologne wanted to include Emperor
Rudolf, who had no interest in joining, so that was not going to work.
Maximilian of Bavaria didn’t want to join any group for the opposite
reason—fear that the Habsburgs would join and he would be overshadowed. But by
July 1609, Maximilian had changed his mind, and formed an alliance with the
bishops of Augsburg, Konstanz, Kempten, Passau, Regensburg, Ellwangen, and
Wurzburg. They envisioned a nine-year defense pact dedicated to defending
Catholicism. I unfortunately can’t find a map of the Catholic League
territories, but I did find a map of the state of religion in 1618 at the dawn
of the war. It shows Lutherans, Calvinists, Zwinglians, Hussites (Czechia), and
the Catholics. Protestants are in orange/red, Catholics are in purple. Lands
controlled by the Muslim Ottomans are in the bottom right also in red for some
reason.
The Return of the Brother’s Quarrel
Power
transitioned from Emperor Rudolf II to Emperor Matthias in two stages: first,
Matthias stripped his brother of his remaining power, and then Matthias
convinced the electors to accept him as successor. How this happened was
honestly very confusing in the book and I had to go to Wikipedia:
In November 1600 at Schottwien the
Archdukes Matthias, Maximilian and Ferdinand signed an agreement of concerted
opposition against the emperor, in 1606 declared Rudolf insane (document dated
25 April), appointed Matthias as the head of the family, and began to oust
Rudolf. It was Matthias and not the emperor who had brokered the Peace of
Zsitvatorok with the Ottomans and in 1606 had ended the conflict in Hungary by
granting freedom of religion in Hungary and guaranteed the right of
Transylvanians to elect their own independent princes in the future.
As unrest resurfaced in Hungary and
spread into parts of Moravia and Austria, Matthias attempted to utilize this
opposition in the power struggle against the emperor. He joined the rebellious
Diet of Hungary and the Lower and Upper Austrian estates in Bratislava in 1608
and in Moravia shortly later. In April 1608 Matthias marched on Prague and
besieged the city. Although unable to fully win over the Bohemian estates, he
forced Rudolf to negotiate and sign a peace treaty in June 1608. This, unsurprisingly,
resulted in the redistribution of power. Rudolf kept Bohemia, Silesia and
Lusatia and Matthias received Hungary, Austria and Moravia.
Rudolf surrendered the crown in 1611 and was confined to his
apartments. At this point, Matthias had Austria, Hungary and Bohemia while his
brothers Maximilian and Leopolld controlled some territories. Max had Tirol and
Leo was bishop of Strasbourg and Passau. Their cousin, Ferdinand, ruled Inner
Austria.
Matthias was finally able to gain
the throne in 1612 and found initial successes. The Catholic League dissolved
and the Protestant Union was “marginalized and on the verge of collapse” in
1618. The Reichstag met again and was able to recess normally in 1613, and
confidence was restored in the Habsburgs. However, the royal family was still
relatively weak and vulnerable to attack. While Matthias had once been the more
energetic and dynamic brother, it seems that once he gained the throne, he had
little energy left to rule. He did not have a head for detail, and critically,
he had no heir (the electors actually gave him and his wife a crib as a wedding
present). So perhaps it was a good thing that he preferred to spend time with
his young wife (half his age), but it meant that he went into the background of
imperial politics while his advisor Bishop Klesl entered the foreground. No
heir would come.
When the Reichstag met in 1613, the
Palatine representative led another walkout when the Protestant demands were
not immediately met in full. The remaining delegates managed to grant the
Emperor (Matthias) some money for frontier defense and recess to save face.
Bishop Klesl decided to delay another meeting of the Reichstag due to the rival
alliances. It would not convene again for another 26 years.
Because Matthias could not produce
an heir, his succession became a major question, as he was already 55 when he
gained the crown. Spain (for a myriad of reasons discussed in the book) decided
to back Matthias’ cousin, Ferdinand.
However, it should be noted that there was a sort of phantom candidacy
for Maximilian of Bavaria, then the richest man in the world. Christian of
Anhalt, the staunch Calvinist even approached the Catholic duke to propose they
merge their Protestant and Catholic alliances to kick out the Habsburgs. It didn’t
work out. Instead what happened is the Habsburgs cut a deal amongst themselves
in which Philipp III of Spain renounced his claims to Bohemia and Hungary, but
giving his sons claims over Ferdinand’s daughters, in exchange for a future
gift of an Austrian province. However, a secret deal was struck. Ferdinand
promised to marry Philipp III’s daughter and to surrender Austrian parts of
Alsace to Spain and Ferdinand would be made heir to Matthias and therefore the
Holy Roman Empire.
