Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War was a war fought in Central Europe (mainly the Holy Roman Empire) between 1618 and 1648, in which most of the great European powers took part. of the time. This war marked the future of the whole of Europe in the following centuries.
Although initially it was a political-religious conflict between pro-reform and counter-reform states within the Holy Roman Empire itself, the gradual intervention of the different European powers gradually turned the conflict into a general war throughout Europe, for reasons not necessarily related to religion: Search for a situation of political balance, achieving hegemony on the European stage, confrontation with a rival power, etc.
The Thirty Years' War came to an end with the Peace of Westphalia and the Peace of the Pyrenees, and marked the culminating point of the rivalry between France and the Habsburg territories (the Spanish Empire and the Holy Roman Empire Germanic) for hegemony in Europe, which would lead to new wars between the two powers in later years.
The biggest impact of this war, in which mercenaries were used extensively, was the total devastation of entire places that were depleted by armies in need of supplies. Continuing bouts of famine and disease decimated the civilian population of the German states and, to a lesser extent, the Netherlands and Italy, as well as bankrupting many of the powers involved. Although the war lasted thirty years, the conflicts that generated it remained unresolved for a long time.
During the course of this, the population of the Holy Roman Empire was reduced by 30%. In Brandenburg it was as high as 50%, and in other regions even two-thirds. The male population in Germany fell by half. In the Czech Countries the population fell by a third due to war, famine, disease and the mass expulsion of Czech Protestants. The Swedish armies alone destroyed 2,000 castles, 18,000 villas and 1,500 villages in Germany during the war.
In the territory of the Holy Roman Empire, which became the main theater of operations. The long series of conflicts that make up war can be divided into four distinct stages
- the Bohemian revolt and German intervention (1618-1625).
- the Danish intervention (1625-1629).
- the Swedish intervention (1630-1635).
- French intervention (1635-1648).
Conflicts outside Germany took the form of local wars: the Spanish War with the Netherlands, the War of the Mantuan Succession, the Valtellin War, the Swiss Grisons War, the Anglo-Spanish War, the Anglo-French War, the Russo-Polish War, the Polish-Swedish War, the Polish-Ottoman War, the Franco-Spanish War, the Torstenson War, the Portuguese Restoration War, etc. Sigfried Steinberg also marks the Thirty Years' War as twelve wars interrupted by truce and peace. The Thirty Years' War did not last 30 years without a curtain, but 13 wars and 10 peace treaties were signed, and historians of the epoch of the 17th century looked at each one separately instead of these wars being considered as one, and the artificial word &# 34;Thirty Years' War" it was coined at the end of the 17th century.
Origins of War
In Catholic Europe, the onset of the Counter-Reformation initiated a broad retreat from Renaissance materialism. The strengthening of the position of the Roman Catholic Church was combined with the fashion of astrology, the spread of occultism and other mystical movements such as the Spanish Ascetic School. Conflicts between the church and the representatives of the modern world intensified. Later, at the Council of Trent, the members of the "Society of Jesus" created by Ignacio Loyola, the Jesuits, became the combat unit of the Catholic Church in reaction to philosophical innovations questioning Scholasticism and its political rights..
Since the early 16th century century, the main role in the political life of Europe was played by the Habsburg dynasty, which split into the Spanish and Austrian branches. At the beginning of the 17th century, the Spanish branch of the house owned, in addition to the Kingdom of Spain, also Portugal, the Netherlands in the South, the Franche-Comté, in Italy the rich Duchy of Milan together with the Sicilian and Neapolitan crowns, and also had at its disposal an enormous Spanish-Portuguese colonial empire. The Austrian Habsburgs secured the crowns of the Holy Roman Empire, Bohemia, Hungary, Croatia, and Austria itself. Throughout the 16th century, the major European powers tried to prevent the establishment of Habsburg hegemony in Europe and the further growth of their possessions. The confrontation with the Habsburgs was led by Catholic France (in alliance with the Ottoman Empire), and England, which challenged Spanish rule of the sea and invaded the Spanish crown's colonial possessions. Other opponents of Spain were in the north of the continent: these are the Protestant Republic of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, which for several decades defended its independence in a protracted war of secession. The interests of the conflicting parties intersected more intensely in several regions at the same time. The greatest number of contradictions accumulated on the territory of the Holy Roman Empire, which, in addition to the traditional struggle between the emperor and the German princes, was divided along religious lines.
In 1546, the Schmalkaldic War broke out between Charles V, Catholic Holy Roman Emperor, and the Schmalkaldic League of Lutheran princes. The Emperor defeated the Protestant princes and the Provisional Agreement of Augsburg was established in favor of Catholicism, but the Peace of Augsburg was promulgated in 1555 after the Treaty of Passau with the Elector of Saxony Moritz, which was delivered. According to this decree, Catholics and Lutherans are prohibited from violence for reasons of faith (Calvinists and Zwinglis are excluded as heretics). The Augsburg Peace of Augsburg was exchanged between the emperor and the princes, independently of the Pope, and factions old and new continued to expand their power. In the middle of the 16th century, the fragile Peace of Augsburg, an agreement signed by Emperor Charles V of Germany and I of Spain and the Lutheran princes in 1555, had confirmed the result of the first Diet of Speyer and had actually increased the hatred between Catholics and Lutherans over time. In said peace it had been established that:
- The German princes (about 360 of them) could choose religion (luteranism or Catholicism) in their lordships according to their conscience. It was the beginning of cuius regio, eius religio.
- Lutherans living in an ecclesiastical State (under the control of a bishop) could continue to be Lutherans.
- Lutherans could retain the territory they had taken to the Catholic Church since Passau Peace (1552).
- The bishops of the Catholic Church who became Lutheran had to give up their diocese.
Although the provisions of the Religious Peace of Augsburg prevented the outbreak of a great religious war for 60 years, there were discussions about its interpretation, and a confrontational attitude of a new generation of rulers contributed to the aggravation of the conflict situation and the deterioration of the political order. Within the Holy Roman Empire, war was avoided by allowing different religions to spread freely. On the other hand, it annoyed those who wanted there to be a single religion that would unify the political society. However, due to the lack of military potential on the part of the opponents, the conflicts were largely non-violent for a long time. One effect of the Augsburg Religious Peace was a development known today as "confessionalization." The sovereigns tried to create religious uniformity and protect the population from different religious influences. The Protestant princes feared a split in the Protestant movement, which would possibly lose the protection of the Augsburg Religious Peace and used their position as emergency bishops to discipline the clergy and the population in terms of their denomination (social discipline). This led to bureaucratization and centralization, and the territorial state was strengthened, initiating the first nationalizations of churches for the benefit of the states. Due to the strengthening of the states, the confrontational policy of the new rulers, the paralysis of the Imperial Court of Appeals as an instance of peaceful resolution of conflicts in the Empire and the strengthening of the Catholic princes by the Council of the Imperial Court, hostile groups of princes were formed. As a result and as a reaction to the battle of the cross and banner in the city of Donauwörth, the Electoral Palatinate withdrew from the Reichstag. Thus, a Reichstag resolution on the Turkish tax did not materialize and the Reichstag, as the most important constitutional body, was inactive.
After the recognition of the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, Catholicism was consolidated in the lands of the Czech Crown (Kingdom of Bohemia) on the basis of the core idea of the Peace of Augsburg, Cuius regio, eius religio (Whose government, that religion). The Jesuit religious order had a great participation in the Catholicization, confirmed in 1540 by the bull Regimini militantis ecclesiae of Pope Paul III. The main function of the order was missionary activity, which was to help Protestants find their way to the Catholic Church. The order was mainly dedicated to education, science, art and culture. He was invited to Bohemia in 1556 by Ferdinand I to help him against the rising tide of the Protestant Reformation. Since the beginning of the religious reform, the Catholic-Protestant conflict continued, the Pope having established the Jesuits in response to the reform, he went on to re-Catholicize much of Europe and by the end of the century XVI, Bavaria, Austria, France, Poland, Spain, Italy, and the Czech Republic were in the Catholic sphere of influence. After Ferdinand's death, he was succeeded by a less religious monarch, Maximilian II Habsburg, who promised the Czech states religious freedom in the form of the Czech Confession. In exchange, he was granted the right of succession to his son Rodolfo. Rudolf II was weak as a monarch and confirmed the extensive religious liberties of the Czech states in his regency. The House of Habsburg soon declared him incompetent and dethroned him. His brother Matthias Habsburg ascended the Czech throne and tried to stabilize power in Bohemia again, but the estates did not renounce their previously established rights and a certain animosity gradually developed between them and the monarch. As a result, he was unpopular in the Hussite-majority Czech Republic, whose rebellion against Ferdinand sparked the Thirty Years' War.
Power relations in Europe
In the period before the Thirty Years War, there were three main areas of conflict: western and northwestern Europe, northern Italy, and the Baltic Sea region. In western and northwestern Europe, as well as northern Italy, dynastic conflicts were fought between the Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs and the French king, as well as the Dutch Netherlands, which were fighting for independence, while Denmark-Norway and Sweden As would-be great powers, they battled for supremacy in the Baltic region, occasionally involving Poland-Lithuania, Russia, and the German Hanseatic League. The conflict between France and Spain, which in turn arose from the dynastic opposition between the Habsburgs and the French kings, was decisive in western and northwestern Europe. Spain was a major European power with possessions in southern Italy, the Po Valley, and the Netherlands. The scattered Spanish bases meant that there could hardly be a war in western and north-western Europe that did not affect Spanish interests.
Of the countries adjacent to the Holy Roman Empire, Spain occupies the Spanish Netherlands on the western border of the empire and is connected via the Spanish Corridor from the countries of Italy to the Netherlands. In the 1560s, the Dutch rebellion was frequent, and in the process of the rebellion, it was divided into 10 states in the southern part of pro-Spain (later Belgium and Luxembourg) and 7 states in the northern part of anti- Spain (later the Netherlands), which was recognized in 1609. It will be an eighty-year war that will continue until the Spanish peace agreement.
From the middle of the 16th century to the middle of the XVII, France was surrounded by the Habsburgs: Roussillon to the south, Genoa and Milan to the southeast, Franche-Comté to the east and the Netherlands to the north, all possessions of Spain and the SIRG. The interest of the French royal family outweighed that of religion, and as a result, Catholic France entered the war on the Protestant side. Henry IV worked to break the encirclement in 1609, followed by the chancellor Richelieu and Cardinal Mazarin. Due to their many violent confrontations, France and Spain rearmed their armies. The French monarchs saw a big problem in being surrounded by the Habsburg states, so it was not surprising that France had gone to war. At first only with a financial contribution and later, when he dealt with internal political problems, also with military support.
In northern Italy, Spain ruled the Duchy of Milan. Besides the economic strength of the area, its strategic value lay mainly in ensuring the supply of Spanish troops to the Netherlands through the Spanish Straits. France sought to weaken Spanish power in the region and cut off Spanish supplies. Both powers tried to win over the local princes with their emissaries. Attention was drawn in particular to the dukes of Savoy, with whose alpine passes and fortresses the supply route could be controlled. Neighboring European-ranked powers were the Papal States and the Republic of Venice, with the Curia in Rome dominated by cardinals friendly to France, Spain and the German Emperor, while Venice's interests lay more on the Mediterranean and Adriatic coast. than in Italy.
The three main players in the wars in the Baltic Sea area were Poland, Sweden and Denmark. Poland and Sweden were temporarily in personal union with Sigismund III, which prevented the spread of Protestantism in Poland, which was therefore allied with the Habsburgs during the Thirty Years' War. In 1599 Sigismund was deposed as Swedish king by a revolt of nobles. As a result, the Lutheran faith was established in Sweden and a long war broke out between Poland and Sweden. The first campaigns of the new Swedish King Charles IX were initially unsuccessful and encouraged the Swedish rival Christian IV of Denmark to attack. Denmark was less populated than Sweden or Poland, but owning Norway and southern Sweden with sole control of Øresund, she recorded high customs revenue. Charles IX Sweden, on the other hand, founded Gothenburg in 1603 hoping to collect part of the Øresund customs revenue. When Christian IV starts the Kalmar War in 1611, Charles IX expected the attack on Gothenburg, instead the Danish army surprisingly marched on Kalmar and took the city. Charles IX died in 1611, and his son Gustav II Adolf had to pay a heavy price for peace with Denmark: Kalmar, northern Norway, and Ösel fell to Denmark, plus war contributions of one million Reichsmarks. In order to pay this sum, Gustavus Adolphus went into debt with the United Netherlands. These war debts weighed heavily on Sweden and weakened her foreign policy position. Denmark, on the other hand, had become a power in the Baltic Sea as a result of the war, and therefore Christian IV considered himself a great general on the one hand and believed that he had enough money for future wars. Sweden and Denmark, who wanted to dominate the German Baltic Sea States, were Lutheran countries and were in conflict over commercial dominance in the North. Sweden seized Denmark's eastern Baltic Sea base. Sweden rose as a great power while Denmark declined, and King Gustav II Adolf of Sweden had a plan to connect the ring of territory around the Baltic Sea, but the challenge of the emperor's army forced him to participate in the German problem. In addition, the "old Gothicism" It was one of the reasons for participating in the war.
At the beginning of the 17th century tensions increased between the nations of Europe. Spain was interested in the German principalities, because Philip III, Charles V's grandson, was a Habsburg and had territories around the western border of the German states (Flanders, Franche-Comté). France was also interested in the German states, because she wanted to regain hegemony at the expense of Habsburg power, as it had been during the Middle Ages. Sweden and Denmark (which controlled the Duchy of Holstein) were interested for economic reasons in the northern Germanic states, on the shores of the Baltic Sea, with the Dominium maris baltici policy, so if the political situation in the empire changed in favor of Catholics, would undoubtedly have an adverse effect on these states.
During the second half of the 16th century, religious tensions had also intensified. The Peace of Augsburg had consequences throughout the second half of the 16th century, as bishops refused to abandon their bishoprics. In fact, the terms of the Augsburg treaty were used for a revival of Catholic power. Tensions and resentments between Catholics and Protestants had only increased since the signing of the treaty, and in many parts of Germany Protestant churches were destroyed and there were limitations and obstacles to Protestant worship. Calvinism, which was spreading throughout Germany, and whose exclusion, together with the Anabaptists, from the congregations specifically protected in the peace of Augsburg, could have contributed to the conflict, did not help to reduce these tensions. required], which added another religion to the dispute as Catholics in central Europe (the Habsburgs of Austria or the kings of Poland) were trying to restore Catholicism to power after the Counter-Reformation.
The Habsburgs were primarily interested in extending their power, so they were sometimes willing to compromise and allow Protestantism. In the long run, this increased tensions. Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, and his brother and successor, Matthias I, did not pursue an aggressive Catholic policy, as they were more interested in increasing Habsburg power and possessions. They were also very tolerant (like their grandfather and father, Ferdinand I and Maximilian II), which allowed different religions to spread freely and clash with each other freely. The Holy Roman Empire was a set of highly independent nations, but the Habsburgs themselves, who held the throne, directly controlled much of the empire (Archduchy of Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary). Austria was a great power ruling 8 million people. The empire also included regional forces such as Bavaria, Saxony, Brandenburg, Palatinate, Hesse, and Württemberg (each with a population of 500,000 to 1 million). There were also a host of other nations (Slavs, Magyars, Burgundians, Italians, etc), including territories, free cities, monasteries, bishops, and petty lords (some of whom had only one town). With the exception of Austria and Bavaria, these nations are incapable of participating in politics at the national level, and clan-based alliances resulting from the divided inheritance of their descendants are common.
