story of thirty year war

INTRODUCTION

The holy Roman Emperor   and a majority of the electors of the Holy Roman Empire remained Catholic but many become Lutheran and some Calvinists.  The Protestant rulers persecuted Catholic subjects and Catholic rulers persecuted Protestant subjects and to top is all the Protestant princes fought with the Catholic Emperor. After a bitter struggle, a treaty - the treaty - the peace of Augsburg (1555) was signed between the Emperor and the princes, by which every prince obtained the right of either being a Lutheran or a Catholic as per their wishes but also recognised the right to compel his subjects to conform to the kind of Christianity which the Prince professed. The inevitable result was that religious intolerance continued to be the order of the day within each of the several German states and ultimately led in the first half of the seventeenth  century to one of the longest and most destructive civil and international war in human history - The Thirty Years' war.

In vain the Holy Roman Emperor Charles had fought the new religious movement started by Luther. Though the right of choosing either Catholicism or Protestantism had been formally conceded by the peace of Augsburg yet this very Protestantism in Germany proved to be a disintegrating rather than a unifying factor. such would not have been the case had the Emperor all the princes accepted the new faith or it had been rejected by them all. In either case civil war would have been avoided, religion would have been wholly or partially nationalized and the central states grown stronger.

In really, however, the princes and the people in Germany were equally divided between Catholicism and Protestantism and the princes used religion as a garb for opposing the Catholic emperor  with a view to asserting local rights and privileges and for blocking and sabotaging every movement for national unity. The Holy Roman Empire during the reign of Charles V , one of the greatest emperors, ironically was falling mortally ill. In the same year as the peace of Augsburg 1555, in October Charles V formally abdicated the sovereignty of his son the Spanish and Italian Crowns and to his brother Ferdinand the Austrian Kingdom and imperial authority and himself withdrew to a monastery in Spain where he eventually died in 1558.

CAUSEES

Defects of the Peace of Augsburg 

The peace of Augsburg (1555) had been expected to settle the religion question in the Holy Roman Empire. In fact it failed in two respects. In the first place the clause forbidding further secularization of Church property was not honoured. The Protestant princes continued to confiscate Catholic estate and some Catholics on becoming Protestants converted church lands held by them into private holding. secondly the peace had taken cognisance of only came into prominence in Southern and Central Germany and in Bohemia they demanded equal rights.

Mounting tension between Catholics and Protestants

In order to revise the treaty of Augsburg and extract further concessions from the Catholic Habsburg emperor, a union of German Protestant princes was formed in 1608 under the leadership of young Calvinist ruler of Palatinate - Frederic commonly called the Elector Palatine of the Rhine. On the other hand the German Catholics were in an equally belligerent mood. Not only were they determined to oppose further secularization of Church property but encouraged by the success of the Catholic reformation during the second half of the sixteenth century they were eager to revise the earlier religious settlement in their own interest and if possible recover lands that had shipped from the possession of the Church. In 1609 a League of Catholic princes was formed under the leadership of Duke Maximilian of BAVARIA. Religion coupled with economic greed and political ambition was driving Germany clearly into two war like groups and threatening the Holy Roman Empire with a terrible civil war. Though the Catholic league would certainly support the Hapsburg emperor against the Protestant union, yet the Catholic princes like the Protestant princes were not inclined or willing to strengthen imperial authority at their own cost. This was a danger to the Hapsburg prestige in Germany for not being able to prevent a civil war, the Hapsburg emperor was the one to suffer its consequences. The only support that could be counted upon war understandably was that of Spain.

The Bohemian Crisis

The signal for the outbreak of hostilities in the Holy Roman Empire was a rebellion against the Austrian Hapsburgs in their kingdom of Bohemia. As Emperor Mathias was without an issue the successor to his kingdom and titles was his cousin Ferdinand of Styria a man of character and fanatically devoted to the Catholic church. Little opposition to Ferdinand was expected in Austria or Hungary. In Bohemia however the Czech nobles, many of whom were Calvinists, feared that Ferdinand would deprive them of their special privileges and restrict if not ban, the exitance of the Protestant religion on their estate. Already there had been encroachments on their political and religious freedom. One day in 1618 a group of Czech nobles broke into the room where the Imperial envoys were staying and threw them out of the window into a castle most some sixty feet below. This act of defiance was followed by the proclamation of the dethronement of the Hapsburg in Bohemia and the election to the kingship of Frederick the Calvinistic Elector Palatine. Frederick accepted the throne at Prague and prepared to defend his new title. At this stage the Emperor Matthias died and Ferdinand of Styria having became Ferdinand II (1619- 1637) took vigorous steps to expel Frederick from Bohemia. He arranged with Phillip III for the invasion of the Palatinate by a Spanish army and with Maximilian of Bavaria for the invasion of Bohemia by the forces of Austria and the Catholic League under the command of the famous Bavarian general Count Tilly, King Frederick hoped for assistance from his father - in - law James I of England and the Lutheran princes of Northern Germany but was sorely disappointed. Neither came to his help. James confined his help to sweet nothings except advice. The Lutheran princes led by John George, the Elector of Saxony remained neutral hoping thereby to obtain special concessions from the Emperor.

In 1620 Tilly won a decisive victory at White Hall in Bohemia. Frederick ran away and within a short time the whole country was brought under control and Ferdinand II was reinstated. Many rebellious Czech nobles lost their lives and property and Protestant religion was banned in Bohemia. This was not all. The fugitive king Fredrick sarcastically called the "Winter King" was driven out of his own wealthy possessions on the Rhine by the Spanish and Bavaria troops and became an exile without money or land. The conquered Palatinate was given to Maximilian of Bavaria who was further rewarded for his services by being made an elector of the Holy Roman Empire in place of the deposed Frederick.

The initial phase of the war was thus in favour of the Hapsburg and the Catholic cause. The revolt had been put down in Bohemia and an important electorate was transferred from Calvinist to Catholic control. Both the Spanish and Austrian Hapsburgs gained prestige and in 1625 Spain occupied the centre in European politics.