War Erupts in Bohemia
1618
Wilson
writes, “it proved impossible to contain the violence which kept drawing in
outsiders. The rapid internationalization of the conflict is deceptive. Europe
was not poised for war in 1618, as all the major powers remained afflicted by
their own problems. Therein lay the danger. With their rivals apparently
preoccupied, each power felt safe to intervene in the Empire. Few intended
their involvement to lead to a major war, and no one thought of a conflict
lasting thirty years.”
I would say
that one of the biggest things I’ve come to understand from this book is that
the Thirty Years War was really a series of different wars that in retrospect
make up one pan-European conflict. The Bohemian revolt that sparked it was over
in just two years. But things played out like one of my Crusader Kings games,
where just as you finish defeating one revolt and are weakened, a rival power
declares war on you or another revolt breaks out, taking advantage of your
vulnerability.
The
Bohemian revolt was an “aristocratic coup” brought about by a small group of
militant Protestants. These militants decided to throw three representatives of
the crown out a high window, which was actually the third defenestration of
Prague. I don’t know how this keeps happening. But basically, it was a super
high fall. Luckily for these guys they all lived, and one of them who kind of
slid along a slanted side of the building was able to get them up and to
shelter and safety. Protestants claimed that they fell into manure, and
Catholics claimed that the Virgin Mary laid out her holy cloak to bring them
safely to ground. Who can say what really happened? Most importantly, one of
the men who was thrown out the window was made a lord with the dynasty name
“Von Hohenfall” (of the high fall) and that is hilarious.
The
Bohemians quickly announced that they no longer recognized the Holy Roman
Emperor Ferdinand II as their king, but rather they elected Frederick V,
Elector of the Palatinate, and leader of the radical Protestant faction. One
really strange thing about all of this is how slow things move. The
defenestration happens in May 1618, and from that point, Bohemia is in
rebellion. It’s not until August 1619 that the Bohemians name Frederick as
their king, and not until 1620 that a decisive battle is fought. It is crazy
how slow the empire was moving to stop this. That same month, Gabriel Bethlen,
the Calvinist Prince of Transylvania, invades Hungary. So it’s a shitshow. At
this point, the Habsburg monarchy is in serious peril. Ferdinand II was in
massive debt, and only surviving on subsidies from Spain and the Papacy, so
that’s why the response was so slow. This was how Maximilian of Bavaria was
able to gain an advantage. Max slowly prepared to revive the Catholic League,
ostensibly not led by him, and reactivated it in October 1619 at Ferdinand’s
request, providing the legal basis for his future actions. Max used his
leverage to get Ferdinand to declare Frederick an outlaw, entitling Emperor
Ferdinand to seize his lands, which Max of Bavaria had his eyes on. In an
agreement with Maximilian, Ferdinand agreed to give the Palatinate’s elector
vote to Bavaria (used to elect emperors). In November 1620, Ferdinand’s troops (led
by Tilly and Wallenstein) win a decisive victory against Frederick’s (led by
Christian of Anhalt) in the Battle of White Mountain and go on to sack Prague. Frederick
V was starting to be called “The Winter King,” as he only ruled for a single
winter. He went on the run. In the meantime, Ferdinand negotiates a peace with
Bethlen who sees he’s outmatched.
It seemed
like peace was possible in 1621 and that the crisis was over. The Catholic League
even voted to reduce its army’s numbers to 15,000. However, Frederick was
intransigent. The Saxons mediated talks in which he declared that he would
renounce Bohemia and accept Ferdinand as king, but only if Ferdinand confirmed
full religious liberty, assume all of Frederick’s Bohemian debts, and refund
Palatine military expenses from the rebellion. This was obviously insane, and
Ferdinand put the major leaders of the revolt under imperial ban, paving the
war to confiscate their lands and titles. Frederick became more inflexible and
decided his only hope was to fight on.
The Palatinate Campaign
At this
point I got lost and had no clue what was happening. So I consulted Wikipedia a
bit for this part. In 1620, while Catholics and Protestants were fighting at
White Mountain outside Prague, the Spanish decided to occupy the Palatinate
while Frederick was gone due to its proximity to the Spanish Road. It happens
that Frederick was married to the daughter of James I of England, who
threatened the Spanish, but they were able to open up negotiations. Sensing
Spanish weakness, the Dutch restarted the Eighty Years War in 1621, and offered
military support to Frederick to regain his lands, which could be used to
threaten the Spanish Road. The Catholics won this stage of the war too.