Political and economic tensions grew between the most powerful nations of Europe in the early 17th century century, due to the position geopolitics of Germany in the center of Europe.
- Spain (in union with Portugal) and Holland was interested in the German states because they bordered the territory of the Netherlands, which also attracted England (in union with Scotland) as the enemy of Spain.
- France (and its Italian allies like Venice or Saboya) was interested in the German states because they were the weakest neighbor, unlike the strong countries of the Habsburgs, which surrounded France, like Spain and their possessions in Italy and Wallonia.
- Sweden and Denmark were interested in taking control of the Protestant states of northern Germany, bordering the Baltic, which attracted to a certain degree Poland-Lithuania (Catholic power and rival of both Baltic powers in Eastern Europe) to be interested in the German states, as well as Orthodox Russia to a much lesser extent.
- Transylvania and the Ottoman Empire were interested in taking control of the Hungarian and Slavic states in union with the German Habsburgs, in addition to turning people into Protestantism or Islam to the detriment of Catholicism.
- The Papal States were interested in sealing the Counter-Reform in the German states, in alliance with the Emperor and other Catholic monarchies, to avoid the propagation of Protestantism and the humanistic ideologies of modernity that questioned the theocentric political approach of scholasticism and the supremacy of the spiritual power of the Church over the temporal power of the earthly governments, so as to recover its pre-Researchist hegemony.
These tensions first erupted with violence in the Cologne War whereby, in 1582, Gebhard Truchsess von Waldburg, the Elector of Cologne, converted to Calvinism. The principle of ecclesiastical reservation forced him to abdicate instead of forcing the conversion of his subjects (the reservation was only tolerated by Protestant princes because the Declaratio Ferdinandea assured them that cities and estates already reformed in territories spiritual would not be forcibly converted or forced to emigrate), but he declared religious parity with his subjects and in 1583 married Agnes von Mansfeld-Eisleben, seeking to transform the ecclesiastical principality into a secular, dynastic duchy. A faction of the cathedral chapter elected another archbishop, Ernest of Bavaria (younger brother of William V, Duke of Bavaria). Initially, the troops of the Archbishopric of Cologne fought for control of parts of its territory. Many barons and counts held the territory due to feudal obligations to the Electorate, they also defended the territory in areas close to the Flemish Provinces, Westphalia, Liège and the southern Spanish Netherlands. The problems caused by the distribution of land and the dynastic infantry caused the fight for a fief to worsen and various houses to take sides, such as the Electorate of the Palatinate and Flemings, Scots and English mercenaries on the Protestant side; and the Duke of Bavaria, papal mercenaries on the Catholic side. In 1586, the conflict escalated, with the arrival of Spanish troops and Italian mercenaries on the Catholic side and the financing and diplomatic support of Henry III of France and Elizabeth I of England on the Protestant side. The conflict coincided with the Eighty Years' War, motivating the participation of the Flemish rebels and the Spanish in this conflict. The successful end of the war consolidated the Wittelsbachs in northwestern Germany and marked the triumph of the counter-reformation in the Lower Rhine area. It also served as a precedent for foreign intervention in German dynastic and religious affairs that would be repeated in the future., which intensified in the Juliers-Cleveris succession crisis.
In addition, Upper Austria had been unruly for centuries, with 62 known uprisings between 1356 and 1849, 14 of which occurred in the last century XVI and the most famous being the War of the German peasants by the Anabaptists against the Catholics and the rejection of Martin Luther himself. This makes Upper Austria one of the regions where riots and violence occurred most frequently in a class struggle between farmers and their landlords. In addition to the social component, these uprisings also had religious motives since the time of the Reformation, since the peasants no longer only opposed high taxes, forced conscription and compulsory labor (Frondienst) resisted, but also defended free practice of religion and in particular the choice of the pastor by the community. Furthermore, until Josephine's time, churches and monasteries were often masters of the peasants themselves. The economic impact of the death in these revolts of between 100,000 and 130,000 peasants was very serious and made Germany not a major force during the Thirty Years' War. After the suppression of the peasant revolts of 1594-1597, Emperor Rudolf II saw the opportunity to begin the re-Catholicization of the Ob der Enns region. Because according to the religious peace of Augsburg in 1555 concluded after the first conflicts between Protestant and Catholic countries in the Holy Roman Empire, all the people had to belong to the religion of their sovereign (according to the legal principle cuius regio, eius religio ). These efforts met with little success, however, and the Counter-Reformation made little headway even under his successor, Emperor Matthias. The high point of peasant uprisings in the region would be the Upper Austrian Peasants' War of 1625/26 in the midst of the 30 Years' War.
More episodes of violence occurred when in the German city of Donauwörth in 1606, the Lutheran majority blocked the attempts of Catholic residents to hold a procession and thus provoked a violent riot. The city's Catholics requested the intervention of Duke Maximilian I of Bavaria in their support. From 1607 to 1608, Maximilian I of Bavaria converted and annexed the Lutheran imperial city of Donauworth to Catholicism. In 1608, the two factions clashed. After the Imperial Diet of 1608, both Protestant and Catholic princes created formal unions that sought alliances with non-German powers.
Once the violence had stopped, in Germany the Calvinists, whose religion was still in its infancy and constituted a minority, felt threatened and grouped together in the League of the Evangelical Union (also known as the Protestant League), created in 1608, under the leadership of Frederick IV of the Palatinate, the Elector of the Palatinate. This prince had in his power the Palatinate of the Rhineland, one of the States that Spain desired for itself in order to protect the Spanish road. This caused the Catholics to also group together in the Catholic League, under the leadership of Duke Maximilian I, with support from Spain and opposition from Great Britain. Simultaneously, the Netherlands, an enemy of Spain, cooperated with the Protestant Union, and began negotiations with France, an enemy of the Holy Empire. The Protestant Union, in particular, had signed treaties with England in 1612 and with the United Provinces in 1613. Spain, Austria, and the Netherlands repeatedly invaded the United Duchies of Jürich-Klefe-Berg, but the assassination of Henry IV of France (former Protestant and head of the Bourbon Dynasty) prevented it from resulting in a major war. On October 24, 1610, the Protestant Union and the Catholic League were reconciled, excluding other claimants, and under the Treaty of Xanten in 1614, Brandenburg divided Klefe-Berg and Pfalz-Neuburg divided and inherited Eurich-Berg.
In 1617, both branches of the Habsburg dynasty signed a secret agreement, the Treaty of Oñate, which resolved the differences that had accumulated between them. Under its terms, Spain was promised land in Alsace and northern Italy, which would make it possible to finally close France in the ring of Spanish possessions and freely move troops from the Netherlands to Italy. In return, the Spanish King Philip III renounced his claim to the crown of the empire and agreed to support the candidacy of Ferdinand of Styria.
Meanwhile, the aging Emperor Matthias of Habsburg persuaded the Czech states to elect his cousin Ferdinand of Styria (he ruled the lands of the Czech crown as Ferdinand II). This was also helped by Jáchym Ondřej Šlik, who was persuaded and eventually supported Ferdinand's coronation, although he was originally going to give a speech supporting the states' views on the election of kings to the Czech throne. Ferdinand was a supporter of a consistent re-Catholicization policy, which did not reassure the Czech states, however most of the complaints were lodged mainly with the established governor's government. The disputes over the competence of the states and the government culminated on May 23, 1618, when two governors: Vilém Slavata of Chlum and Košumberk, and Jaroslav Bořita of Martinice, together with his secretary Fabricius, were expelled from the windows of the Prague Castle during the defenestration of Prague, who were accused of misrepresenting the Czechs in court in Vienna. The Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia, Matthias of Habsburg, died in 1619, but having testated in favor of his first cousin, Ferdinand III of Styria. Ferdinand, who on becoming King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor had been renamed Ferdinand II, was a Catholic convinced that he had been educated by the Jesuits and wanted to restore Catholicism. Because of this, he was unpopular in Bohemia, which was predominantly Calvinist. Bohemia's rejection of Ferdinand was the trigger for the Thirty Years' War. For Zúñiga and his allies at the Spanish court, these actions threatened the survival of the Habsburg dynasty. Of the seven imperial electors, three were already Protestants. If the Bohemians elected a Protestant as promised, the Catholics would be outnumbered and sooner or later the Holy Roman Empire would fall to the Protestants. Over the protests of Lerma's remaining supporters, Zúñiga convinced the king to abort an attack on Algiers and divert the money to Austria along with 7,000 Spaniards from the Army of Flanders.
The German Habsburgs have as allies the papacy, their cousin Philip III of Spain Maximilian I of Bavaria and his Catholic League whose armies are commanded by the Count of Tilly. The ecclesiastical electors (prince-archbishops of Mainz, Cologne and Trier, temporal leaders as much or more than spiritual ones) are part of the Catholic League (the archbishop of Cologne is even the brother of Maximilian himself). However, the Archbishop of Trèves will later, with his intrigues and his Francophile policy, make France go to war.
The strategy that Spain inherited from its predecessors focused on the alliance with Austria, the control of northern Italy and the war with the Dutch. It would involve Spain on almost every front in the Thirty Years' War and, eventually, in a confrontation with France for total hegemony in Europe.
Bohemian Revolt and Palatine Phase (1618-1625)
Bohemian War
By 1618, the aged and childless Emperor Matthias was near death. His nephew, the devoutly Catholic Ferdinand of Styria (who had been educated by the Ingolstadt Jesuits), was expected to succeed him and had already been appointed king-elect of Bohemia by the Diet of Bohemia, most of whose members were Protestants..
The election of the Catholic Ferdinand II —heir to the imperial throne— as king of Bohemia had put the nobility of that kingdom, with a Protestant majority, in a situation of virtual rebellion. Then, on May 28, a long-simmering dispute over the reversion of church properties led Bohemian Protestants to insurrection.
In addition, since the dignity of King of Bohemia was conferred by election, the Bohemians would choose as their leader Frederick V of the Palatinate (successor of Frederick IV, who had created the League of the Evangelical Union), to whom they offered the crown. When Ferdinand II sent two Catholic advisers (Martinitz and Slavata) and their representatives to Hradcany Castle in Prague in May 1618 to prepare the way for his arrival, Bohemian Calvinists kidnapped them and threw them out of a palace window.. Frederick was a staunch Calvinist and already an elector in his own right. He was also the son-in-law of James I of England and Scotland. If he survived, he would have two votes out of seven in the Electoral College.
The two dignitaries and the scribe who were thrown fell on a pile of dung and suffered no major injuries (unlike the first defenestration, which occurred 200 years earlier and in which seven councilors died). This event, known as the Third Defenestration of Prague, is taken as a reference point for the beginning of the Bohemian rebellion, although the rebellion was already brewing long before. The Bohemian conflict soon spread to the entirety of the Czech Countries (Bohemia, Silesia, Lusatia and Moravia), which were already divided by clashes between Catholics and Protestants, and established a provisional government. This confrontation was to find many echoes throughout the European continent, France and Sweden being affected, inter alia. Given this, Ferdinand II wanted to take power in 1619. He had already imposed re-Catholicization in Styria, Carinthia and Carniola, and now he also tried to apply this policy in Upper Austria. However, the heads of the Ennsian states under the Calvinist Georg Erasmus von Tschernembl refused to follow and allied themselves with the Bohemian insurgents. In the course of the summer, three other Habsburg territories, Lusatia, Silesia and Upper Austria, joined to the Bohemians and began the search for a new king. The Protestant Union pledged its support, and in May 1619 its armies laid siege to Vienna. By then, Fernando had formed an army of his own. The Protestant siege of Vienna collapsed in June, but Moravia and Lower Austria joined the revolt. After Ferdinand was elected the new emperor in Frankfurt on August 28, 1619, he traveled back to Vienna via Bavaria. In Munich he made an alliance (Treaty of Munich) with the Bavarian Duke Maximilian I, who was also a leader of the Catholic League. The Emperor made him Commander-in-Chief of the League army and promised to pawn Upper Austria for the costs involved. Since the Habsburg war chest was empty due to the Turkish wars and the rebellion that broke out in Bohemia, the emperor could only compensate the league in this way. After a Bohemian army under Heinrich Matthias von Thurn was repulsed at the gates of Vienna on November 26, 1619, Ferdinand gave the Duke of Bavaria the order on June 30, 1620 to begin suppressing the uprising in the country on the Enns also.
The emperor, who was engaged in the Uzkok War against Venice, hastened to raise an army to stop the Bohemians and their allies from completely drowning his country. Count de Bucquoy, the commander of the imperial army, defeated the Protestant Union forces led by Count Ernst of Mansfeld at the Battle of Sablat on June 10, 1619. This cut off the Count of Thurn's communications with Prague, which immediately abandoned the siege of Vienna. In July 1620, an Imperial army invaded Upper Austria, while the Saxons marched on Lusatia.
Had the Bohemian Rebellion been confined to a purely Central European affair, the Thirty Years' War could have been concluded in just thirty months. However, the weakness of both Ferdinand II and the Bohemians themselves led to the extension of the war to western Germany. Ferdinand was forced to claim the help of his nephew and son-in-law, King Philip III of Spain, Philip II's son and successor. On the other hand, in May 1619, the Moravian states joined the Czech resistance; this was the merit of General Count Thurn of the Czech state army, who provoked the coup d'état of the Protestant nobility. Ladislav Velen from Žerotín then became governor of Moravia.
The rebels initially celebrated their success. Artillery General Petr Arnošt Mansfeld deserved a great victory when he managed to capture Pilsen. The army did not stop and, under the command of Count Thurn, approached Vienna, which it was about to conquer, but had to withdraw after the defeat of the Protestant troops under the command of Count Mansfeld, who came from the army of retaliation led by Field Marshal, Buquoy, in Záblatí. Following the victory at the Battle of Sablat, the Habsburgs achieved some diplomatic successes. Ferdinand was supported by the Catholic League, and the King of France promised to facilitate Ferdinand's election as emperor, using his influence over one of the undecided electors, the Elector of Trier. On July 24, the Bavarian army led by Johann t'Serclaes von Tilly coming from the Innviertel region of Bavaria, crossed the border at Haag am Hausruck, conquered Aistersheim Castle, which was occupied by peasants, and entered Linz on August 4. Tschernembl (Austrian Calvinist) then fled to Bohemia to join the insurgents. Bohemia, Lusatia, Silesia, and Moravia refused to recognize Ferdinand as their king on August 19. Frederick V was elected king of Bohemia on August 26, and two days later in Frankfurt, where news from Bohemia had not yet reached, Ferdinand was elected emperor.
