Article 3 – The Thirty Years’ War

by Brady Cockerill

Notwithstanding the Second World War, many people often cited the Thirty Years’ War as the most destructive and transformative period in modern European history. The length of the conflict, coupled with its religious and political undertones, did indeed make it a pivotal moment in European and especially German history. The nature of the conflict itself was difficult to deduce, with many labeling it a religious war and their opponents calling it a political one. With atrocities committed by the various state and dynastic players, and the depopulation of the Holy Roman Empire’s lands the aftermaths were long lasting. From the defenestration of Prague in 1618, to the Westphalian treaty of 1648, indeed much had changed in the territory of the Holy Roman Empire. What had initially begun as a religious conflict between Roman Catholic and Protestant leaders within the Holy Roman Empire, was infused with the political ambitions of the belligerents, and developed into a hybrid conflict where foreign policy and religion guided the warring sides.

The Holy Roman Empire at the dawn of the seventeenth century was a very complex state. The large nation was subservient to the Emperor, although in a very complex fashion. The Emperor was lord of all the Empire, which contained a significant number of imperial autonomous territories. These territories were usually comprised of a powerful city ruled by a nobleman or elite class, and a varying amount of land around the city. Unlike other cities in the Holy Roman Empire, which were subservient to a territory or a prince, these were directly subordinated to the Emperor himself. Some of these cities gained their autonomous status as a result of war, economic clout, or as a gift from the Emperor. Some of the smaller and less influential estates such as Cologne may have only comprised of the land within their city walls, while some of the larger more prestigious cities such as Hamburg would have enjoyed a large swath of territory around it. This structure was great for the Habsburgs to acquire lots of territory, however it would remain a constant thorn in the side of the dominant Habsburg dynasty as this made it difficult to enforce religious hegemony. Despite having religious authority over his subjects, the Emperor could not directly dictate what the religion was as the free cities had the ability to enforce their own religious views.i However, a plan that had been conceived decades before it would provide a solution to this unique situation.

In 1579 the Munich Conference was held; at this conference Charles II of Inner Austria, Ferdinand II of Tyrol and William V of Bavaria agreed on a plan to re-catholicize Inner Austria. The religious concessions of the Protestant Reformation needed to be undone “fein tacite und per indirectum,” roughly translated as “in an indirect an inconspicuous manner.”ii However, the structure of the Holy Roman Empire did not make it easy for the Emperor to simply make a decree instating Catholicism as the singular religion. In short, gradual changes towards eroding the concessions were needed instead of an all-out assault.iii The imperial monarchy began elevating Catholics to the aristocracy, as many of the current members had embraced the new Protestant faith. The Habsburgs also began to promote more Catholics to knighthood at the cost of the Protestant support and prestige. As this plan began to bear fruit at the turn of the seventeenth century, the Protestant opposition began to fear social displacement as service to the Crown, which was the best method of acquiring prestige, fortune and special connections to the court. Many of the old families that had embraced Protestantism began to realize that without service to the crown, they had lost the main avenue to elevating their social and economic status.iv As the Catholic occupation of important positions grew, the Protestant opposition became more radicalized against the monarchy.

Emperor Rudolph II was known as an incredibly talented and a well-read man. He had turned his residence of Prague into an artistic and scientific hub frequented by the best scientists and artists from many disciplines and nationalities. His lack of success as a monarch was not necessarily due to personal failings. He was known to be mentally unstable, withdrawn and more devoted to intellectual pursuits instead of the duties of Empire.v Although his diagnosis was unknown, it has been attributed to many medical conditions which was withdrawn and mentally unstable, the most prominent claim being that he suffered from some form of schizophrenia.iv By the end of the sixteenth century, his sickness had overtaken his abilities to such an extent that the Habsburgs began to take action. Several Archdukes began to conspire against the aging Monarch, urging him to designate a successor with their concern for his health. In 1595, Archduke Matthias took the Emperor’s declining health as an invitation to position himself as the heir to the throne, and began working towards that goal. When the Habsburg family council assembled in Vienna in April 1606, Matthias was secretly designated as heir to the dynasty by the council. In order to oppose his brother Rudolph, Matthias needed the support of the autonomous territories, which were still ruled by Protestant nobility. After the news of renewed conflict in eastern Hungary, he reached an agreement with the Austrian, Hungarian, and Moravian estates.vii The Emperor, perhaps seeing which way the wind was blowing, ceded the rebellious provinces to his brother Matthias. He also gave Matthias the right to succeed him in Bohemia with the Treaty of Lieben in June 1608.