Ferdinand granted Frederick’s titles, lands, electoral vote, and lands to
Maximilian of Bavaria, despite opposition from Protestants in the Empire and
the Spanish. During this portion of the war, Britain allowed the powers to
recruit from them, and ended up sending huge amounts of troops to fight in the
war.
At this
point, the Catholics were ascendant. Ferdinand consolidated his hold on
Hungary, and confirmed his son, also named Ferdinand, as King of Hungary in
1625. Catholic influence grew again in Hungary. In Bohemia, the Battle of White
Mountain was long thought of as a critical turning point in Czech history,
ushering in a dark age for the Czechs. When the Czechs broke from the
Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, a large crowd gathered on White Mountain
battlefield to hear speeches declaring triumph over the shame of 1620. But
Ferdinand was not in possession of complete victory in 1625. Frederick V still
lived, and his rights were the basis of Danish intervention in Saxony that
year. The Empire was still fundamentally financially unsound. Ferdinand was now
even deeper in debt and soldiers would not disband their regiments until
paid. He used incomes from his
hereditary lands and confiscations of revel lands to raise money and even
created waiting lists to gain lands, which individuals could trade positions on
for cash; but it was fundamentally the personal relationship of Emperor to
subjects that sustained the HRE in this time.
One
fundamental issue for the imperials and Catholics was the disunity of their
forces. The Catholics, led by Maximilian of Bavaria, were allied to the
imperials, led by Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor. However, their armies were
not united, with the Catholic League’s forces led by Tilly and the imperial
army led by Wallenstein. The two jockeyed for power and disagreed frequently,
and Wallenstein tried to resign six times between February and March 1626 due
to Tilly’s refusal to join his troops with Wallenstein’s.
Another
problem for the imperials was that re-Catholicization was not going well. In
many regions where the church was restored to power, peasants were now
revolting. The Bavarians were able to crush revolt in Austria, but Ferdinand
was forced to delay re-Catholicization measures until 1631.
Denmark Invades: 1626-1629
The period
of the war from 1626-29 is marked by an invasion of Denmark by King Christian.
Christian asserted Frederick’s rights to Bohemia, but lost in his invasion. It
appeared that peace was at hand, but the intransigence of Ferdinand and
Frederick got in the way once again. Frederick finally offered a compromise,
saying he would renounce Bohemia, accept Maximilian as an elector as long as
the title reverted to the Palatinate on Maximilian’s death, and submit to
imperial authority by proxy to avoid personal humiliation. But Ferdinand
demanded that Frederick submit in person, and a deal was not reached.
After
triumph against Denmark, the powers that be in the Empire thought that the war
was over. As a result, the electors voted to reduce the size of the imperial
army, as Wallenstein was unpopular already and of course they didn’t like to
submit to imperial power. Tilly’s Catholic League army remained strong.
Ferdinand became less popular when he granted Mecklenberg to Wallenstein in
1628, the same year that he officially make Maximilian a hereditary elector and
gave him much of the Palatinate, upsetting the balance of power in the HRE.
Ferdinand further upset the balance of power in 1629 by issuing the Edict of
Restitution, setting out his intention to return lands taken by Protestants to
the church, which angered the Protestants who had remained loyal and made peace
harder to reach, as the rebels had more to lose now if they surrendered. Even
the Catholic Habsburgs in Spain opposed the Edict, correctly fearing that it
would prolong the war. Re-Catholicization was seemingly a doomed effort. Even
when the Catholics succeeded in taking back their churches, they lacked enough
monks, nuns, and priests to fill them. The quality of Catholic clergy declined
in this era.
Ferdinand
was now isolated from his nobility, and when he tried to remove doubts of
succession by proposing his son as his heir, the electors refused until other
issues were resolved. Instead, they demanded Wallenstein be dismissed, but
failed to accomplish this.
Swedish Intervention: 1630-1632
Gustavus
Adolphus was first and foremost a conqueror. Nominally a Protestant, his
chancellor, Oxenstierna later admitted that religion was a pretext for war, and
Gustavus himself said that if religion were the cause he would have declared
war on the pope. Gustavus Adolphus invaded to secure the security of Sweden,
strengthening it on the international stage, and to balance the internal politics
of Europe by weakening the Habsburgs. Additionally, the Swedish king didn’t
mind picking up all the plunder he could along the way. France made a deal to
fund Sweden for five years as it ransacked the HRE so long as it did not touch
Bavaria, with whom Richelieu had made a deal to defend Maximilian’s title.