The Bohemians, desperate to find allies against the emperor, applied to be admitted to the Protestant Union, led by the Calvinist Frederick V of the Palatinate. The Bohemians agreed that the Elector Palatine could become King of Bohemia if he allowed them to join the Union and thus come under his protection. However, other members of the Bohemian States made similar offers to Duke Carlos Manuel I of Savoy, Elector Juan Jorge I of Saxony and the Hungarian Gabriel Bethlen, sovereign of the Principality of Transylvania. The Austrians, who seemed to have intercepted all letters leaving Prague, publicized these duplicities and unraveled much of this support for the Bohemians, particularly at the Saxon court. What was a local rebellion, due to the weakness of Ferdinand II and Frederick V, turned into a war that spread far beyond the borders of Bohemia.
In the fall of 1619, Spanish policy moved decisively toward open warfare. The prospect of a Calvinist-dominated Holy Roman Empire allied with the Dutch was intolerable. Oñate, the Spanish ambassador in Vienna, helped Ferdinand reactivate the empire's Catholic League by offering the Upper Palatinate to Maximilian of Bavaria if Frederick was defeated. James of England, influenced in part by Spanish diplomacy, refused to support his son-in-law, and Spanish agents at the Turkish court convinced the sultan to abandon his support for Bethlen Gabor, the Calvinist ruler of Transylvania who had conquered Hungary. of the Habsburgs in November. By the following spring, Frederick's support in the Protestant Union had waned as the Lutheran princes withdrew their support from him. They began to fear Calvinists more than Catholics.
The rebellion was initially favorable to the Bohemians. Much of Upper Austria, whose nobility was Lutheran and Calvinist, joined them (however, the religious sympathies of this area would change in the following years). The southern part of Austria revolted in 1619. The Count of Thurn led an army to the very walls of Vienna, before being defeated at the battle of Záblatí by Karel Bonaventura Buquoy. In the east, the Protestant Prince of Transylvania, Gabriel Bethlen, led an inspired campaign into the Hungarian interior (where he was joined by much of the nobility), with the blessings of the Turkish sultan Osman II, in August 1619, rebelling against the Hungarian people against the Habsburgs. Ferdinand II had become King of Hungary in 1618 and tried to implement in his Hungarian territories the same measures that he had applied in Bohemia against the Protestants. Feeling aggrieved, the Transylvanian Hungarians declared war against Ferdinand using the religious issue as an excuse, since the Transylvanian princes had for decades aimed to free Hungary from Habsburg control and reunify the kingdom. Thus, Protestants even appealed for Muslim help from the Ottoman Empire on many occasions (as Gabriel Bethlen requested a protectorate from Osman II), who also wanted to see the Holy Roman Empire brought to its knees.
With this, the Ottoman Empire, by way of Transylvania, became the only official ally, with great power status, for Bohemia, after they had shaken off Habsburg rule and had elected Frederick V as king Protestant, Heinrich Bitter visited Istanbul in January 1620 and Mehmet Aga visited Prague in July 1620. The Ottoman cavalry gave Frederick V some 60,000 cavalry, and with an army of 400,000 he planned to invade Poland (allied with the Catholics), all in exchange for an annual tribute to the sultan. This negotiation sparked the Polish-Ottoman War, which broke out between 1620 and 1621. In 1620, the Moldavian Magnates' War was drawing to a close, and the Archduke of Moldavia, Kaspar Graziani, attempted to break from Ottoman rule and allied with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, believing it was better to be ruled by Poland than by the Turks, this move led the Ottomans to send troops to Moldavia, and King Sigismund III of Poland also and He sent support troops, which eventually led to the Polish-Ottoman War. The Ottoman Empire invaded the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which supported the Habsburgs during the 30 Years' War, from September to October 1620. Defeated the Poles at the Battle of Chechora in October, which also killed the famous Polish commander Stanislav Zolkiewski. During the winter, hostilities stopped, but continued into 1621. However, the Ottoman Empire was unable to intervene when the Bohemians were defeated in November 1620. In 1621, the Polish army reorganized and defeated the Ottoman Empire. at the Battle of Chocim, resetting the war between the two countries away from Germany and ending in a status quo. After that, the Habsburg ambassadors persuaded the Ottomans to avoid direct involvement, aided by the outbreak of hostilities with Poland in 1620, followed by the 1623-1639 war with Persia.
The King of France Louis XIII wants to help the Emperor. Despite the rivalry of the two families, they have in common the monarchical ideal, the desire to consolidate Catholicism against the Protestants and the Turks, always threatening in the east. France offers to mediate. France believed that Frederick would not be able to hold Bohemia, and feared that the war-exhausted Evangelical Union would be unable to resist Spanish troops on the French border if war was used by the Emperor or King of Spain. in Bohemia as an excuse to seize Frederick's property: the Rhine Palatinate. In this regard, he actively contributed to the conclusion of a non-aggression pact. Finally, on July 3, 1620, representatives of the Evangelical Union and the Catholic League signed the Treaty of Ulm for a truce between Catholics and Lutherans.
The defeat of the Bohemian Protestants at Sablat also cost the Protestants an important ally, Savoy, which had long been an opponent of Habsburg expansion and had already sent considerable sums of money and irregular troops to the garrisons of the Rhineland fortresses. The capture of the Mansfeld field chancery exposed the Sardinian plot and forced the embarrassed duke to abandon the war in exchange for the cession of Lusatia. Although they would intervene again after the French and Swedes went to war. Furthermore, the Elector of Saxony sided with the Habsburgs; his father-in-law James I, King of England, denied him military aid; the same Evangelical Union founded by Frederick's father refused with the Treaty of Ulm to support the King of Bohemia. The little aid came from the United Provinces, which sent small contingents and promised modest financial aid, and from the Prince of Transylvania with Ottoman support. Frederick V's cause, however, was seen as analogous to Elizabeth Stuart's, and this guaranteed him an influx of tens of thousands of volunteers for him.
Despite Sablat's defeat, Count Thurn's army continued to exist as an effective force, and Mansfeld managed to reform his army further north in Bohemia. The states of North and South Austria, still in rebellion, entered into an alliance with the Bohemians at the beginning of August, and on the 22nd Ferdinand was officially deposed as King of Bohemia and replaced by the Elector Palatine Frederick V. In Hungary, even though After the Bohemians had refused the offer of their crown, the Transylvanians continued to make astonishing progress, forcing the emperor's armies to withdraw from that country in 1620.
The Spanish sent an army from Brussels under the orders of Ambrosio Spinola to support the emperor, and the Spanish ambassador in Vienna, don Íñigo Oñate, convinced Protestant Saxony to intervene against Bohemia in exchange for offering them control over Lusatia. The Saxons invaded, and the Spanish army in the west prevented the Protestant Union forces from providing relief. Oñate conspired to transfer the electoral title of the Palatinate to the Duke of Bavaria in exchange for his support of the Catholic League.
King Sigismund III of Poland sends Catholic troops to help. Lisowczyk - Cossack-type soldiers who plundered everything they could think of when they invaded Moravia. Only the town of Holešov was saved thanks to the intervention of the priest Jan Sarkander, who, according to some "invitations" of those in charge of the press participated. The Czech army withdrew to Prague.
At this time, the Valtellian War (1620-1639) broke out in the Swiss Grisons, which runs from Milan to the Alps and Tyrol, the shortest path connecting Austria and Spanish Italy, reason why the Habsburgs wanted to control it. The Catholics of Valtellina, under the leadership of the knight Giacomo Robustelli, raised an uprising on May 19 (the Veltlin massacre), with the aim of clearing the mountain valley of Protestants. Thanks to the success of the rebels, Spanish Catholic troops gained access to the Valtellina, and with it the ability to freely transport troops and materiel from northern Italy to Austria. France and Venice opposed the Habsburgs, and Spain occupied Valtellina in 1620, when a factional dispute arose around Georg Jenatch. It was then occupied by France in 1624.
After the conquest of Bohemia, the war spread to much wider territories, as all the German principalities and almost all the neighboring countries joined (or were drawn): Spain-Portugal, France, Switzerland, Savoy, the Netherlands, England-Scotland, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Denmark-Norway, Sweden, Transylvania, Moldavia, Wallachia, the Ottoman Empire, and even the Russian Tsarate, mindful of their own interests, entered the war at different times and with different degrees of commitment.
Several mercenary units, paid by the warring parties, participated in the large-scale hostilities. They included, among others, the Polish horse troops of Lisowczyk, who fought in the years 1619-1620 on the territory of Hungary, and then on the lands of the Empire (Czech Republic) and in the countries of the Reich (Rhineland). Under the command of Walenty Rogowski, they defeated the Translivan forces led by George I Rákóczi at the Battle of Zavada and at the Battle of Humienne in November of that year, forcing Gábor Bethlen on 4 December to withdraw from the siege of Vienna. and return to the country in danger. The Battle of Humenné was an important part of the war as Polish intervention saved Vienna, the capital of the Holy Roman Empire, from the siege of Ottoman-supported Transylvania. That is why some Polish sources call it the first relief from Vienna, the second being the famous Battle of Vienna in 1683. After the victory, they took up their traditional pastime, plundering the nearby lands, killing even children and dogs, as contemporary chronicles recall. It was then that they earned their new nickname: Horsemen of the Apocalypse. At that moment Lisowczycy was divided: one part, with Rogowski, decided to return to Poland, plundering the Hungarian highlands (Magyar Felvidék, since 1920 it has been called Slovakia) on its way. Others, under the command of Jarosz Kleczkowski, remained in the emperor's service for a few more years. After Kleczkowski's death (March 4, 1620) in the Battle of Krems, Stanisław Rusinowski became the new commander of the Lisowczycy. Under Rusinowski, the Lisowczycy took part in the battle of the White Mountain (8 November) in which twenty banners were captured. On May 7, 1621, the Emperor paid them their salaries and released them from service, due to numerous complaints about their behavior. Some of the Lisowczykss returned to Poland, others went to serve Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria.
Under the command of General Tilly, the army of the Catholic League, which included René Descartes in its ranks, pacified Upper Austria, while the Emperor's forces pacified southern Austria. Once the two armies were united, they moved north into Bohemia. Despite the relatively good position of the States Army compared to the invasion of the Imperial Army in one of the first engagements. Ferdinand II decisively defeated Frederick V at the battle of the White Mountain (Czech: Bílá Hora) near Prague in 1620, the Protestant States Forces were defeated after one or two hours of fighting. When this news reached the hands of Frederick V, who was currently in Prague, he fled from the Czech Kingdom to Silesia without any effort to defend the city, and later, when he learned that Thurn wanted to surrender to the emperor, he left the crown lands. Czech definitively in December 1620, this first rebellion, which was supported mainly by the nobility and the bourgeoisie, was put down by the majority Protestant classes. The Bohemian rebels, subdued by Spain and the old religious federation, were executed, and Bohemia subsequently undertook a Catholic policy. Bohemia would remain in Habsburg hands for almost 300 years. The new land ordinance of 1627 made Bohemia dependent on the Habsburgs. This defeat led to the dissolution of the League of the Evangelical Union and the confiscation of Frederick V's possessions. The Rhenish Palatinate was given to Catholic nobles, while the title of Elector Palatine was given to his distant cousin, Duke Maximilian I. Frederick V, though already landless, became a prominent exile abroad, winning sympathy and support for his cause in the United Provinces, Denmark, and Sweden. As a result, many bohemian aristocrats and Protestants went into exile throughout Europe.
This was a serious blow to Protestant ambitions in the region. The rebellion literally collapsed, and extensive asset confiscations and suppressions of pre-existing Bohemian noble titles ensured that the country would return to the Catholic faith after more than two centuries of religious dissent, beginning with the Hussite War. On March 6, 1621, the emperor announced the promise of Bavaria to the Linz provincial estates and introduced Adam von Herberstorff as the new governor. In the four years that followed, he was able to pacify the country and even gain some confidence among the population, although the ongoing War placed a heavy burden on them.
The first phase of the war ended completely when Gabriel Bethlen of Transylvania signed a peace treaty with the emperor in December 1621, gaining some territory in eastern Hungary. In Czech exile, in Germany, Jan Jiří Krnovský, Jiří Fridrich Bádensko-Durlašský and Kristián Brunšvický defended the interests of Frederick.
The Spanish, trying to outflank the Dutch, in preparation for the impending war brought about by the end of the truce after the Eighty Years' War, seized Frederick's lands, the Rhineland Palatinate. In the summer of 1620, the Spanish general Ambrosio Spinola, coming from Flanders, conquered the Palatinate on the left bank of the Rhine after the Capture of Oppenheim, Spinola advanced towards Jülich and conquered it, but withdrew back to Flanders in the spring of 1621. A 11,000-strong garrison remained in the Palatinate. The city of Oppenheim would be in Spanish power until its capture by Swedish troops in June 1631.
The remaining commanders of the Protestant army, Christian von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, and Ernst von Mansfeld as well as Margrave Georg Friedrich von Baden-Durlach, moved into the Palatinate from different directions in the spring of 1622. The Dutch Republic provided asylum and financial assistance to Frederick V, whose truce with the Spanish expired on April 9, 1621. Shortly thereafter an agreement was drawn up on April 12, 1621, under which the Protestant Union was dissolved. In the fall of the same year, Mansfeld headed for the Rhine from Bohemia. The Protestants received small reinforcements in the person of the Duke of Brunswick Christian with an army of 10,000 and the Margrave Georg Friedrich of Baden-Durlach who raised an army of 11,000. Thus, in the spring of 1622, three armies were ready to fight against the emperor: Mansfeld in Alsace, Christian of Braunschweig in Westphalia and Georg Friedrich in Baden. On April 22, Frederick secretly moved from The Hague to the location of Mansfeld's troops, forcing him to urgently break off negotiations with the enemy about the cost of his departure from Frederick.
Palatinate War
Some historians regard the period between 1621-1625 as a separate phase of the Thirty Years' War, calling it the Palatinate Phase. The catastrophic defeat of the Protestant army on the White Mountain and the departure of Gabriel Bethlen meant the pacification of eastern Germany. The war in the west, concentrated on the occupation of the Palatinate, consisted of much smaller battles than those that saw the Bohemian and Hungarian campaigns and much greater use of siege. On April 27, 1622, Mansfeld defeated Tilly at the Battle of Mingolsheim, preventing him from joining the army of the Spanish general Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, which came from the Netherlands. In the months that followed, however, they suffered heavy defeats because, although they outnumbered the Imperial loyalists, they failed to unite. Baden's troops were defeated at the Battle of Wimpfen (May 6, 1622). While Mansfeld awaited the approach of the Margrave of Baden's troops, Tilly and Córdoba joined forces and on May 6, 1622, while trying to force the Neckar at Wimpfen, defeated Georg Friedrich. After this Mansfeld and Tilly moved north towards the Main; one is trying to link up with the army of Christian of Brunswic (known as the "mad Halberstadter"), the other is trying to prevent him. Crossing the Main at Hoechst. The Protestants, fighting against the combined troops of Tilly and Córdoba, lost some 2,000 people, 3 cannons and almost the entire train, but retained the cavalry and the treasures looted on the way to the Battle of Höchst, which were supposedly going to pay off the army. Mansfeld mercenary. The behavior of the mercenaries, who devastated the once rich provinces, plundered and burned everything in their path, regardless of whether it belonged to Catholics or Protestants, quarreled Frederick with Mansfeld. Christian von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel then entered the Dutch service with Ernst von Mansfeld, where the two armies went.