With his succession secured and the rule of the Austrian, Hungarian, and Moravian territories now in his possession, Matthias found himself under pressure from the Protestant nobles of his new territories. They sought his guarantee that the promises made by his father Maximilian allowing them to practice their religion and seek public positions, as they would not swear fealty to him if he did not guarantee these promises.viii They also wrung a few concessions out of the new Emperor such as having two protestant deputies for each Catholic nobleman, and allowing Protestants in Catholic towns to practice their own religion. Matthias conceded but refused to extend this concession to the urban populace. In the end a compromise was reached in which a written document addressed the nobles while Matthias made a public speech to the people. With the death of Rudolph II in 1612 Matthias became the Emperor of the entire Empire. The new Emperor, however, made no effort to hide the fact that he believed the concessions he had made to be a temporary compromise. He maintained that these concessions had been made given his previously tenuous position.ix While he had accomplished his goal of becoming Emperor, he produced no heirs for the throne. The Habsburgs met again and had selected Archduke Ferdinand to succeed Matthias in Bohemia. Ferdinand was known to be strongly in favor of re-catholicization which infuriated the Protestants, and thus tensions rose dramatically among them. This culminated in the 1618 Defenestration of Prague, in which imperial agents of the Holy Roman Empire were thrown out of the window of Prague Castle. This act was the beginning of the Bohemian Revolt and eventually led to the Thirty Years’ War.x

The Thirty Years’ war was a very complicated conflict, with many sources from both sides claiming that the war was either religious or political. Many examples could be found in the popular writings of the time. For example, Carolus Caraffa’s Commentaria de Germania sacra restaurata et ad annum 1641 continuata presented the conflict as a strictly religious one.xi He painted the conflict with the Catholic Habsburgs taking on an evil international cabal of Protestants. Meanwhile another writer from the same period paints a different picture altogether. Bogislaus Philip von Chemnitz’s Dissertatio De ratione status In Imperio nostro Romano Germanico frames the war as the emergence of the German Princes’ independence from the Emperor’s control.xii Such divisions were not limited to the authors of the time, they extended up the rungs of power to the cardinals in charge of religious policy and to a certain degree, in politics. Cardinal Richelieu was one such man, despite being a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church and the principal minister of Louis XIII of France, he believed the war to be political. He demonstrated his belief as early as 1616 while still Bishop of Lucon by declaring that “The interests of the state and the interests of Religion are two entirely different things”.xiii Later in his life when he was appointed as cardinal and principal minister, he maintained this controversial belief bearing no mind to the fact that his opinions were considered controversial among fellow members of the church. As the Thirty Years’ War continued, he made his big move towards checking Habsburg power: he brought France into the war on the side of the Protestant Swedish, Dutch and Hessian Protestants. In order to make such an unexpected move, Cardinal Richelieu employed legions of propogandists to demonize the Habsburgs. He claimed that the Spanish Habsburgs had plans for universal monarchy and had enrolled their Austrian cousins in the plot. He was also careful to frame the war as a just legal cause. When the French subsidised Gustavus Adolphus in 1631 it was presented as “The defence of the liberties of the German Princes”.xiv Cardinal Richelieu continued his practice of maintaining the legality of the war until his death in 1642.

In a conflict as large as the Thirty Years’ war it is without doubt that many civilians suffered from unimaginable hardship. The war was often portrayed as widespread ruin and misery, and eyewitness accounts bear this out. Many inhabitants of German towns that were victims of famine, and they described the situation so dire that they had ground up unnatural foods such as cabbage stalks, linseed residue and nettles to try and ward off starvation.xv These efforts ultimately proved futile, with many of them succumbing to famine. This desperation was not only limited to the civilian population, but among the soldiers’ ranks as well. A similar account from Peter Thiele, town clerk at Beelitz, describes the drastic measures the soldiers took as starvation set in.

The soldiers were so famished that in the Altmark some of them ate human flesh. As they reached Beelitz and marched on around the town they ate dogs, cats and rotting dead horses. Everything that they found in the barns outside they either consumed or destroyed, but the town itself was preserved, thank God.xvi

These accounts are testament to the hardships endured by both soldier and civilian, however, the practice of looting became more common in the 1630’s as the financial institutions of the warring states began to exhaust their capabilities. This would have terrible consequences on the civilians inhabiting the occupied areas, as the soldiers now had no reliable source of income and food, they turned to brute force against the population to extract resources.xvii The cruelty employed by the soldiers to acquire loot and food became absolutely barbaric, with soldiers tightening chains around peoples’ heads until they bled out of their eyes in order to reveal where their own food and belongings were hidden. In one notable instance, a man named Krueger Moller was tied and placed over a fire to be roasted until he divulged the location of the rest of his money. Then a second raiding party arrived and hearing the boast of the first party that they had wrung 100 Taler out of Krueger, bound him again and roasted his face over the fire, hoping to acquire more money from the poor man. Instead he was roasted for so long that his skin came off like a butchered goose and he died.xviii