Britain also backed the Swedes, as they hoped Gustavus would restore Frederick
(related to the King of England through marriage) to his seat as an elector.
The Swedes
used a huge among of German manpower, in fact making up the lion’s share of
their army. 46% of the Swedes who landed in July 1630 were dead within six
months, largely due to diseases that were unfamiliar to them in Scandinavia.
Adolphus lost 50,000 men by the end of 1631, at which point his army contained
only 13,000 Swedes and Finns, being mostly German. The annual attrition rate
was one in five, with most conscripts from Scandinavia living no more than four
years after arriving in Germany.
Despite those obstacles, the Swedes
were completely dominant on the battlefields of Germany. Gustavus Adolphus was
declaring significant chunks of the HRE liberated as he conquered them in his
own name and proved unstoppable for a time. With Wallenstein gone, Tilly could
not win against the Swedes and was killed in battle in 1632. Wallenstein was
restored as master of all the imperial and Catholic armies, and took
inspiration from the Swedes as he instilled greater discipline in his men.
Finally, Wallenstein confronted Gustavus at the Battle of Lutzen, where the
Swedes won the field, but Gustavus Adolphus lay dead with two bullet wounds. No
one realized this until after the battle was over, but it would turn the tide
of the war. Frederick V would also die in 1632.
The Latter Portion of the War, and the Point at Which I
Became Completely Lost
So at this
point in the book, I have to admit that I took a big defeat. I just could not
keep up with all the new names and battles and numbers of men fighting at each
battle and it was just killing me. I think the author has been good at
including the details but man I did not need this many details. The Holy Roman
Empire is just so hard to read about and this is a clusterfuck. I will try to
write down what I know and what is important.
When
Gustavus Adolphus died, his sex-year-old daughter, Christina, became queen. His
widow was distraught at the news of his death and locked herself and her
daughter in her room and blackened he windows. When her husband’s embalmed body
arrived, she visited it every day, and when they buried him, she dug him up. Eventually,
the courtiers seized Christina from her to be queen and banished her mother to
Gripsholm island in 1636. The Swedes started looking for a way to end the war.
However,
the Empire was not about to let the Swedes gain peace while they still held
power in Southern and Central Germany. They sent Wallenstein after Swedish
forces. Wallenstein was successful, and I could not tell you how because I was
totally lost at this point. But what I did figure out is that he was too
successful, and spawned jealousies and a plot to murder him. Soldiers had
grievances and blamed him, and the nobility never liked how he was able to
centralize military power. So they killed him. And by the way, in 1636, Emperor
Ferdinand II died and was succeeded by his son, Ferdinand III. I will just say
that at this point, about 20 years into the war, almost none of the major
players from the beginning are left. This was really a generational struggle
and it must have been easier to negotiate for peace at this point as all the
war-starters were dying. The only major character I see left by the time
negotiations begin is Maximilian of Bavaria.
I will also
say that by the 1640’s, this is really not just one war, but several. There are
the rebellions in the Empire, the Dutch Revolt against Spain, French invasions
of Germany, Spain, and Italy, the Swedish invasion of the Empire, Polish
incursions to protect their own interests, and so many more disputes. The war
has just become a black hole sucking every polity in Western Europe into its
lightless maw.
Peace Negotiations
Peace
negotiations began in 1643 and lasted five years until the Peace of Westphalia
in 1648. During that time, fighting continued, and the powers sought to win
victories in the field so that they could win victories in diplomatic meetings.
In fact, the Swedes arrived at the gates of Vienna to threaten the young
Emperor Ferdinand III in 1645. Certain disputes and powers were excluded. These
included tensions in the Baltic and the Balkans as well as the English Civil
War. Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and some minor Italian states were also
excluded.
But despite
those exclusions, the congress that occurred in Westphalia became one of the
most monumental events of all time. It blew my mind. There were 194 official
participants, with 178 coming from within the Holy Roman Empire. The other 16
participants were European states like Spain, Sweden, France, Denmark, and
Poland. Wilson writes that this was the first truly secular international gathering,
and that makes it hugely significant.
The powers
agreed that all kings had the title of “majesty” and that all royal and
electoral amabssadors could be addressed as “excellency,” and could arrive in a
six-horse coach. The model of this congress was used for hundreds of years
thereafter, at Utrecht (1711-13), Vienna (1814-15), and Paris (1919), until
eventually its form was standardized in the United Nations.