The latter also went into Dutch service, joining Christian and moving to the aid of the Netherlands, meeting a Spanish army on the march, where Spinola besieged the key fortress of Bergen op Zom in the summer of 1622. The Count-Duke of Olivares rebuilt the Spanish fleet, which had been sadly neglected under Philip III, and established a squadron of 70 ships at Dunkirk to disrupt the English Channel trade. He then worked with Imperial forces to secure a Spanish base on the Baltic Sea and put the Army of Flanders to secure the inland sea lanes between the Netherlands and Germany, all without sacrificing Spanish armies in Italy. On 29 August, near Fleurus, were defeated in the Battle of Fleurus, where the Spanish under the command of Gonzalo de Córdoba intercepted them and destroyed the Protestant army, which fled and managed to reach Breda with only 3,500 knights of the 14,000 soldiers that started the battle. Christian lost an arm in the battle, and Francisco de Ibarra's Spanish Tercio, who died in combat, of the initial 1,000 Spaniards, only 600 remained when they were completely surrounded by the enemy. Saved in extremis by a great maneuver by Gonzalo, the Tercio defended putting cars with their own belongings and money to block the breach generated in the Protestant attack, their possessions being looted by the Protestants, more concerned with taking the loot than with the combat itself. On the Catholic side, 1,200 of the 6,000 who participated in the battle died, among them a large number of renowned captains and generals, old and experienced soldiers of the Spanish Tercios. In this way, in just 2 months Córdoba had defeated the Protestants in 3 different battles, condemning the future of the Palatine, Mansfeld and Christian. Since the summer of 1622, the Palatinate on the right bank of the Rhine was occupied by troops of the catholic league Soon after, Tilly and Córdoba went on to capture the Palatinate. Its capitals, Mannheim and Heidelberg, fell on September 19 and November 5, 1622, respectively, and Frankenthal in 1623 to Spanish hands and defended by a small English garrison. With this, the Palatinate fell into the hands of the emperor. The only country that Ferdinand could not suppress was Transylvania: in the peace of Nikolsburg, Bethlen reaffirmed the privileges of the Transylvanian orders and also prevented the counter-reformation. The acquisition of the electoral Palatinate from the Dukes of Bavaria was contrary to the Golden Bull, which provoked the wrath of the princes. After the invasion of the Palatinate, Tilly attacked Bishop Halberstadt, expanding the front into northern Germany.
On January 10, 1623, a congress of imperial delegates opened in Regensburg, at which Ferdinand announced the transfer of the Elector of the Palatinate from Frederick to Maximilian I of Bavaria on February 23, 1623. This decision, contrary to The German constitution and the oath taken by Ferdinand at the coronation and that it did not allow the distribution of German lands without the consent of the Reichstag was received negatively by almost all the imperial princes, except the Elector of Cologne, Maximilian's brother. The Protestant electors of Saxony and Brandenburg also feared further Catholic pressure. Elector of Brandenburg, to whom the Polish king ceded Prussian domain as a fief, felt obliged to the Habsburgs. Spain, fearing the strengthening of Bavaria, proposed an option that provided for Frederick's abdication in favor of his son, who would have to grow up in Vienna and then marry one of the emperor's daughters. This decision was supported by the English king and pope, who feared a further strengthening of the Habsburgs. As a result, on February 23, 1623, Frederick was deposed and on February 25 all his titles were transferred to Maximilian.
Christian Braunschweig's army at this time invaded the Lower Saxony region and Mansfeld's troops fortified themselves in Münster. The rest of the Protestant army, led by Mansfeld, made an attempt to reach the Dutch border. Tilly outflanked him at Stadtlohn on 6 August 1623, and only a third of Mansfeld's 21,000-man army managed to escape the battle. Without supplies, manpower, or funding, Mansfeld's army dispersed in 1624, his decimated troops no longer a serious opponent for the imperialists. Out of hatred for Spain, Maximilian forbade Tilly from pursuing the defeated army that was retreating to the United Provinces, so as not to weaken this eternal enemy of Spain. Three weeks after Stadtlon, Frederick, through the mediation of the King of England, signed an armistice with the emperor. On August 27, 1623, Georg Friedrich also concluded a peace treaty with Ferdinand. It should be noted that this fact was practically decisive for the course of the war. Following this catastrophe, Frederick V, already in exile in The Hague and under increasing pressure from his mother-in-law, James I of England, to end his involvement in the war, was forced to abandon any hope of undertaking new campaigns. The Protestant rebellion had been crushed. France views with regret the imbalance established in favor of the Habsburg party.
This transfer of a Protestant electoral dignity to a Catholic duke and the territorial expansion of Bavaria marked a far-reaching shift in the power structure of the empire in favor of the Catholics, thus laying the foundations for the escalation of the conflict. Immediately after the inauguration of Maximilian I in Regensburg, the Infanta of Spain, Isabel Clara Eugenia, in Brussels passed sentence on Philip IV of Spain, whose envoys had tried in vain to postpone Maximilian's appointment as elector for fear of the consequences. of this act whereby '[t]he emperor [...] became involved in new and dangerous battles'. His assessment would turn out to be correct.
However, in 1624, Emperor Ferdinand II saw the situation so stable that he sent a counter-reformation commission to the country of Upper Austria. Starting in October of this year, all non-Catholic preachers had to leave and schoolteachers left the country. In May 1625, the Protestant priest of the parish of Frankenburg am Hausruck was replaced by a Catholic priest sent from Bavaria.. However, since the pastoral positions that became vacant as a result could not be filled by local pastors, Italian priests were brought in from the Italian part of Tyrol. However, most of them did not speak German and could not celebrate mass in the national language, as the population was used to before. This led to the first riots in January 1625. In Natternbach, Dean Blasius de Livo and the Italian priest he appointed were stoned and driven away by a few hundred farmers. This initially had no consequences. But when something similar happened in Frankenburg am Hausruck in May 1625 Herberstorff wanted to set an example. There, too, the Protestant pastor had previously been expelled, sparking an uprising by farmers and citizens. Frankenburg Castle was besieged and the new shepherd was driven away. But after three days, the rebels gave in to the Bavarian governor's offer of clemency: the infamous Frankenburg dice game ensued, in which Adam von Herberstorff, the Bavarian steward of Upper Austria, called all the men of the region to Haushamerfeld, near Frankenburg, for hearings. The 36 men who had led the revolt were among the 5,000 assembled. The court sentenced the men to death but released half of them. Two men would step forward, and one would hang up while the other would walk away. A roll of the dice determined his fate in which 17 alleged ringleaders were hanged. The Bavarian governor thought that he had dissuaded the population from further anti-Catholic uprisings.
Thus, the first period of the war ended with a resounding victory for the Habsburgs. The uprising of the Protestants of the Czech Republic was drowned, Bavaria received the Upper Palatinate, and Spain captured the Kurpfalz securing a foothold for another war with the Netherlands. This served as the impetus for a closer cohesion of the anti-Habsburg coalition. Well, without territory or title, Federico began to travel and persuade Protestant countries to fight for his cause, first Holland, which fought against the Spanish in the Eighty Years' War, then Denmark and Sweden. This ended part of the war, which took place only within the Holy Empire with the help of Spain. However, the regional conflict spread very quickly.
Danish and Dutch intervention (1625-1629)
The Danish period began when King Christian IV of Denmark-Norway (1577-1648), a staunch Lutheran (who also ruled as Duke of Holstein, a duchy within the SIRG), feared that sovereignty as a Protestant nation would be threatened, mainly because he had family ties as the Duke of Holstein, so he helped the Germans from neighboring principalities, from what is now Lower Saxony, by leading an army against the Holy Empire. Christian IV had profited greatly from his policies in northern Germany (Hamburg had been forced to accept the Danish protectorate in 1621, and in 1623 Denmark's heir was appointed Bishop of Bremen-Verden). Cristián IV had performed really well as an administrator and had achieved for his kingdom a level of stability and wealth that had not been equaled anywhere in Europe. He had also benefited from the financial contributions of the customs in the Skagerrak and the extensive war reparations paid by Sweden. The only country in Europe with a comparably strong financial position was, ironically, Bavaria. The Danish sovereign had the Dutch military support of the United Provinces, who were facing the invasion of their territories by Catholic forces, he also had political support from France, headed by Cardinal Richelieu, in the name of the raison d'État, began to support Protestant efforts and oppose Catholic Habsburg hegemony. Even Charles I of England (who had Frederick V of the Palatinate as his brother-in-law, having married Elizabeth Stuart) agreed to defend the Protestant cause, sending English and Scottish contingents to defend Denmark. It was also helped by the fact that the French regent, Cardinal Richelieu, wanted to encourage and finance a Danish incursion into Germany.
Furthermore, encouraged by Richelieu, over the next few months England, Sweden, Denmark-Norway, Savoy, the Republic of Venice and some German states agreed in The Hague on an Alliance against the Habsburgs, in order to carry out coordinated action against Spain in the midst of the Eighty Years' War in aid of the United Provinces of the Netherlands. This was the beginning of France's diplomatic war against the Holy Roman Empire in the Thirty Years' War, with France as the initiator of the siege against the Habsburgs. The Anti-Habsburg Protestant Union also resonated with the interests of Gabriel Bethlen's Transylvania, Ottoman Turkey and its alliance with Catholic France through the Braunschweig Christians who conquered Westphalia and the Wittelsbaha territory in Lower Saxony. Christian's main motivation for entering the war was to win Verden, Osnabrück and Halberstadt for his son. The King of Denmark planned to seize Lower Saxony and join Supreme Allied Commander Mansfeld with Bethlen of Hungary to invade Bohemia, Schlesien and Moravia.
However, this Richeleu alliance was not stable, for example Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria the leader of the Catholic League, resented the Habsburgs and sought a rapprochement with France, but as France formed an alliance with Protestant countries, was in danger of jeopardizing his position as a voter. As a result, Maximilian I reverted to Emperor Ferdinand II, and France's plan to separate the Bavarian Catholic from the emperor failed. Richelieu also planned a joint intervention by England, Sweden and Denmark against Spain, but the intervention resulted in a leadership battle between Sweden and Denmark over their own Baltic rivalry. Christian IV promised that he alone would need 30,000 soldiers, most of whom would be paid for by the Lower Saxon imperial circle, of which Christian, as Duke of Holstein, was a voting member. He prevailed against the Swedish king Gustav II who demanded 50,000 soldiers. England demanded that Sweden entrust all power of joint participation to King Christian IV of Denmark, which was refused by King Gustav II of Sweden. As a result of these leadership struggles, Sweden resumed its longstanding war with Poland and remained indifferent in the affairs of the Netherlands and the German Reich. Despite everything, Richelieu's purpose was to contain the Habsburgs and the Catholic League by forming an alliance, but, as a result, he failed at this stage.
Even so, in 1625 England declared war on Spain while Venice and Savoy agreed to attack the Spanish Highway, a land route connecting Spanish areas in Italy with Flanders, France tried to block the Habsburg support route in the Iberian peninsula. At first, the Danes tried to intervene together with Sweden, but the two sides fought for leadership, resulting in Sweden focusing on the Polish front and Denmark intervening alone on the German front. Christian immediately raised a 14,000-strong army and tried in the Lüneburg district council in March 1625 to persuade the district estates to finance another 14,000 mercenaries and to elect him district colonel. However, the estates did not want war and therefore made it a condition that the new army would only serve to defend the district and was therefore not allowed to leave the district area. The Danish king did not comply with the regulations and occupied cities such as Verden and Nienburg that belonged to the lower Rhine-Westphalia imperial circle. Thus, Denmark intervened alone in the Holy Roman Empire, and Christian invaded at the front with an army of 20,000 mercenaries, paid almost entirely out of his personal fortune. In response to Denmark's involvement in the war, Britain provided the military expenses, sending a contingent of 13,700 Scots, under the command of General Robert Maxwell, 1st Earl of Nithsdale and about 6,000 English soldiers, led by Charles Morgan, for the defense of Denmark, also sent two mercenary commanders, Mansfeld and Braunschweig, as reinforcements. However, there was a battle for leadership between the Danish army and the mercenary forces, and they eventually took another action. This was a good barrage for the defeat of each of the forces. The Denmark-Norway cause was aided by France, which, along with Charles I of England, had agreed to help subsidize the war, especially since Christian was a blood uncle to both King Stuart and his sister Elizabeth of Bohemia, through from his mother Anne of Denmark. In 1626, the Transylvanian prince Gábor Bethlen also joined this association, and another eastern siege of Ferdinand's empire began.
However, this network of alliances made by Richelieu was threatened in 1625 by another Huguenot revolt, centered on La Rochelle then the second or third largest city in France, with more than 30,000 inhabitants, and one of its largest ports. important. The Huguenots responded to the growing religious persecution by arming themselves, forming independent political and military structures, establishing diplomatic contacts with foreign powers, and eventually openly rebelling against the central power. Richelieu then activated the mutual defense provisions of both treaties; England was asked for seven warships, while the twenty Dutch ships assigned for the attack on Genoa were now to be used against La Rochelle. Despite popular opposition to attacking their fellow Protestants, the Dutch states felt they had no choice, as they could not afford to lose France as an ally. A combined French, English, and Dutch force defeated a Huguenot squadron at Pertuis Breton in September 1625; the remnants led by Soubise took refuge in Falmouth, calling into question England's commitment to the French alliance. The Treaty of Paris was signed between the city of La Rochelle and Louis XIII on February 5, 1626, preserving religious freedom but imposing some guarantees against possible future disturbances with the destruction of one of its forts and the prohibition of maintaining a military fleet.. The Huguenot revolt became an international conflict with England's participation in the Anglo-French War (1627-1629). The House of Stuart in England had been involved in attempts to secure peace in Europe (through the Spanish Party), and had intervened in the war against Spain and France. However, the defeat of the French (which indirectly led to the assassination of the English leader the Duke of Buckingham), the lack of funds for the war and the internal conflict between Charles I and his Parliament led to a reorientation of English participation in the European affairs, much to the dismay of Protestant forces on the continent. This involved a continued reliance on the Anglo-Dutch Brigade as the main agency of English military involvement against the Habsburgs, although the regiments also fought for Sweden thereafter. France remained the largest Catholic kingdom not aligned with the powers of the Habsburgs, and would later actively wage war against Spain. The French Crown's response to the Huguenot rebellion was not so much a representation of the religious polarization typical of the Thirty Years' War, but rather an attempt to achieve national hegemony by an absolutist monarchy.
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When the twelve-year armistice between the Netherlands and Spain expired in 1621, the Eighty Years' War began anew. Spain had used the peacetime to strengthen her military power so that she could threaten the Netherlands with an army of 60,000 men. In 1625, the best year for Spanish arms in decades, Ambrogio Spinola, the brilliant Genoese commander of the Army of Flanders, seized the strategically important Dutch fortress with the surrender of Breda. Genoa was rescued from a joint attack by France and Savoy. In England, Charles I succeeded his father, James, and launched a farcical attack on Cádiz in retaliation for his failure to arrange a marriage with Philip IV's sister, Maria, but fortunately for Spain, England's military capabilities had degenerated since the days of Isabella I. For a time it seemed that Spain was about to revive its former glories. However, the wars caused a growing indebtedness due to lack of new financial resources, until reaching the bankruptcy of 1627, the new financial restrictions of the Spanish crown hampered the subsequent operations of the Flemish army, which prevented the total conquest of the Dutch Republic...
