In March 1638, Bernhard destroyed an Imperial army at Rheinfelden, while his capture of Breisach in December secured French control of Alsace and severed the Spanish Road. After the prolonged siege of Stralsund and several months of negotiations, Christian signed the peace of Lübeck (May 22, 1629) by which he renounced all claims to German territory and surrendered his legal membership in the lower Saxon district of the Empire, yet managed to avoid an indemnity and to retain Jutland, Schleswig, and Holstein. Instead he reached a compromise with the moderate and essentially loyal Lutherans led by Saxony. Whereas the Catholic League had decided to support Ferdinand, the Protestant Union preferred to stay neutral and was soon dissolved. Using this as a pretext, Danish armies entered the Empire. The Renaissance. Thus a renewal of the twelve-year truce between Spain and the Netherlands that had been signed in 1609 became unlikely at the very moment when the Bohemian Estates rose against the Habsburgs. Leipzig 1931–32). This was due to the influx of soldiers from foreign countries, the shifting locations of battle fronts, as well as the displacement of rural populations into already crowded cities. [84] The Swedes captured Leipzig in December, giving them a significant new base in Germany, and although they failed to take Freiberg in February 1643,[85] the Saxon army was reduced to a few garrisons. https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/thirty-years-war, "Thirty Years War Most textbooks refer to two different series of events as the "Thirty Years' War. Though the war took place mainly within modern-day Germany, many of Europe’s nations were involved. . [22], While Emperors were elected, since 1440 this had been a Habsburg, the largest single landowner within the Empire; their lands included the Archduchy of Austria, the Kingdom of Bohemia, and the Kingdom of Hungary, with over eight million subjects. The Reformation, strongly opposed by the Catholic Habsburgs, brought religious persecution and civil war to Germany. Many Protestant princes joined the struggle and appealed to Sweden for help. Despite the French success at Rocroy (1643) and preliminary overtures toward peace, the war dragged on. MacArthur, despite having to retreat to Australia, oversaw the defeat of the Japanese in the Pacific and accepted their surrender less than four years later. The war had its roots in a religious and political crisis in Bohemia, where an angry mob of Protestant nobles tossed two ministers of the Catholic King Ferdinand out of Prague Castle. The Jesuits were given charge of the education of the Bohemian nobility and of the task of converting Bohemia to Rome. Sweden, however, maintained its superiority for a further two years. Appointed to rule the Duchy of Styria in 1595, within eighteen months he eliminated Protestantism in what was previously a stronghold of the Reformation. An international conflict taking place in northern Europe from 1618 to 1648. His dedication to Catholicism and determination to stamp out Protestantism prompted a revolt in Prague, the capital of Bohemia. This ended with the 1648 Peace of Westphalia.[18]. [102], French policy was to seek to disrupt this road wherever possible, either by attacking the Spanish-held Duchy of Milan, or by blocking the Alpine passes. Four of the electors were Catholic, three Protestant; if this could be changed, it might result in a Protestant Emperor. The Thirty Years' War (German: Dreißigjähriger Krieg, pronounced [ˈdʁaɪ̯sɪçˌjɛːʁɪɡɐ kʁiːk] (listen)) was a conflict fought primarily in modern Germany and Central Europe. This new assault on 'German liberties' ensured continuing opposition and undermined his previous success. [90], Three weeks after Rocroi, Ferdinand invited Sweden and France to attend peace negotiations in the Westphalian towns of Münster and Osnabrück, but talks were delayed when Christian of Denmark blockaded Hamburg and increased toll payments in the Baltic. Ferdinand tried to rebuild a united Catholic front in 1629 by passing the Edict of Restitution, which was designed to give all ecclesiastical property secularized since 1552/1555 back to the Roman Catholic Church. . (March 15, 2021). "War, Economy and Society." The advance quickly fell apart; Mansfeld was defeated at Dessau Bridge in April, and when Maurice refused to support him, Christian of Brunswick fell back on Wolfenbüttel, where he died of disease shortly after. [54], Many of Christian's German allies, such as Hesse-Kassel and Saxony, had little interest in replacing Imperial domination for Danish, while few of the subsidies agreed in the Treaty of the Hague were ever paid. The Palatinate was occupied by Bavarian and Spanish troops in 1622, the palatine electoral dignity was transferred to Maximilian of Bavaria, and the army of the Catholic League led by Count Johann Tserclaes of Tilly threatened to dismantle the remaining Protestant strongholds in northern Germany. Germany had in the past been largely spared the horrors of religious warfare, thanks to the Religious Peace of Augsburg (1555). Encyclopedia.com. To weaken their Habsburg opponents, Catholic France supported Protestants in the Dutch Republic and Electoral Palatinate, as well as Muslims in the Ottoman Empire. [93] In May, a Bavarian force under von Mercy destroyed a French detachment at Herbsthausen, before he was defeated and killed at Second Nördlingen in August. Der Dreißigjährige Krieg. [41] Many Protestants supported Ferdinand because they objected to deposing the legally elected king of Bohemia, and now opposed Frederick's removal on the same grounds. It devastated most of Europe especially Germany and ended with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. In constitutional terms the emperor's authority had been considerably strengthened. The electoral dignity and the Upper Palatinate were granted to Maximilian of Bavaria (1623). c. v. wedgwood, The Thirty Years War (New Haven 1939). [97], Turenne, French commander in the Rhineland, was ordered to attack the Spanish Netherlands but the plan fell apart when his mostly German troops mutinied. However, Ferdinand failed to exploit his success adequately. Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. [111], Preliminary discussions began in 1642 but only became serious in 1646; a total of 109 delegations attended at one time or other, with talks split between Münster and Osnabrück. Doing so turned the conflict into a contest between Imperial authority and "German liberties", while Catholics saw an opportunity to regain lands lost since 1555. By 1618, Europe was drifting into the generalized crisis that became the Thirty Years’ War. The often chaotic way in which armies were recruited and financed was at least in part responsible for the widespread lack of discipline among soldiers often remarked upon by contemporaries. . ." 2021 . [131], In 1940, agrarian historian Günther Franz published Der Dreissigjährige Krieg und das Deutsche Volk, a detailed analysis of regional data from across Germany; membership of the Nazi Party meant his objectivity was challenged post-1945, but recent reviews support his general findings. In Spain the fall of the duke of Lerma as royal favorite in 1618 marked the victory of those factions at court that favored a more assertive and warlike policy in central Europe, whereas at the same time in the Netherlands the adherents of rigid Calvinism and of an aggressively anti-Spanish policy gained the upper hand in 1618–1619 during and after the Synod of Dort (Dordrecht). Christian retained his German possessions of Schleswig and Holstein, in return for relinquishing Bremen and Verden, and abandoning support for the German Protestants. [141] Mainz and Trier also witnessed the mass killing of suspected witches, as did Cologne, where Ferdinand of Bavaria presided over a particularly infamous series of witchcraft trials, including that of Katharina Henot, who was executed in 1627. [34], Thurn established a new government, and the conflict expanded into Silesia and the Habsburg heartlands of Lower and Upper Austria, where much of the nobility was also Protestant. [133] The financial impact is less clear; while the war caused short-term economic dislocation, overall it accelerated existing changes in trading patterns. The Protestant Union, annoyed at Frederick's illegal acceptance of the Bohemian crown and divided between Lutheran and Calvinist factions, did not aid the Bohemian rebels. The Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus then intervened, fearing the growing Habsburg power in northern Germany. Emperor Ferdinand III (ruled 1637–1657), reluctantly supported by the majority of the German princes, was now virtually on his own in his fight against both France (which had committed a major army to operations in southern Germany) and Sweden. This forced them to become smaller and more mobile, with a greater emphasis on cavalry, shortened the campaigning seasons and restricted them to main supply lines. MCGARRY, P. S. "Thirty Years' War second balkan or interallied war . [51], In the June 1624 Treaty of Compiègne, France subsidised the Dutch war against Spain for a minimum of three years, while in December 1625 the Dutch and English agreed to finance Danish intervention in the Empire. Münster/Osnabrück 1998. They offered the Crown to the Protestant Frederick V of the Palatinate, but most German princes refused to support him, and by early 1620 the Bohemian Revolt had been suppressed. [26], This increased when Frederick IV, Elector Palatine formed the Protestant Union and Maximilian responded by setting up the Catholic League in July 1609. Swedish intervention in the Thirty Years' War, La vida y hechos de Estebanillo González, hombre de buen humor, compuesta por él mismo, Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, "German 'witch' declared innocent after 385 years", "The Battle of Wittstock 1636: Conflicting Reports on a Swedish Victory in Germany", "The face of war: Trauma analysis of a mass grave from the Battle of Lützen (1632)", "The Socio-Economic Relations of Warfare and the Military Mortality Crises of the Thirty Years' War", "Real Wages and the Origins of Modern Economic Growth in Germany, 16th to 19th Centuries", "The Long-term Impact of the Thirty Years War: What Grain Price Data Reveal", "The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Structure of European Politics", "His Expedition with a worthy Scots Regiment called Mac-Keyes", "Mitteldeutsche Selbstzeugnisse der Zeit des Dreißigjährigen Krieges (Central German self-testimonies of the Thirty Years War)", Project "Peace of Westphalia" (among others with Essay Volumes of the 26th Exhibition of the Council of Europe "1648: War and Peace in Europe", 1998/99), BBC Radio4 documentary – The Invention of Germany: The Thirty Years' War and Magdeburg, – Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Westphalian Myth, "The Thirty Years' War – how was peace achieved? 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