Critical to
the people who lived through the war was that the final settlement allowed
freedom of religion to princes, but forbid them from imposing their own theological
beliefs on their Catholic, Lutheran, or Calvinist subjects. Jews, Muslims, and
other heretics were excepted. Religious tolerance was not complete, or anywhere
near what it is today, but people were able to return to peace after the war.
Some places, like Augsburg, were split down the middle, and practiced
segregation based on religion, with guilds, taverns, and pigsties organized by
who was Catholic and who was Protestant. But in other places, like the village
of Goldenstadt, Catholics and Protestants agreed to share a church. Wilson
writes that this should not be considered progress but a return to the
pragmatism that existed before the war. Mixed marriages also resumed in many
places.
The Political Results
The
Habsburg dynasty was surely weakened after the war. The Spanish Habsburgs were
weakened by prolonged conflict, and Spain was now in decline from its early/mid-17th
century peak. At the end of the century, the death of an heirless monarch would
plunge Europe into the War of Spanish Succession. The Austrian Habsburgs were
now the predominant line, but they too were weakened, as the Holy Roman Empire
was now more decentralized than before the war. Eventually, the Habsburg rule
in Germany would weaken enough that they became a purely Austrian house as the
Prussians conquered the Holy Roman territories. That said, the Empire survived
another 150 years until Napoleon, the greatest military mind in almost two millennia,
dismantled it.
It seems
like the war is mainly a stalemate, but that if anything, resulted in more of a
Protestant victory and a Catholic defeat. Wilson writes that the public on all
sides was relieved that the war was over above all else, but that Catholic
celebrations were more muted than those of the Protestants. Catholics seemed to
sense that Protestantism was here to stay and that the role of the Catholic Church
would not return to its old predominance.
The Cost of the War
It is very
difficult for experts to say how many died in the Thirty Years War. In fact, it
is very difficult for experts to even know how many people were alive in Europe
at the time. However, the best estimates suggest that there was a 15 to 20
percent decline in population due to the war. This is immense. For scale, a 15
percent decline would make the Thirty Years War the most destructive conflict
in European history. For reference, the Soviets lost 12 percent of their
population in World War Two. So even by low estimates, the war was a horrific
disaster.
Conclusion
The Thirty
Years War is well-understood as a war of religion, but people should be careful
not to take that characterization too far. Religion was certainly the major if
not greatest aspect of the war. However, it was not the only aspect by a long
shot. Throughout the war, Catholics fought in Protestant armies and Protestants
fought in Catholic armies. Wallenstein even promoted several Protestants to
high positions in the Imperial army, which discriminated much less than others.
No one seemed to care what religion the ordinary soldiers were. And remember
that most soldiers in any army were not of the “nationality” that they fought
for. The French army contained a minority of Frenchmen, the Swedish army hardly
any Swedes and so on.
All in all,
this was a really informative book, and I feel like I just took a class in European
history. I do not plan on reading anything like this for a long time. Lol.
Miscellaneous Facts:
- The Jesuits were founded in 1540 with the mission to “extirpate Protestantism” in Wilson’s words. Jesuits were more political than other Catholic priestly orders, and they worked at the top of the political hierarchy, in the belief that winning over the elite of territory would lead to the rest of its society rejoining the church. Protestants have seen this as a papal conspiracy, which it sort of was, since the plan was to put Jesuit advisors in all the courts of Europe and have the elites send their children to Jesuit schools.
- Not really a “fact” but something I found very interesting was how the author compared Sweden in the 17th century to Prussia in the 18th century. Both were led by dynamic young kings who were military geniuses (Gustavus Adolphus and Frederick the Great), both states used paid professionals as a significant part of their armies, and both were poor states with agrarian economies that leveraged their manpower where they lacked gold.
- The low countries were the center of the European arms industry at the beginning of the 17th century.
- Rene Descarte was an observer at the Battle of White Mountain.
- When Duke Maximilian took control of the Palatinate, he appointed as governor Heinrich von Metternich, an ancestor of the Clement von Metternich who negotiated the “concert of Europe” after the defeat of Napoleon.
- Wallenstein commissioned Johannes Kepler to do his horoscope in 1608 and 1625. Wallenstein was obsessed with astrology.
- Rape was rarely prosecuted in the Renaissance/Reformation era. Official papers record rape only five times in Munich in the first half of the 17th century and three times in Frankfurt in between 1562 and 1695.
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