Meanwhile, Upper Austrian Bavarian steward Adam von Herberstorff had thought the harsh sentence of Frankenburg's infamous dice game would scare off the peasants, but it only served to increase dissent and give sympathy to the rebels. Over the next year, the peasants secretly prepared for war by recruiting one man from each farmer's house, supplying them with weapons, and teaching them tactics. They had intended to attack on Pentecost, but the war had broken out two weeks earlier, when Bavarian soldiers tried to steal a horse at Lembach im Mühlkreis. In response, several pilgrim peasants near Lembach quickly assembled to massacre the 25-man Bavarian garrison. The group continued to gather more recruits on their way to Peuerbach, where they confronted Herberstorff and his men. Even before the full size of the peasant army was assembled at Peuerbach, several companies attacked them and were quickly defeated. The new commissioners for the region were summarily chosen on the battlefield. The 5,000-strong peasant army went on to besiege Eferding Wels Kremsmünster and Steyr, eventually reaching Linz, which did not surrender despite being defended by only 150 Bavarian soldiers. During the siege of Linz, the rebel leader Stefan Fadinger was shot. He died on July 5, two weeks after the fatal shooting. Bavaria took months to send troops, under Gottfried von Pappenheim, with the order to relieve the city at the end of August. Steyr rallied on September 26, and Wels on September 27. The Peasants' War in Upper Austria continued until the beginning of the winter of 1626, leaving the countryside destroyed. Farmers were now required to feed the 12,000 Bavarian soldiers wintering in the country. Most of the leaders of the revolt were beheaded in the following months. In contrast to the peasant uprisings of 1525 and the second Upper Austrian peasant uprising between 1595 and 1597 which were driven mainly by Social Revolutionary motives, the uprising was mainly directed against the Counter-Reformation and the Bavarian occupation. The social base of the uprising went far beyond the peasantry and, in addition to the rural lower classes, also included peasants and artisans up to the urban intelligentsia and, at times, even the lower nobility. Its failure contributed to re-Catholicization The Peasants' War of 1626 would prove to be the costliest in terms of human lives and damage to livestock and property. The war caused Martin Aichinger (protestant preacher and mystic) to lose his farm and begin to wander the country. He eventually became a religious leader who led a popular revolt against aristocratic rule years later.
In this threatening situation, the Czech aristocrat Albrecht von Wallenstein offered the Emperor to create an army of his own. In May and June 1625 the Imperial Councils deliberated on the offer. To confront this force of Anti-Habsburg alliances, in the absence of loyalties in revolting Austria itself, Ferdinand II used the military aid of Albrecht von Wallenstein, a Bohemian nobleman. Wallenstein promised Ferdinand II an army of between 30,000 and 100,000 soldiers in exchange for the right to plunder the captured territories. Cristian, who was unaware of Wallenstein's existence when he carried out the invasion, was forced to retreat before his army was annihilated by Wallenstein's and Tilly's army. Cristián's luck took a turn for the worse when all the allies he thought he had were forced to abandon him. Both England and France were going through civil wars. Sweden was at war with Poland-Lithuania, and neither Brandenburg nor Saxony seemed intent on doing anything to upset the tenuous peace in eastern Germany. Defeats on the battlefield soon added to the lack of Allied aid: on April 25, 1626, Ernst von Mansfeld's army, coming from the United Provinces in support of the Danes, was defeated by Wallenstein's forces. at the Battle of Dessau Bridge (1626) and the Belgian general Tilly defeated the Danes at the Battle of Lutter (1626). Wallenstein then invaded Hungary in pursuit of Mansfeld's unarmed army, where Gábor Bethlen engaged the imperial army with his Hungarian and Romanian armies, but failed to force the Transylvanian prince into a decisive battle. With his campaign, Bethlen got what he wanted: he made new concessions for Transylvania. Mansfeld, who had hoped to achieve his goal with the help of Gábor Bethlen before he made peace with the Habsburgs, died a few months later of an illness, apparently tuberculosis, in Dalmatia, exhausted by the battle that had cost him half his life. army. Part of the failure is contributed by the fact that none of the substantial British contingents will arrive in time (due to the continuing British campaigns against France and Spain) to prevent Wallenstein from defeating Mansfeld's army at the Battle of Dessau or Tilly's victory at the Battle of Lutter. While Christian IV himself was forced to retreat to Jutland, threatening Danish lands with invasion.
Wallenstein's army then marched north, occupying Mecklenburg, Pomerania, and finally Jutland itself. However he was unable to take the Danish capital on the island of Seeland without a fleet, and neither the Hanseatic nor the Polish ports allowed an imperial fleet to be built in the Baltic. He then chose to besiege Stralsund, the only belligerent Baltic port with facilities to build a fleet that could take the Danish islands. However, the cost of sustaining Wallenstein's operations was exorbitant and would far outweigh any gain to be gained by the rest of Denmark and Norway, particularly when compared to what might have been gained in the war with Denmark and the fear of losing his conquests in northern Germany in the face of a Danish-Swedish alliance: the imperial commander therefore tried to negotiate with the besieged, to whom he proposed very favorable conditions for surrender, conditions that were however rejected by the authorities of the city, now in the service of the Swedes. The news of a new intervention by Christian IV who, having landed in Pomerania, was advancing into the German interior, prompted Wallenstein to lift the siege of Stralsund; near Wolgast, the imperial forces easily defeated the Danish (August 12, 1628). Neither side now saw any advantage in continuing the conflict. In another military setback, Spain's hope of a Baltic base died when the Imperial General Wallenstein failed to take Stralsund.
This is why the Treaty of Lübeck (1629) was finally reached, whereby Christian IV renounced his support for the German Protestants in order to maintain his control over Denmark-Norway (including the duchies of Sleswick and Holstein). In the same year, Gabriel Bethlen, the Calvinist prince of Transylvania, died. Only the port of Stralsund continued to hold out against Wallenstein and the Emperor, having been reinforced by "volunteers" Scots who arrived from the Swedish army to support their compatriots who were already there in the service of Denmark-Norway. These men were led by Colonel Alexander Leslie, who became governor of the city.
Over the next two years, with this favorable outlook, more land was subjugated to Catholic powers. The Thirty Years' War could have ended the Danish period, but the Catholic League persuaded Ferdinand II to try to recover Lutheran possessions which, in application of the Peace of Augsburg agreements, belonged by law to the Catholic churches. These possessions were described in the Edict of Restitution of 1629, and included two archbishoprics, sixteen bishoprics, and hundreds of monasteries. The edict also marks the height of imperial power in Germany and the turning point of the war, for it fueled the already broken resistance of the Protestants and brought them allies that the emperor and the league ultimately could not.
The outlook for the Protestants was bleak, their cause in the empire seemed lost. Like Frederick of the Palatinate in 1623, the Dukes of Mecklenburg, allies of Denmark, were now declared deposed. The nobles and peasants preferred to leave their lands in Bohemia and Austria rather than convert to Catholicism. Mansfeld and Gabriel Bethlen, the first officers of the Protestant cause, died in the same year. A peace treaty was also signed by England with France in 1629 (Treaty of Susa) and with Spain in 1630 (Treaty of Madrid): England's withdrawal from European affairs dismayed Protestant forces on the continent. Only the port of Stralsund, abandoned by all his allies, stood against Wallenstein and the emperor. Leslie held Stralsund until 1630, using the port as a base to capture surrounding towns and ports that could provide a safe beach for a full-scale Swedish landing under Gustavus Adolphus II once he finished his campaigns against the Polish-Lithuanians on the Vistula.
Italian Phase (1629-1631)
Northern Italy was a strategic battleground for France and the Habsburgs for centuries. Control of this area allowed the Habsburgs to threaten the restive southern French provinces of Languedoc and Dauphiné, as well as protect the supply route known as the Spanish Trail; this meant a succession dispute in Mantua that inevitably involved outside parties.
After the massacre of the Protestant inhabitants in 1620 (Sacro macello), Spain occupied the valley under the pretext of defending the Catholic inhabitants from a reaction from Grisons. To respond to this new Spanish initiative, a league was formed between France, the Duchy of Savoy and the Republic of Venice. In northern Italy, Philip IV of Spain had continued his late father's efforts to defend the Catholics of the Valtellina valleys against the Grisons Protestants, furthermore, one of the strategic objectives of the Spanish Habsburgs was to unite their possessions. European continuous land route for the free transfer of troops. Attempts by the Swiss Protestant canton of Grisons in 1621 to expel the Spanish were unsuccessful. In the same 1621, Pope Urban VIII intervened in the conflict who led his troops from the Papal States to Valtellina. In 1622 Richelieu had created an anti-Spanish league with Venice and Savoy. With his rise in the French government, French politics took a turn. The French affirmed that the league with Savoy forced them to come to the aid of the duke, who at that time was attacking Genoa, attacking the Spanish — allies of the Genoese — in Valtellina. Under the pretext that the papal troops occupying the valley had not withdrawn as agreed, French and Swiss forces commanded by the Marquis de Coeuvres seized the valley and the forts that marked it out—erected by the Milanese governor— in the fall of 1624. Spain reacted by allying with the Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Dukes of Modena and Parma, and the republics of Genoa and Lucca, to counterattack. In 1625, Richelieu also sent money to Ernst von Mansfeld, a famous mercenary general operating in Germany in the service of the English. In the spring of 1625, Franco-Savoyard troops led by Duke Charles of Savoy attacked Asti and surrounded Genoa, an ally of Spain and a key link in its communications with the empire. However, Spanish troops then invaded Piedmont and secured the so-called "Spanish Way", in May 1626, when the costs of war had nearly ruined France, the king and cardinal made peace with Spain by the Treaty of Monçon., with the mediation of the Pope, according to which (contrary to the promise made to the Duke of Savoy), the French troops left Valtellina to the Spanish. The invasion of Genoa and the Valtellina planned by Richelieu ended in French defeat. However, the Treaty of Monson did not provide for control of the road that passed through the Valtellina, but gave France and Spain the right to use it. The Valtellina problem was temporarily resolved. Furthermore, in March 1627, France formed an alliance with Spain to oppose England, which supported the Huguenots. Until the surrender of La Rochelle on October 28, 1628, French troops practically did not take part in hostilities outside their territory.
This peace was quickly broken after tensions over the War of the Mantuan Succession. Occurring in the final years of the Danish phase and the initial years of the Swedish phase, the War of the Mantuan and Monferrat Succession (also known as the "Monferrat War") is considered by some historians to be part of the Thirty Years, a peripheral conflict that did not take place in the German area, but in the area of influence of the Habsburgs in the Italian peninsula and challenged by the Kingdom of France, after a long series of of conflicts between the Frenchman Francis I and the Spanish Charles V. His casus belli was the extinction of the direct male line of the House of Gonzaga in December 1627. Upon the death without heirs of Vincenzo II Gonzaga Duke of Mantua and Monferrato, in 1627, the dynastic dispute for control of the territory of Mantua (the strongest fortress in northern Italy) and Monferrato began after the extinction of the direct line of the Gonzaga family, since the brothers Francesco IV (1612), Ferd Inando (1612–26) and Vincenzo II (1626–27), the last three dukes of Mantua in the direct line, had all died leaving no legitimate heirs, generating two rival claimants: on the one hand Ferrante II Gonzaga, supported by the Spanish, by Ferdinand II and by the Duke of Savoy Carlo Emanuele I (who had agreed with the governor of Milan on the partition of Monferrato), by the other Carlo I de Gonzaga-Nevers, de facto lord of Mantua from January 1628, supported by the Republic of Venice, the French King Louis XIII and by Cardinal Richelieu. Pope Urban VIII was frightened by the prospect of a Habsburg intervention in Italy. He insisted on the return of the monastic lands to those orders from which they were withdrawn, and not to the Jesuits.The succession had been resolved in favor of the French house of Gonzaga-Nevers; This resolution, which placed two strategic territories under the control of France for the control of northern Italy, was not accepted by Spain, which instead supported the candidacy for the duchy of the pro-Spanish branch of Gonzaga di Guastalla.
The initial intent of Don Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, Spanish Governor of Milan, and Charles-Emmanuel was to divide the Mantuan-Montferrat estate, which lay to the east and west of Milan. The Spanish minister supported the Guastalla claimant in Mantua, as the weaker of two neighbors, and the Savoy claimant in Montferrat, the lesser of the territories. Friction ensued between the Confederates, when Charles-Emmanuel moved his troops into more territory than had been agreed, laying siege to the city of Casale, the capital of Montferrat. While Louis XIII of France and Cardinal Richelieu were concerned about new Huguenot uprisings in Languedoc, the capture of La Rochelle in 1628 allowed them to send forces to the relief of Casale, then besieged by a Habsburg army from Milan. In March 1629, the French stormed the barricades blocking the Pas de Suse and, by the end of the month, had lifted the siege of Casale and taken the strategic fortress of Pinerolo. In April, France and Savoy agreed to the Treaty of Susa, and the French army returned to France, leaving a garrison at Pinerolo. The papal envoy at the negotiations at Casale was Jules Mazarin. The forces of Emperor Ferdinand II under Ramboldo, Count of Collalto invaded Grisons and the Valtelline. The governor was recalled from Milan, followed by insults from the citizens, because bread had been in short supply for months. The following winter, Milan was devastated by the bubonic plague brought in by armies, which has been vividly described by Manzoni.
After a first Spanish victory, with troops coming from the territories of Milan, with the Savoys occupying Trino Alba and Moncalvo, and with Ambrogio Spinola besieging Casale, the situation was reversed with the descent into Italy of the King of France himself (after defeating the Huguenot faction) in 1628, which defeated the Piedmontese forces and occupied a large part of the Duchy of Savoy, and then again devastated the Imperial and Spanish forces, with the arrival on the Italian peninsula of Wallenstein's army. Later, in 1629, Emperor Ferdinand II sent a Landsknecht army to besiege Mantua. Charles left without the promised support of Louis XIII of France. The siege lasted until July 1630, when the city, already plagued by a plague, was brutally sacked for three days and nights by troops led by Count Aldringen and Gallas. But the emperor was not successful in Mantua. The rampant plague among the imperial troops, the war events in northern Europe and the Swedish invasion of Germany pushed Ferdinand II to seek an agreement with the French, first with the Treaty of Regensburg (October 13, 1630) and finally with the Peace of Cherasco (April 6, 1631), which recognized the French candidate as the legitimate Duke of Mantua. Despite military success, which led to the conquest and sack of Mantua by imperial soldiers in July 1630, the Emperor and Spain were unable to achieve their political goals. At the same time, the Kaiser subsequently missed these troops in the German theater of war.
