The Thirty Years' War was a protracted armed struggle which took place in Central Europe between 1618 and 1648. It involved two large groups of powers: on one side, the Habsburg group, which was composed of Austria and Spain (ruled by Habsburg monarchs), the Catholic princes of Germany, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, being supported by the Papal States; on the other side, a coalition of nations which consisted of France, Sweden, the Protestant Netherlands, German Protestant princes, Denmark, Russia, and England, which espoused the cause of the German Protestant princes and the anti-Habsburg movements in Bohemia, Transylvania, and Italy. Although the war began as a religious conflict, it gradually lost its religious character, especially after Catholic France assumed the leadership of the anti-Habsburg coalition.
The Thirty Years’ War marked the end of the Spanish hegemony in Europe and the rise of France as a super power. This long armed conflict was a reflection on the international level of the profound social and political malaise and disturbances in Europe, which could be seen in the outbreak of local revolutionary movements, such as the German Peasants War, that ushered in the emergence of capitalism in feudal Europe during the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern era. The Austrian dynasty of the Habsburgs represented the forces of reaction, and endeavored to preserve Europe’s extinguishing feudal system.
Origin and Cause
In the late 16th century, the re-establishment of cordial relations between the Austrian and Spanish branches of the Habsburg house provoked fears in Europe that a union of the two would lead to the restoration of the empire of Charles V. The first to oppose the Habsburgs’ plans for supremacy on the Continent were the Protestant princes of Germany, whose independence within the Holy Roman Empire had been guaranteed by the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. When Emperor Rudolf II, therefore, inaugurated a campaign against the privileges that had been granted to the Protestants, the German Protestant princes, in an effort to safeguard their independence and to retain the lands they had seized during the Reformation, formed a Protestant Union in 1608. The Protestant Union received the support of the feudal absolutist states, such as France and England, which perceived in the Habsburgs’ plans a potential threat to their own interests. Soon after, the Catholic princes of Germany formed their own alliance: the Catholic League of 1609, with the backing of Spain and the Papal States.
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| Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus during the first Battle of Breitenfeld in 1631 |
The Armed Conflict
In 1617 and 1618 the Habsburgs attempted to circumscribe the privileges of Bohemia (present-day Czech Republic), which still retained a measure of independence under the Habsburg monarchy. The Hapsburgs’ move precipitated the Bohemian Revolt of 1618–20, which became the focus of the general conflict in Europe and heralded the first phase of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–23) —or the Bohemian, or Bohemian-Palatine period. In 1619 the leader of the Protestant Union, Frederick V of the Palatinate, was elected king of Bohemia, and in October of that year, Austrian Emperor Ferdinand II concluded an alliance with the Catholic League. With military assistance from the Catholic League, Ferdinand attacked the forces of the Bohemian Protestants, completely defeating them in a major battle at Bílá Hora on November 8, 1620. The early fall of Bohemia gave the advantage to the Habsburg Catholic camp. In 1621, troops from the Catholic League and from Spain, under the command of A. Spinola, marched into the Palatinate and occupied it until 1623.
The second phase of the Thirty Years’ War, called the Danish period because of Denmark’s entrance into the war against the Habsburgs, lasted from 1625 until 1629. In joining the conflict, Denmark acted, in effect, as a surrogate of France, England, and northern Netherlands, which had formed an alliance in 1624, agreeing to carry out their political designs in return for large subsidies promised in the Treaty of The Hague, signed in December 1625. Yet Denmark, a Protestant country, had another reason for entering the war: it hoped to acquire territories on the southern Baltic coast. With the United Provinces of Protestan Netherlands’ main forces dispatched to Spain, where fighting had resumed in 1621 after the expiration of the Twelve Years’ Truce of 1609, the French government, headed since 1624 by Cardinal Richelieu, sought to maneuver both Denmark and Sweden, under King Gustavus II Adolphus, into the war in an effort to force the imperial army to fight on two fronts.
In July 1630, Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, invaded northern Germany, thereby opening the third phase of the Thirty Years War, known as the Swedish period (1630–35). In the summer of 1631 he marched into the interior of Germany at the head of a well-trained army. To help finance his campaign, the Swedish king used subsidies obtained from France, under the Treaty of Bärwalde in January 1631, and from Russia, in the form of grain sold to Sweden on highly favorable terms. Gustavus Adolphus’ participation in the war marked a new phase in Sweden’s struggle for supremacy in the Baltic. The German peasants, as well as some burghers, greeted Gustavus Adolphus and his troops, mostly free Swedish peasants, as liberators from the oppression of the imperial princes and nobles. The German Protestants consequently pinned all their hopes on the Swedish king. Gustavus Adolphus, however, exploited his victories, made easier because of German popular support, to effect a deal with the princes in an attempt to place the empire under his rule.
In 1631, Gustavus Adolphus defeated the Catholic League's Army, under Count Tilly, at the Battle of Breitenfeld, near Leipzig. Then he marched across Germany, and, in May 1632, he captured the Bavarian capital of Munich, posing a direct threat to the Austrian lands of the Habsburgs. Meanwhile, the army of Saxony, which in September had concluded an alliance with the Swedish king, invaded Bohemia and occupied Prague. In the wake of these developments, the emperor, who in 1630 had dismissed Wallenstein at the request of the princes, placed him again in command of the imperial army in 1632. In November 1632, the Swedish troops, despite the death in battle of their king, defeated the imperial forces at Lützen in Saxony. Nevertheless, the situation of the Swedish army, which had lost its social and political support in Germany, deteriorated seriously. The worsening of Sweden’s military position had grave consequences elsewhere.
Forced by these events, Catholic France intervened directly against the Hapsburgs on German soil in 1635, thereby inaugurating fourth phase of the conflict, or the French period (1635–48) of the Thirty Years’ War. Sweden, after signing the Truce of Stuhmsdorf with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Treaty of Compiégne with France in 1635, was free once again to employ all its forces in Germany. France, in alliance with the United Provinces, was forced into a war with Spain that began in May 1635. In Germany the Swedish and French troops, as well as the imperial and Spanish forces, were engaged mainly in plundering; the population resisted by waging its own bitter partisan war against the marauding invaders. In time, however, the military advantage fell to France and Sweden. With their victories at the Second Battle of Breitenfeld on November 2, 1642, at the Battle of Rocroi on May 19, 1643, defeating the Spanish Army, and at Junkau on March 6, 1645, the two allies raised the prospect that they would end up by dividing Germany between themselves. Yet, as the Habsburg Catholic camp hovered on the brink of total defeat, the French government, concerned over the success of the English Civil War, which had broken out in 1642, and of the French Fronde, moved quickly to terminate the war. The Thirty Years’ War was formally concluded by the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648.
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