With such apocalyptic descriptions it is not surprising that some people began to see this war as God’s last judgment and the beginning of the end times. Before the outbreak of war in 1618 a comet had been seen in the sky over the German territories. This was a sign of concern for the populace, as comets were seen as signs of God’s anger, and an omen of bad things to come. There had been many sightings of comets before in the years leading up to the conflict. However, there were two things that made this comet special: first was the fact it had arrived during the peak of Lutheran apocalyptic speculation that had been building since Luther’s death. Secondly, the comet sighting coincided with a dramatic rise in religious dissent within the Holy Roman Empire.xix In the ensuing thirty years of chaos that engulfed the Holy Roman Empire, this seemed to be an accurate comparison indeed. Lorenz Ludolf, the pastor of the village of Reichensachen, began comparing the Old Testament to the afflictions being suffered by the people of Reichensachen.xx Even some of the religious pamphlets that had circulated after the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 claimed that the 1618 comet had appeared for thirty days, as if to signal that God’s punishment was to last thirty years, further elevating the religious connection to the comet.xxi

As the war began to wind down the political ambitions began to leak into the French state during peace negotiations in 1646. The Spanish had lost faith in the Emperor and were rushing towards peace, the desperation is noted in the humiliating terms they accepted, most notably a thirty-year truce in Catalonia. This was a huge win for the French as it would have essentially given them control of the principality but political ambition got in the way. Instead of having his men sign the treaty, Cardinal Mazarin ordered them to postpone the negotiations until the French armies could conquer a few more Spanish strongholds.xxii This was a perfect chance to end the war on favorable terms, but the French political goals favored prolonging the conflict. This would end up backfiring on the French as they would suffer several reverses from the Spanish, weakening their negotiating position as well as rousing the suspicions of their Dutch and Swedish allies.xxiii All this accomplished was needlessly prolonging the war for several more years, concluding with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 with the Holy Roman Empire and the much later the French and Spanish treaty of Pyrenees in 1659. With this last treaty, the Thirty Years’ War and related conflicts at long last came to an end, restoring a state of peace and stability in Europe.

In conclusion the motivations and perceptions of this war drew from religious as well as political schools of thought. What at first appeared to be a conflict driven by religion gradually became intertwined with political motivations as the conflict dragged on. The only definite outcome appeared to be a check of the Habsburg power in Europe, as well as massive devastation of German lands. Hundreds of thousands of military lives were lost as well as millions of German civilians died from famine and disease.xxiv It is perhaps a testament to the destruction wrought that many areas of the Holy Roman Empire took decades to recover from the crop devastation and disease that accompanied the war. Many towns and villages were reduced to rubble, as well as much of the Holy Roman Empire’s trade networks lay in ruin. Several cities experienced severe population reductions like the city of Augsburg, with a sixty percent decline in population.xxv It was no wonder that until the two World Wars of the twentieth century, the Thirty Years’ War was held as the most destructive conflict in Europe, and Germany in particular. This war held a collective trauma for the German people that remained in their national conscience for centuries.

Endnotes
i Peter Thaler, “Fall of the Peacemakers: Austria’s Protestant Nobility and the Advent of the Thirty Years’ War.” Renaissance and Reformation 2016 Vol.39 No.3 p.135
ii Peter Thaler, “Fall of the Peacemakers: Austria’s Protestant Nobility and the Advent of the Thirty Years’ War.” Renaissance and Reformation 2016 Vol.39 No.3 p.144
iii Ibid p.144
iv Ibid p.144
v Peter Thaler, “Fall of the Peacemakers: Austria’s Protestant Nobility and the Advent of the Thirty Years’ War.” Renaissance and Reformation 2016 Vol.39 No.3 p.153
vi Ibid p.153
vii Peter Thaler, “Fall of the Peacemakers: Austria’s Protestant Nobility and the Advent of the Thirty Years’ War.” Renaissance and Reformation 2016 Vol.39 No.3 p.154
viii Peter Thaler, “Fall of the Peacemakers: Austria’s Protestant Nobility and the Advent of the Thirty Years’ War.” Renaissance and Reformation 2016 Vol.39 No.3 p.155
ix Ibid p.155
x Ibid p.155
xi David A. Meier, “AN APPEAL FOR A HISTORIOGRAPHICAL RENAISSANCE: LOST LIVES AND THE THIRTY YEARS WAR” The Historian. 2005, Vol. 67 No. 2 p.257-258
xii Ibid p. 257-258
xiii Paul Sonnino, “From D’Avaux to Devoit: Politics and Religion in the Thirty Years War” History 2002 Vol.76 No.286 p.192
xiv Ibid p.193
xv Geoffrey Mortimer, “Individual Experience and Perception of the Thirty Years War in Eyewitness Personal Accounts” German History: The Journal of the German History Society. Vol. 20 No. 2 p.147
xvi Ibid p.147
xvii R.G. Asch, “’WO DER SOLDAT HINKöMBT, DA IST ALLES SEIN’: MILITARY VIOLENCE AND ATROCITIES IN THE THIRTY YEARS WAR RE-EXAMINED” German History 2000 Vol.18 No.3 p.294
xviii Geoffrey Mortimer, “Individual Experience and Perception of the Thirty Years War in Eyewitness Personal Accounts” German History: The Journal of the German History Society. Vol. 20 No. 2 p.148
xix John Theilbault, “Jerimiah in the Village: Prophecy, Preaching, Pamphlets and Penance in the Thirty Years War” Central European History. Vol. 27 No.4 p.441-442
xx John Theilbault, “The Rhetoric of Death and Destruction in the Thirty Years War” Journal of Social History. 1993, Vol. 27 Issue 2 p.284
xxi John Theilbault, “Jerimiah in the Village: Prophecy, Preaching, Pamphlets and Penance in the Thirty Years War” Central European History. Vol. 27 No.4 p.445
xxii Paul Sonnino, “From D’Avaux to Devoit: Politics and Religion in the Thirty Years War” History 2002 Vol.76 No.286 p.200
xxiii Ibid p.200
xxiv David Lederer, “The Myth of the All-Destructive War: Afterthoughts on German Suffering, 1618–1648” German History. Vol. 29, No. 3, p.400
xxv Geoffrey Mortimer, “Individual Experience and Perception of the Thirty Years War in Eyewitness Personal Accounts” German History: The Journal of the German History Society. Vol. 20 No. 2 p.142