The French accepted the Peace of Regensburg, which was negotiated by the French representatives, Father Joseph and Nicolas Brûlart de Sillery. The agreement was signed on October 13, 1630, which provided favorable terms for French interests in Italy despite their military setbacks. Specifically, the French were allowed to keep their garrison in Grisons. The agreement also confirmed Charles Gonzaga-Nevers as Duke of Mantua and Marquis of Montferrat in exchange for minor concessions to Charles Emmanuel of Savoy and Ferrante de Guastalla. The Habsburgs, for their part, would reduce their number of troops in the region. The treaty was seen as so unfavorable to the Spanish that the Spanish prime minister, Olivares, considered it no different than a surrender. In addition, the treaty contained a problematic clause. It included an agreement whereby the French were not allowed to form alliances in Germany against a reigning Holy Roman Emperor. This should have sidelined France in the ongoing conflict. Louis XIII of France refused to accept this, and the Austrians found themselves still at war, but with diminished forces in the area. The new forces sent south of the Alps would be missed when Swedish forces under Gustavus Adolphus invaded from the north. Italian peace was finally made with the Treaty of Cherasco, signed in a Piedmont town on June 19, 1631. France, which had taken Savoy in 1629, then captured Pinerolo in Piedmont the following year, renounced its conquests in Italy. Charles Gonzaga-Nevers was confirmed as ruler in Mantua and Montferrat, with concessions to the other claimants: Vittorio Amedeo I, who succeeded in Savoy after the sudden death of his father, Duke Carlos Emmanuel, won Trino and Alba in Montferrat; while César II of Guastalla, son of Ferrante, received Luzzara and Reggiolo. It was later discovered that by a secret treaty with Vittorio Amedeo, Pinerolo surrendered to France. With the exception of the Piedmontese Civil War from 1639 to 1642, this secured the French position in northern Italy for the next 20 years. Piedmont then became a satellite state of the kingdom of France.
The war of Monferrato and the great plague that struck the peninsula between 1629 and 1631 are the background to the events of Renzo and Lucia in I promessi sposi, the best-known work by Alessandro Manzoni, which depicts society with considerable accuracy and historical research, at the time of Spanish rule and the ruin made of epidemics, famines, and looting brought by the armies of the century XVII in the theaters of the conflict.
Subsequently, hostilities resumed in this territory. After France entered the Thirty Years' War. Well, the conflict conceived by Vittorio Amedeo I to create an anti-Spanish league in Italy, between 1636 and 1637, was added.
Swedish intervention (1630-1635)
Gustav II Adolf of Sweden had been involved in the Polish-Swedish War since 1626, with Poland allied to the Holy Roman Empire (which sent Austrian troops to aid the Commonwealth in 1629 in the form of a body of imperial troops under the command of the Field Marshal Hans Georg von Arnim-Boitzenburg and another Imperial corps, commanded by Albrecht von Wallenstein operating in nearby Pomerania). The Swedish king returned to Polish Prussia with substantial reinforcements in May and marched south towards Graudenz (Grudziądz) hoping to cut off Arnim's newly arrived Imperial corps before he could link up with Koniecpolski. He was unsuccessful, and as he withdrew north towards the Swedish garrisons at Stuhm (Sztum) and Marienburg (Malbork), he was drawn into battle on June 27, 1629, at Honigfeld, or Honigfelde, near Stuhm, in an action known by the Poles as the Battle of Trzciana. In this encounter, while trying to cover the retreat of their infantry, the Swedish cavalry was subjected to a series of fierce clashes in the villages of Honigfeldt, Straszewo and Pułkowice. With the help of Arnim's heavy cuirassiers, the Poles, with their The faster 'winged' hussars, and their Cossack mercenaries, gained a great advantage over the light Swedish horsemen. Swedish losses in the fighting were heavy, amounting to 600-700 dead, almost all cavalry (including Herman Wrangel's son). The Poles took 300 prisoners, 10-15 banners, as well as 10 of Gustavus Adolf's famous leather cannon. Commonwealth losses were less than 300 killed and wounded. The Swedish king himself barely escaped with his life, later saying that he had never taken "such a hot bath." Despite all of Koniecpolski's brilliant efforts against the Swedes who intended to conquer Prussia and Pomerania, a cease-fire at Stary Targ (Altmark Truce) on September 26, 1629 favored the Swedes, to whom Poland ceded most of its territory. Livonia together with its important port of Riga. Sweden now controlled almost all the Baltic ports; with the notable exceptions of Danzig, Putzig, Königsberg, and Liepāja (Libau). This would be the closest the Swedes came to achieving their goal of turning the Baltic Sea into 'Sweden's inland lake'. After the treaty, Sweden used its prize money as a starting point for its entry into the German camp of the Thirty Years' War.
In this war, Scotsman Alexander Leslie began his career in the Swedish army as commander and ruler of Pillau in East Prussia. Gustav II Adolf had made plans to intervene in the Holy Roman Empire, which were approved by the Riksdag commission in the winter of 1627-28. On June 23 or 25, 1628, Stralsund concluded an alliance with Gustav II Adolf of Sweden, which was to last twenty years. Gustav II Adolf proceeded to station a garrison in the city, the first of its kind on German soil. This event marked the antecedent of the Swedish intervention in the war.
Some people at Ferdinand II's court believed that Wallenstein wanted to control the German princes and restore the emperor's power in Germany under his authority. Ferdinand II deposed Wallenstein in 1630. he would later call him back after the Swedes, under King Gustav II Adolf, attacked the empire and won a few significant battles. The entry of this nation into the war would lead the Empire into a defensive situation.
Gustavus II Adolf officially justified his intervention on the grounds that he would defend the Protestants from an unjust emperor. But, as Christian IV had previously done, he came to the aid of the German Lutherans to prevent a possible Catholic aggression against his country and to gain Swedish economic and political influence in the German states around the Baltic Sea, to the detriment of the spheres of influence of Denmark, Poland and the Hanseatic League. Also, like Cristián IV, Gustavo II Adolfo was subsidized by Richelieu, the prime minister of the king Luis XIII of France, and by the United Provinces.
Swedish forces entered the Holy Roman Empire through the Duchy of Pomerania which served as the Swedish bridgehead since the Treaty of Stettin. After dismissing Wallenstein in 1630, Ferdinand II became dependent on the Catholic League. Gustavus Adolpfo allied with France in the Treaty of Bärwalde in January 1631. France and Bavaria signed the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau in 1631, but Swedish attacks on Bavaria rendered it irrelevant. Most of the mercenaries recruited by Gustavus Adolphus were German, but Scottish soldiers were also very numerous. These were made up of some 12,000 Scots already in service before the Swedes entered the war under General Sir James Spens and colonels such as Sir Alexander Leslie, Sir Patrick Ruthven and Sir John Hepburn. They were joined by another 8,000 men under the command of James Marquis Hamilton. The total number of Scots in Swedish service at the end of the war is estimated at about 30,000 men. At the Battle of Breitenfeld in 1631, Gustavus Adolf's forces defeated the Catholic League led by Tilly. A year later, they met again in another Protestant victory, this time accompanied by Tilly's death on the River Lech while offering resistance to the Swedish invasion of the Palatinate. The advantage had now shifted from the Catholic side to the Protestant side, led by Sweden. Gustav Adolf on May 17, without resistance, occupied the capital of Bavaria, the city of Munich. In 1630, Sweden had paid at least 2,368,022 daler for its 42,000-man army. In 1632, he contributed only a fifth of that (476,439 daler) at the cost of an army more than three times as large (149,000 men). This was possible thanks to subsidies from France and the recruitment of prisoners (most of them taken at the Battle of Breitenfeld) into the Swedish army. From 1630 to 1634 he pushed back the Catholic forces and recovered a large part of the occupied Protestant lands, taking Pomerania and invading Magdeburg, subjecting it to a very violent looting that with its 24,000 deaths will be remembered as one of the most dramatic events in the entire world. conflict. The destruction of one of the largest religious centers caused stupefaction throughout Europe. Influenced by this news, the Republic of the United Provinces allied with Gustavus Adolphus on May 31, pledging to invade Spanish Flanders and subsidize the king's army.
In the mid-1630s, Philip IV of Spain intended to crack down on Dutch merchant shipping on the northern routes, while Sigismund III of Poland, himself of Swedish origin, had his eyes set on regaining his throne in Stockholm. The diplomatic services of both monarchs worked to build a navy, possibly financed by the Spanish and manned by the Poles, which would take control of the western Baltic. However, the interests of both kingdoms were not exactly the same; moreover, the emperor and his allies were pursuing their own objectives.The result was that the Swedes captured a joint fleet in 1631 from the Royal Commission of Ships. In 1632 Spain withdrew from active Baltic politics.
The position of the emperor became threatening again. The traditional ally - Spain - was forced, by the counter-offensive of Prince Friedrich-Heinrich, which began in the Netherlands, to repel the Spanish troops that had to be transferred from the Rhine to resume the Eighty Years' War. Another ally, Poland-Lithuania, was brewing a conflict with Russia: the war began on June 20, 1632, when the Russian voivode, Mikhail Shein, attacked the Smolensk Voivodeship (then Polish property) on behalf of Tsar Michael I., the Orthodox Patriarch Philaret I of Moscow and the Zemsky Sobor, taking advantage of the country's weakness after the death of its king Sigismund. In addition, another conflict was brewing with the Ottoman Empire in 1633-1634, taking advantage of the Russian invasion, so that Mehmed Pasha, Bosnian governor of Sylistra (in Bulgaria), tried to capture Kamieniec Podolski with troops from the Principality of Wallachia, Moldavia, Crimea and Nogayos. from the Budjak Horde and Yedisan (allegedly it was an excursion without the official permission of the Turkish sultan, and at the request of the tsar); since the Swedish king Gustavo II Adolfo had sent an alliance proposal to the Russian Tsarate and the Ottoman Empire to declare war on the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and thus prevent the Swedish army in Germany from opening a new front with the rumored entry of the Commonwealth in the Catholic coalition led by the Habsburgs, which were allowed to recruit volunteers in Poland. Russian and Ottoman war plans coincided with intense diplomatic action by France and Sweden, which sought to create an anti-Polish coalition. Due to the unfavorable course of the Thirty Years' War, both Gustavus Adolphus and Cardinal Richelieu wanted to end the war for the mouth of the Vistula as soon as possible and move the Swedish army into Reich territory. For this reason, an attempt was made to form a joint anti-Catholic bloc of Orthodox, Islamic and Protestant states directed against the Republic of Poland. This alliance would be formed by Russia, Turkey, Tatars, Transylvania and Zaporozhian Cossacks, the French envoy Louis Deshayes left Konigsberg for Moscow; he was to officially present the Franco-Persian trade project through Russia, and in fact intended to persuade Patriarch Filaret to cooperate closely with the anti-Habsburg alliance. The conclusion of a stronger alliance between the Swedes and the Russians was prevented by the death of the Swedish king Gustav II Adolf (1632), so Russia entered the war alone against Poland-Lithuania. Two years later, 1634, Murad IV declared a jihad against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but the victory of the Polish army over Shein's Russian army during the Smolensk War forced the sultan to abandon his war plans and end the "eternal peace" with the Poles and focus on the Ottoman-Persian War. In this situation of isolation and with Tilly dead, the emperor had no choice but to return, like seven years ago, to ask for help from Wallenstein and his great army.
Wallenstein marched south, threatening the supply chain of the Swedes. Gustavo Adolfo knew that Wallenstein was expecting the attack and was prepared, but he found no other option. He forced the Battle of Fürth with Wallenstein at the end of August 1632, possibly the biggest mistake made in his German campaign. Later Wallenstein and Gustav II Adolf of Sweden clashed at the Battle of Lützen, in 1632, where the Swedes were victorious, but with the loss of their king at Leipzig, which in turn frustrated attempts to forge a stronger alliance with Russia and the Ottoman Empire for a possible intervention in Germany in exchange for a Swedish intervention in Poland. The Russian Empire did not commit itself militarily, but from the beginning it supported the anti-Habsburg coalition, mainly by supplying grain to England and the United Provinces, later to the Kingdom of Denmark and Norway and Sweden, and after the Peace of Lübeck in 1629 only to Sweden. Russia, as an Orthodox country, also exported nitrate only to countries united against their Catholic enemies.
Ferdinand II's suspicions of Wallenstein reappeared in 1633, when Wallenstein attempted to arbitrate the differences between the Catholic and Protestant factions. The emperor believed that such a general was planning treason against him, in cahoots with Sweden. Fernando II arranged things to arrest him after removing his command again. One of Wallenstein's soldiers, Captain Devereux (an Irish centurion), assassinated him when he tried to contact the Swedes in the town hall of Cheb (Eger in German), on February 25, 1634. The assassination was carried out by a group of Irish mercenaries under the command of cavalry colonel Walter Butler. Wallenstein's huge estate was confiscated, his family regaining only the Wallenstein Palace in Prague for Maximilian of Wallenstein and the Česká Lípa estate for Elizabeth's widow. The confiscation of the extensive Wallenstein property and the property of A. E. Trčka had an even worse impact on the Czech lands than the subsequent White Mountain confiscations. A small foreign nobility rushed into the occupied territory of Wallenstein, the emperor distributed as a reward to anyone who participated in the death of the duke. Most of them were soldiers with aristocratic origins from abroad who could not understand the problems of the Czech economy at such a difficult time. Wallenstein's death had far-reaching political and military consequences for the Habsburg Monarchy
Although a separate conflict, the Smolensk War became an integral part of the Thirty Years Confrontation as an episode of the Swedish-Russian and Polish-Austrian coalition struggle. The Russo-Polish peace of 1634 it ended Polish ambition for the tsarist throne, but left Poland free to resume hostilities against its main enemy in the Baltic. Although Russia lost, this military aid allowed the Swedes to fight in Central Europe without being attacked by the Polish-Lithuanian armies. The new Polish king Władysław IV, crowned in 1632, resumed the plans harbored by his father. In 1634 he sent a special envoy to Madrid. Apart from the usual negotiations over the Sforza inheritance (both countries mutually claimed the southern Italian inheritance of Bona Sforza), talks centered on compensation for the Polish fleet lost to the Swedes. when he was nominally in the service of Philip IV and securing Spanish posts and a pension for two royal brothers. The main issue, however, was Spanish financial support for the future Polish military effort against Sweden, since 1630 the formal belligerent in the Thirty Years' War. The Polish-Swedish truce of 1629 was to expire in 1635, and the Polish monarch was considering a resumption of the conflict. In 1634 he sent another diplomat to Madrid, and another in 1635. Until then, the position of the Spanish court was not clear; The Polish envoys were listened to politely, but no initiatives were taken. This changed in 1635, when two Spanish envoys left for Warsaw. However, they were unaware of the pressure of time. French envoys, setting out at a similar time but with exactly the opposite intentions, traveled by sea and arrived in Poland in May, just in time. In response, in 1635 the truce with Sweden was extended by the Treaty of Stuhmsdorf. Many European powers such as Brandenburg-Prussia, France, England, and the Dutch Republic were interested in the outcome of the Polish-Swedish negotiations and were also appointed as mediators to ensure Polish neutrality. Sweden ceded the Prussian ports, and Poland ceded most of Livonia to Riga, but kept the Latgale region. The armistice concluded between them allowed Sweden to transfer significant reinforcements from across the Vistula to Germany. The Spanish traveled mainly by land, visiting various diplomatic missions along the way; they did not meet before Władysław IV in August 1636 in Vilnius. There they proposed to create an army in Poland that would fight under the banner of the Catholic League.
