The Thirty Years’ War

Thirty Years War is sometimes called a “religious war,” but it was about politics more than religion. Most of Germany, which was called the Holy Roman Empire and extended from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, was not a unified state, but rather a loose collection of a huge number of autonomous city- states or province-states — three hundred and sixty autonomous states to be exact. The Holy Roman Empire also included pieces of what would become Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Bohemia, the Czech Republic, and other areas. The map of Europe, with its national boundaries, looked different then than it does now. Each was a more or less sovereign state that levied taxes and tariffs, had its own armies, made its own money, and even enforced its own borders. Political and economic rivalries between these separate states were sometimes hidden behind religious difference. About half the states were predominantly Protestant while the other half were predominately Catholic.

The era from 1555 until 1618 was peaceful; only in France were there domestic purges, but no large-scale warfare in Europe.

The Treaty of Augsburg (1555) recognized both Lutheranism and Roman Catholicism. A third tradition, Calvinism, made great strides throughout these territories in the latter half of the sixteenth century. In 1559 Frederick III became the Elector of the Palatinate (north of Bavaria) and converted to Calvinism. The rulers of kingdoms within the Holy Roman Empire were called “electors” because they would help to choose a new Page 1 emperor. This new Calvinist state would become a force to reckon with when it allied with England, the Netherlands, and France against the Spanish in 1609.

To the south of the Palatinate, Bavaria was unwaveringly Catholic. When Frederick IV, Elector of the Palatine, formed a league with England, France, and the Netherlands in 1609, Maximillian, Duke of Bavaria, formed a league. Although these leagues were political and military alliances, they often called themselves religious alliances.

In 1618, the relationship between these two leagues erupted into war. The Thirty Years War was, perhaps, the first World War fought in Europe, for nearly every state in Europe became involved in the war in some way or another. The sheer amount of casualties and human destruction made this war the most calamitous and disastrous war of European history before the nineteenth century.

After thirty years of untiring bloodshed, the war came to an end with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. The Treaty was not really an innovation; it simply reaffirmed the Treaty of Augsburg and allowed each state within the Holy Roman Empire to decide its own religion. The only important innovation of the treaty was the recognition of Calvinism.

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