Bibliography

Asch R.G., “’WO DER SOLDAT HINKöMBT, DA IST ALLES SEIN’: MILITARY VIOLENCE AND ATROCITIES IN
THE THIRTY YEARS WAR REEXAMINED” German History 2000 Vol.18 No.3
Lederer David, “The Myth of the All-Destructive War: Afterthoughts on German Suffering, 1618–1648” German
History. Vol. 29, No. 3, pp. 380–403
Meier David A., “AN APPEAL FOR A HISTORIOGRAPHICAL RENAISSANCE: LOST LIVES AND THE THIRTY
YEARS WAR” The Historian. 2005, Vol. 67 fNo. 2
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Accounts” German History: The Journal of the German History Society. Vol. 20 No. 2
Sonnino Paul, “From D’Avaux to Devoit: Politics and Religion in the Thirty Years War” History 2002 Vol.76 No.286
Thaler Peter, “Fall of the Peacemakers: Austria’s Protestant Nobility and the Advent of the Thirty Years’ War.”
Renaissance and Reformation 2016 Vol.39 No.3
Theilbault John, “Jerimiah in the Village: Prophecy, Preaching, Pamphlets and Penancefin the Thirty Years War”
Central European History. Vol. 27 No.4 p.441-460
Theilbault John, “The Rhetoric of Death and Destruction in the Thirty Years War” Journal of Social History.
1993, Vol. 27 Issue 2

About the Author: Brady Cockerill was born in Thompson and has lived here so far. He is Metis. He is not a fan of cold winters, but enjoys his life in the north. He graduated from R.D. Parker Collegiate with a bilingual diploma through the French Immersion program. Thus, he is fluent in French. European history has always held his admiration, specifically European conflict and human experiences. These were a natural fit for a paper on the Thirty Years’ War, and so he piqued his interest on exploring this topic. Brady is currently enrolled in UCN’s Bachelor of Arts program with a major in history, and plan to compliment it with a Bachelor of Education degree. His dream profession is teaching history

Instructor’s Remarks: History 2100 “Modern Western Civilization 1” is a course that is designed to examine the social, cultural, and political realities of the Western world from approximately 1500 to 1715. While the course’s focus might seem remote from the realities of life in Northern Manitoba as we discussed throughout term from 1500 onward we were all part of a global community. Like ripples in a pond, developments in one part of the world eventually had repercussions, for good for or often for ill, in other parts. At one point we noted that in the courts of various European ruling houses various grandees might sport beaver felt hats that could have traced their origins back to a trapline in the drainage basin of Hudson Bay. Brady Cockerill has written an interesting and nuanced paper examining the catastrophic and complicated Thirty Years’ War that ravaged the Holy Roman Empire (essentially the precursor of Modern Germany, the Czech Republic, and Austria) between 1618 to 1648. The human toll was horrendous and, as Cockerill points out, the scale of human suffering was not surpassed until the terrible wars of the twentieth century. The Thirty Years’ War cast a long shadow and its outcomes regarding the state and international relations continue to influence our world today. (Dr. Greg Stott)