Hostilities continued, and earlier this year, the Swedes and their German Protestant allies, led by Gustaf of Horn and Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, were defeated by Spanish-Imperial forces at the Battle of Nördlingen, led by King de Romanos (imperial heir), Archduke Ferdinand (son of Ferdinand II) and General Matthias Gallas, in command of the German Catholic troops, and by the Cardinal-Infante Don Ferdinand of Habsburg, brother of King Philip IV, in command of troops Spanish women who came to the aid of the Catholics from the Spanish possession of Milan.
After that, After the severe defeat of the Swedes, in the following year 1635, with the exception of the Calvinist Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel, almost all the Protestant states, led by Electoral Saxony, broke the alliance with Sweden. Both sides met for negotiations, and the Swedish period ended by the Peace of Prague (1635), according to which:
- The date was restored, 1555, that the Peace of Augsburg had established as that from which the possessions in the lands of Protestants and Catholics would remain unchanged, which annulled the Edict of Restitution for all purposes.
- The army of the emperor and the armies of the German States were united as the only army of the Holy Roman Empire. (though John George I of Saxony and Maximilian I of Bavaria maintained, as a practical matter, the independent command of their own forces, now nominally components of the "imperial" army).
- All the signatories of the agreement committed to expelling the Swedes from the territory of the Holy Empire.
- It prevented the German princes from establishing alliances between them or with foreign powers.
- Calvinism was legalized.
- It resolved the religious issues of the Thirty-year War.
The objective of the imperial princes and the imperial army was to act together and with the support of Spain against France and Sweden as enemies of the empire. The Thirty Years' War finally ceased to be a war of Christian denominations. This treaty, however, did not satisfy the French, as the Habsburgs were still very powerful. In addition Spain (in response to the French invasion of Lorraine and Bar in the spring of 1634) took Philippsburg on January 24 and Trier on March 26, 1635, fortresses of the Electorate of Trier. France decided to enter the war against Spain on May 19 and on September 18 declared war on the Holy Empire, once the imperial occupation of Speyer had taken place on September 4.
French intervention (1635-1648)
Before France entered the war, the French army had 72 infantry regiments. In the year of entry into the war the number increased to 135 regiments, reaching 174 regiments in 1636 and culminating in the number of 202 regiments in 1647. After a reform of the army in 1635, each line regiment consisted of 1060 men. In 1635 the number of French infantry was about 130,000 men, in 1636 about 155,000 men, and in 1647 about 100,000 men. At the start of the war, the French army was considered to be in poor condition and composed of inexperienced soldiers. compared to battle-hardened Swedish and Imperial soldiers.
Since the beginning of the war, France had always carefully kept out of the fighting, while since 1625 it had supported the opponents of the Emperor and the King of Spain through its diplomacy and subsidies. The only direct implications of it were in peripheral areas of Italy and Lorraine. This policy was not exempt from contradictions because Richelieu, a cardinal of the Catholic Church and a ruthless adversary of Protestant forces within the kingdom, allied with foreign Protestants against the Habsburgs, champions of Catholicism. Therefore, religious considerations are opposed to political considerations and the desire to contain the power of the Habsburgs. However, they end up winning over their various adversaries. To maintain the desired balance, France has no other solution than to get directly involved in the conflict
France, although a Catholic country, rivaled the House of Habsburg, and now entered the war on the Protestant side. Cardinal Richelieu, Louis XIII's prime minister, thought that the Habsburgs were still too powerful, as they held several territories on the eastern border of France and had influence over the United Provinces. Richelieu was a bon français like the king, who had already decided to subsidize the Dutch to fight the Spanish through the Treaty of Compiègne in June 1634.
Therefore, France allied itself with the Dutch and with Sweden, and entered the war after the Spanish, as a precaution, occupied Philippsbourg, Speyer, Landau and finally Trier, of which Archbishop Philipp Christoph von Sötern, one of the prince electors, placed himself under the protection of France. Richelieu took this pretext to declare, on May 19, 1635, war against Spain, the most direct adversary of French interests. In accordance with the Swedish forces (Wismar treaties of 1636 and Hamburg of 1638), French troops opened the anti-Habsburg offensive in Germany and the Netherlands, while Swedish forces established themselves in northern Germany. France declared war on the Habsburg Emperor in Vienna on September 18, shortly before the Emperor planned a preemptive strike. The declaration of war had only indirect but serious consequences for the emperor. Until now, French financial contributions to the Swedes and Spanish contributions to the Emperor had roughly balanced each other. Now, however, Spain itself, as an official participant in the war, was under severe pressure. This inevitably had a negative effect on Spain's financial contributions to the emperor, while France had no further financial challenge. In the interaction of France and Sweden, operational delimitations were made in the Holy Roman Empire's theater of war. France took over the southern German area of operations vacated by Sweden. This also included the seizure of fortified places and redoubts on the Upper Rhine from the Swedes. The Swedes withdrew completely to northern Germany on the Baltic Sea coast, to Mecklenburg and the Elbe region. There the supplies that came from Sweden by ship through the Baltic Sea were secured. From there Saxony and Bohemia could be threatened, because Brandenburg was a militarily weak opponent. At the same time, France did not stop its efforts in the diplomatic arena. Their Italian allies went to war against the Habsburgs: the duchies of Savoy Mantua and the Republic of Venice. The French attacked Lombardy and the Spanish Netherlands.
French troops under Duke Henri de Rogan in 1635 drove the Spanish and Imperial (Austrian) forces out of Valtellina. France's reluctance to return Valtellina forced the authorities in Grison to start secret negotiations with Spain and the Holy Roman Empire Roman Germanic. In 1637, the Grisons, led by Georg Jenach, drove the French out of the Valtellina. In 1639, a treaty was concluded in Milan between Grisons and Spain, under which Valtellina was opened to the passage of Spanish troops, but was considered the sovereign possession of Grisons. The population of Valtellina was granted self-government and local Catholics were given freedom of religion.
Piedmont was still looking for a vain expansion towards Geneva: these facts, of arms and politics, did not help the economy and future history, aggravating the already difficult internal situation due to the death of Vittorio Amedeo I of Savoy. His sons succeeded him: for a very short period of time the eldest son Francesco Giacinto of Savoy and then the second son Carlo Emanuele II. In both cases the regency was entrusted to the mother María Cristina (French), who became Madama Reale for the people and her sympathizers took the name Madamisti . Against this French preponderance, which would have made Piedmont a satellite state of the kingdom of France, added to the objectives of Cardinal Richelieu, who tried to annex the duchy of Savoy to the crown of France. The kingdom was divided into "madamistas" and & # 34; princes & # 34;, since Prince Maurice of Savoy and his younger brother, Prince Thomas Francis of Savoy-Carignano disputed the power of his sister-in-law, and her French entourage. When the first heir Francisco Jacinto died in 1638, the two brothers began the Piedmontese civil war, with Spanish support, the princes, Cardinal Mauricio de Saboya, and Tomás de Saboya, mobilized, whose followers took the name Princes. The princes, with the support of Spanish troops from Milan, occupied Chieri, Chivasso, Ivrea, Moncalieri, Vercelli and Verrua Savoia. Failing to take the cities of Cherasco and Turin in 1640. Cristina in 1639 was forced to take refuge in Savoy, under French protection, to escape from her brothers-in-law who were ravaging Turin. Subsequently, however, Richelieu himself had the faithful Count d'Agliè arrested, guilty of opposing the French protectorate. Cristina resisted indomitable, skillfully exploiting the rivalries between the French and Spanish and her royal origin.
Since Sweden no longer supported Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, it began its own alliance negotiations with Richelieu. In October 1635 a treaty of alliance and cooperation was signed. The former Swedish army to the south under Bernard was placed under the French high command and the commander was assured territory in Alsace. The political leadership under Axel Oxenstierna withdrew to Magdeburg from 6 June to 19 September 1635, and the military commander-in-chief Johan Banér also moved the last Swedish army on German soil to Magdeburg. The contractual basis for this was the Treaty of Wismar concluded in March 1636 on the basis of the Treaty of Compiègne. After that, Sweden was supposed to start the war through Brandenburg and Saxony on the Habsburg hereditary lands in Bohemia and Moravia, and France is to seize the Austrian Habsburg areas on the Rhine. When French troops tried to conquer the Spanish Netherlands in May 1635 and the southern Rhineland in September 1635, the plan failed in the Netherlands due to the Siege of Leuven by the Spanish auxiliary corps under Octavio Piccolomini and on the Rhine by the Spanish army Matthias Gallas's imperial power, the Austrians were able to push the Allied armies from France and from Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar to Metz, but the latter was able to hold the positions on the Upper Rhine.
French military efforts met with disaster, and the Spanish counterattacked, invading French territory. The imperial general Johann von Werth and the Spanish commander, Cardinal Infante Ferdinand of Spain, commanding the Spanish troops, razed the French provinces of Champagne and Burgundy, and even threatened Paris during the French campaign of 1636. The campaign of 1636 was very difficult for France. They entered northern France together from Mons in early July. After conquering La Capelle and along the Oise. After advancing towards Paris, they turned west in the expected direction of the French army, captured Le Catelet, and crossed the Somme from the north in early August. Operations in Italy stalled, as did those in Alsace; an operation carried out in Franche-Comté against Dole ended in failure and Gallas invaded Burgundy before failing at the siege of Saint-Jean-de-Losne and having to recross the Rhine when reinforcements arrived; in the north, the Spanish and their allies, under the command of Octavio Piccolomini Jean de Werth and the Cardenal-Infante, gained ground and finally took Corbie (on the Somme) on 15 August. Therefore, Paris is directly threatened and riots broke out in Paris after the attackers captured the French border fortress just 100 km north of the capital, but Louis XIII manages to recapture Corbie on November 14. However, in the south, Spain has taken over Saint-Jean-de-Luz and threatens the southwest. The imperial general Johan von Werth and the Spanish commander, the cardinal-infante Ferdinand, carried out successful campaigns, however this greatly lengthened their lines of communication, so they eventually withdrew while the French took Arras, even so the Spanish were victorious the French in the sieges of Saint Omer in 1638 and 1647. Finally, Bernard of Saxe-Weimar defeated the Spanish-imperial forces on the Rhine and came to threaten their stay on French soil in the battle of Rheinefeld. The Spanish under Cardinal Infante had decided to take over too late, considering that their operations were already complete. The Spanish military leadership eventually settled for acquiring some French frontier forts, which Piccolomini saw as a missed opportunity.
After the dissolution of the League of Heilbronn, the Saxon army formally declared war against its former ally Sweden in October 1635 and blockaded Magdeburg from November 1635. Swedish soldiers became uneasy and even generals suspected that the negotiations of peace were above their heads. After the heavy defeat of the Swedes at Nördlingen the Swedish army threatened mutiny and in August 1635 the Swedish imperial chancellor Oxenstierna was held back by mutinous parties. In September, he secretly eluded the troops because he feared for his life. In October 1635, the successes of the Swedes under Banér at the Battle of Dömitz and then at Kyritz against a Brandenburg-Prussian army ended the threat of Swedish collapse. At the same time, the Swedes were victorious at the Battle of of Wittstock a victory against a Saxon imperial army. This proved to be so complete that Imperial troops were needed as reinforcements in the northeast of the empire for the next year. Before that, Gallas attempted one last offensive into the interior of France to gain winter quarters in enemy territory and devastate weakly defended areas, but it failed in early November due to bad weather and the bitter defense of the border town of Saint-Jean. -de-Losne. Since the Franche-Comté did not grant winter quarters to the Imperials, Gallas had to withdraw his troops again down the long road to the Rhine, against the intentions of the Imperial military leadership. Barely half of Gallas' army ultimately remained there to secure the Free County.
The year 1637 seemed to herald the beginning of an alliance between the Habsburgs and the Polish Vasa. Madrid granted a fixed salary to the king's two younger brothers, and Jan Kazimierz received the Order of the Golden Fleece. Before leaving Warsaw, the Spanish envoy Vázquez de Miranda also undertook to indemnify the fleet lost at Wismar and return Neapolitan sums. Although there was still no progress on the position of Juan Casimiro in the service of Spain; there were only general rumors that he would take command in Flanders or in the Mediterranean fleet. However, the most important event of this year concerned Austria. The Viennese Habsburgs and the Warsaw Vasa concluded the so-called Family Pact. Władysław IV and Emperor Ferdinand III were cousins, as the Polish king's mother was the sister of the late Emperor Ferdinand II. Now they were also becoming brothers-in-law, as Władysław IV was to marry Ferdinand III's sister, Cecylia Renata. Although the agreement was mainly concerned with general dynamics and did not contain any military obligations, it seemed that after years of vacillation, the King of Poland began to lean towards Vienna, not Paris. In January 1638, Prince Jan Kazimierz left Poland for Spain; it is not clear whether both courts had already agreed on his future role, or whether his visit to Madrid was only intended to speed up negotiations on this issue. However, in May, Jan Kazimierz was detained by the French in Port-de-Bouc, while traveling along the Mediterranean coast from Italy to Spain. Officially, he was accused of espionage, but scientists believe that Cardinal Richelieu he used the opportunity to win another argument to put pressure on Władysław IV, prevent the Polish-Habsburg alliance and Poland's entry into the Thirty Years' War. In the summer it turned out that a quick release of the king's brother was out of the question. In October 1638, Władysław IV and Ferdinand III met in Nikolsburg and agreed to further actions; they probably decided to seek the mediation of the Italian states, traditionally on good terms with the King of France. When they failed, it was decided to sign the Treaty of Naples in 1639 between Poland and Spain against France and, if possible, also Sweden. It would not be applied and the possible military consequences of the participation of the Polish army negotiated in Naples in the Thirty Years' War remain a matter of presumption and speculation. Despite this, in the mid-1630s some of the Lisowczycy's Poles fought in the ranks of the Imperial army against the French in Flanders, confirming the worst possible opinions about themselves. the fusion of the forces of the Spanish tercios, considered the best infantry in the world at the time, with the Polish hussars.
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The hostilities of 1637 and 1638 were marked by confusion and a relative status quo. The most notable events are in 1637 the death of the dukes of Mantua and Savoy, and the difficult beginning of the regency of the Duchess of Savoy, Cristina, sister of Louis XIII, before the intrigues of her brothers-in-law, Tomás and Mauricio, allies with the Spanish. Also in 1637 the emperor had died. His successor Ferdinand III pushed for a compromise, but the Peace of Prague was history by then. After the victory at Wittstock, Sweden's situation had improved significantly. Brandenburg was again under Swedish control and the Elector of Brandenburg had to flee to Königsberg in Prussia. In the spring of 1637, the Swedes under Banér also invaded Electoral Saxony. In 1638, it was the French defeat at Fuenterrabía (Basque Country) on September 7 and the destruction of a Spanish fleet on August 22, as well as the capture of Brisach, key to Alsace and Swabia by Bernardo de Saxe-Weimar on 19 from December. When an English-funded Palatinate army also invaded Westphalia, Commander-in-Chief Gallas had to withdraw his own troops from Pomerania to repel them. The Imperials under Melchior von Hatzfeldt crushed the Palatinate-Swedish army under Prince Karl Ludwig at the Battle of Vlotho in October 1638. Neither was the Battle of Vlotho in October 1638, in which Imperial troops defeated Imperial forces. Swedish, English and Palatine (provoking the final departure of the Palatinate from the conflict) neither the death of Bernard of Saxe-Weimar nor the battle of Chemnitz in April 1639 nor, finally, the Franco-Swedish joint offensive in Thuringia, was decisive for the fate of the war, which effectively entered a stalemate. Many battles followed, but no clear advantage was gained by either side. The war was stagnating again and the number of operations was decreasing. However, the degree of devastation had increased considerably, because entire regions were already deserted.
The enemies of the Habsburgs in the empire carefully noted how the imperial military supremacy was vanishing, a clear example was the Battle of Breisach where the French took Alsace and definitively cut off the Spanish road. Amalie Elisabeth von Hessen-Kassel broke off negotiations to join the Peace of Prague, and in the late summer of 1639 she concluded an alliance with France. The Guelph dukes of Wolfenbüttel and Lüneburg who were included in the Peace of Prague, entered into an alliance with Sweden.
With the Spanish Road closed, the Spanish were forced to begin transporting their armies to the Netherlands by sea. In 1639 one of these convoys was attacked off the English coast by the Dutch admiral Maarten Tromp, leading to the Battle of the Dunes in which Tromp annihilated the Spanish fleet that had been escorting the troop ships. This catastrophic defeat crippled Spanish naval power, making it almost impossible for Spain to get reinforcements and supplies for the Army of Flanders.
Around 1640, the emperor began to move toward peace, but there was no force to respond to the oppressive attitude. All other peace initiatives such as those of Pope Urban VIII (Cologne Peace Congress) or the Hamburg Congress of 1638 had failed. In 1640, the emperor convened the Reichstag in Regensburg and thus marked a signal that set a trend in the long road to peace The Reichstag gave the corporate opposition back its forum. The dominance of the monarchical system was broken. However, a peace agreement was only possible with the powers France and Sweden, which were not represented here.
In Holland, the Federal Republic of the Netherlands defeated Spain and captured Fort Breda. This victory secured the independence of the Netherlands and, conversely, was an expression of the collapse of Spanish hegemony. And from this moment on, the Spanish army was repeatedly defeated in front of France and the Netherlands, showing signs of collapse. The siege of the Habsburg fortress of Arras, which lasted from June 16 to August 9, 1640 (in which he distinguished the writer Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac) and its fall, finally ending up in French hands, made events turn decisively in favor of Louis XIII and to the detriment of Spain: having lost Arras, the French troops had an easy game to invade and occupy all of Flanders; In that year, the Kingdom of Portugal began its war of independence from Spain and an uprising took place in Catalonia. The government of the Count-Duke of Olivares, with its policy of fiscal hardening to the detriment of these two regions, had caused paralysis in Lisbon and Catalan hatred and discontent towards the Madrid court. The ferment of these separatist movements did not escape Cardinal Richelieu, who, wanting to promote a "war of fun" in Iberian territory to force the Spanish to withdraw from the German theatre, he promptly lent aid first to the Catalans and later to the Portuguese. The French prime minister's efforts had the desired effects: Philip IV of Spain, supported by his advisers, was reluctantly forced to divert his attention from the war in northern Europe to address problems in his territories..
The imperial coalition was plunged into a deep crisis. In the Mediterranean and Atlantic the French and Dutch fleets repeatedly won over the Spanish, while French and Swedish forces regained the initiative in southern Germany: at the second battle of Breitenfeld on November 2, 1642, he fought off Leipzig, Swedish Field Marshal Lennart Torstenson, who defeated the imperial army led by Leopold Wilhelm of Austria and Prince General Octavio Piccolomini, resulting in the loss of 20,000 men, the capture of 5,000 prisoners and 46 guns at the cost of 4 000 killed or wounded among the Franco-Swedish ranks. The victory at Breitenfeld enabled the Swedish occupation of Saxony and forced Ferdinand III to consider the role of Sweden, and not just France, in future peace negotiations.
After four years of fighting in the Piedmontese civil war, Cristina de Bourbon-France emerged victorious after the Siege of Turin, thanks to French military support. Not only did she keep the duchy for her son, she also prevented France from gaining too much power in the Duchy of Savoy. When peace was signed on June 14, 1642, Mauricio married his fourteen-year-old niece, Luisa Cristina de Saboya, relinquishing the title of cardinal and prior dispensation from Pope Paul V. He became governor of Nice from where expelled Spanish troops, who held Vercelli occupied until 1659. Christina of France remained in control of the Duchy of Savoy, until her son could follow in her footsteps, her official regency ended in 1648, but she remained in power until her death.
In addition, in November 1642, a revolutionary civil war broke out in England due to continued internal conflict between the monarchy and Parliament, which led to a reduction in English subsidies to German and Swedish Protestants, as well as a new front of war against rebellious Ireland, on the Catholic side, during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.
In 1642, Cardinal Richelieu died, followed a year later by King Louis XIII of France. Louis XIV ascended the throne, when he was only five years old, while his regent, Cardinal Mazarin, began to work to find a diplomatic solution to the war. For this reason, Mazarin had no choice but to abandon his ambition to make the French king Holy Roman Emperor from among the policies he had inherited.
Meanwhile, Sweden was at war with Denmark-Norway, which threatened to fall behind the Swedish army fighting in Germany. This war was called Torstenson's War after the commander. In an effort to strengthen their position in the Baltic, the Danes began to build a strong navy capable of resisting Sweden. To prevent this, in December 1643, on the orders of Oxensherna, Swedish troops launched an offensive on Holstein, and in January they occupied the entire mainland of Denmark - Jutland. The Swedish army, with the Dutch navy as an ally, subjugated Denmark and seized control of the Baltic Sea, which was interrupted by the 30 Years War. General Gustav Horn also returned from this war. The Danes requested the help of the emperor. The Imperial Army rushed to support Denmark, Gallas was recalled again and sent to Denmark. In the spring of 1644, his army approached Kiel, plundered western Pomerania, but was stopped on 23 November by the Swedes, led by Torstensson, near Yuterbog, whereupon he was defeated. After the defeat of Gallas under Yuterbog, the path to the Habsburg hereditary lands was again opened for the Swedes. Torstensson invaded Bohemia. To repel his advance, he sent himself an army under the command of the Imperial Field Marshal, Count von Hatzfeldt. Both armies were about the same size, but the combined Imperial-Bavarian forces included large and experienced cavalry units.
In 1642 the Spanish troops defeated the French in Honnecourt, but in 1643 the Spanish troops of Felipe IV, who was facing the Uprising of Catalonia on the peninsula, were defeated in the battle of Rocroi, in Flanders, which It marked a turning point in the long-running Franco-Spanish conflict and marked the decline of Spain as a great power. On the Rhine front, French troops were defeated at Tuttlingen, and their first attempt to invade Bavaria was unsuccessful with the French in command of Touraine defeated at Mergentheim, but two years later, in 1645, Sweden invaded Bohemia again to secure the In victory, the Swedish marshal Lennart Torstensson defeated an imperial army in the battle of Jankov, near Prague. Having repulsed the first attacks of the Swedes, the Catholics managed to put the enemy's right flank to flight. When von Hatzfeldt and von Werth's knights, instead of completing the rout of the enemy, rushed to plunder the Swedish convoy behind, Torstensson, orienting himself to the situation, quickly rebuilt his troops and, skilfully using artillery, repulsed all attacks. of infantry and then, with a successful counter-attack, utterly defeated the Catholics. The imperial army was destroyed, meanwhile Louis II of Bourbon, Prince of Condé, defeated the Bavarian army at Nördlingen. The last great military leader of the Catholics, Count Franz von Mercy, lost his life in the battle. This event was decisive for the defeat of the Habsburgs, and the duke of Bavaria made peace with France, in addition, the isolated duke of Saxony signed an armistice with the Swedish army. Meeting no further resistance, Torstensson crossed the Danube on March 24 and in a short time captured almost all the major cities and fortresses in northern Lower Austria. He invited the rebellious Transylvanian prince György I Rákóczi to launch an offensive against Vienna from the east. Waiting for a response, the Swedes continued to ravage the Danube and on May 4 besieged Brunn in Moravia. When Archduke Leopold Wilhelm's forces, after fierce fighting, recaptured the Wolfschanze fortified point north of Vienna
In July 1644, instead of the pro-French Pope Urban VIII, the pro-Hispanic Innocent X was elected, whose policy in Italy led to the breakdown of diplomatic relations between Paris and the Vatican.
The Principality of Transylvania under the government of Jorge Rákóczi I participated again as an ally of the Protestant Swedes and French, following a policy similar to that of Gabriel Bethlen of confronting the Habsburgs. He enlarged the assets and properties of the Rákóczi family and after several attacks, he did not achieve great successes against the Germans. In 1636, the deposed Stephen Bethlen, allied with the pasha of Buda, attacked Rákóczi trying to regain the throne, but was defeated at the battle of Nagyszalonta. Later in 1644, he led a new military campaign against the Germanic emperor and Hungarian King Ferdinand III of Habsburg, and during this he occupied all the territories of northern Hungary in alliance with the Swedish army that was besieging Brno, the Hungarian troops of Rákóczi were already moving to help the Swedes break through Moravia. When he was preparing to advance towards Vienna, the Sultan forbade him and forced him to return, as he did not want a vassal state of the Ottoman Gate to interfere in the Catholic-Protestant struggles. Then, and to avoid the unification of the Swedish and Hungarian troops, in 1645, Ferdinand III of Habsburg, signed the Peace of Linz, which repeated many points the passages of the Peace of Nikolsburg of 1622. Transylvania obtained from the emperor the seven provinces del Tisza, the convocation of a National Assembly within three months and guarantees of religious freedom. All under the condition of no longer interfering in the affairs of the German Reich.
In late 1642, peace conferences were established on both sides of the Rhine, but negotiations did not begin until 1644. The war developed into an adversarial situation that became very intense as the battle for an advantage in the Negotiations and the battle to end the war got mixed up. Due to a series of circumstances, the peace conference progressed slowly. The international conference was attended by all European countries except Great Britain, the Netherlands, the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire. However, in 1646, the Imperial Army achieved a wonderful revival. Fearing that the Imperial Army would meet with Bavaria, Sweden invaded Bavaria again. France saw this as an act of excess and sent Master Turenne to keep Sweden in check. Besieged by both armies, Bavaria surrendered, but a Bavarian general rebelled and joined the Imperial Army.
In parallel, in the Kingdom of Naples, the Neapolitan Republic rebelled against Spanish rule in the Masaniello revolt, being a popular movement with characteristics of a subsistence riot, the initial support of some sectors of the Italian nobility and urban patriciate It did not last long when it became clear that the best defense of their privileged situation was Philip IV himself and the Spanish troops, which, under the command of Don Juan José de Austria, natural son of the king, entered the city of Naples in February 1648. In Sicily, where a similar revolt had broken out, the same thing will happen in September 1648.
Meanwhile, French troops, led by Prince Condé, again defeated Archduke Leopold in 1648 led by the Spanish at Lens. In 1647 France and Sweden invaded Bavaria and forced Maximilian I to sign the Truce of Ulm on March 14, 1647 and renounce his alliance with the Holy Roman Empire. However, in the fall of that same year he broke the truce and returned to the Imperials. In 1648, the Swedes and French under Louis II de Bourbon defeated the imperial and Spanish armies at the battles of Zusmarhausen and Lens. After that, trying to force Maximilian to conclude a separate peace, they devastated almost all of Bavaria.
The Swedish general Königsmark, who after the battle of Zusmarshausen moved towards Prague, managed to capture Mala Strana and Hradcany on July 26, however, he tried to continue the offensive and cross the Charles Bridge to the old city, he faced an attack fierce resistance from the townspeople and the imperial garrison. The fighting in Prague continued until the end of the war. The final battle was fought in the same place where the Bohemian-Palatinate War broke out. In 1648, the Swedish-French coalition defeated the Emperor-Bavarian army and consolidated its power. The Swedes besieged and captured Prague and prepared to attack Vienna, the imperial capital. The emperor decided to sign the Peace Treaty on October 24.
However, Sweden continued to fight in Prague after July 26, 1648 for the conquest of Bohemia and Protestantism. Prague, the last stronghold of the Catholic camp, resisted fiercely and never surrendered. Carl X, then Commander-in-Chief of the Swedish Army, who later became King of Sweden, also rushed to help, and the siege lasted for three months. However, they failed to conquer the right-bank part of Prague and the old city, which held out until the end of the war. Only the territories of Austria itself remained safe in the hands of the Habsburgs.
The war in the Iberian Peninsula
News of French victories in Flanders in 1640 provided a strong stimulus to separatist movements against Habsburg Spain in the territories of Catalonia and Portugal. It had been the conscious aim of Cardinal Richelieu to promote a " war for fun" against the Spanish increasing difficulties in the country that could encourage them to withdraw from the war. To wage this war for fun, Cardinal Richelieu had been providing aid to the Catalans and Portuguese.
The Catalan revolt of the War of the Reapers had arisen spontaneously in May 1640. The threat that an anti-Habsburg territory would establish a powerful base south of the Pyrenees provoked an immediate reaction of the monarchy. The Habsburg government sent a large army of 26,000 men to crush the Catalan revolt. On the way to Barcelona, the Spanish army retook several cities, executing hundreds of prisoners, and a rebel army from the newly proclaimed Catalan Republic was defeated at Martorell, near Barcelona, on January 23. In response, the rebels reinforced their efforts and the Catalan Generalitat won a major military victory over the Spanish army at the Battle of Montjuïc (January 26, 1641) which dominated the city of Barcelona. Perpignan was taken from the Spanish after a 10-month siege, and all of Roussillon fell under direct French control. The Catalan ruling powers half-accepted the proclamation of Louis XIII of France as sovereign Count of Barcelona, as Lluís I of Catalonia. For the next decade the Catalans fought under French vassalage, seizing the initiative after Montjuïc. Meanwhile, increased French control of political and administrative affairs, particularly in northern Catalonia, and a firm military focus on the neighboring Spanish kingdoms of Valencia and Aragon, in line with Richelieu's war against Spain, gradually undermined Catalan enthusiasm for the French.
At the same time, in December 1640, the Portuguese rose up against Spanish rule and once again Richelieu, together with English diplomacy, provided aid to the insurgents. The ensuing conflict with Spain led Portugal to the War of the Thirty Years as, at least, a peripheral player. From 1641 to 1668, a period during which the two nations were at war, Spain sought to isolate Portugal militarily and diplomatically, and Portugal tried to find the resources to maintain its independence through political alliances and the maintenance of its colonial revenues. However, Portugal had diplomatic successes and ended up signing the Treaty of The Hague with the United Provinces of the Netherlands to finalize a 10-year truce in the midst of the Luso-Dutch War and forge a fleet to attack Spain. Furthermore, to meet the common foreign policy interests of Portugal and France, an alliance was signed between the two countries in Paris on June 1, 1641.
The war for fun in the Iberian Peninsula had the desired effect. Philip IV of Spain was reluctantly forced to divert attention from the war in northern Europe to attend to his problems at home. In fact, even at this time, some of Philip IV's advisers, including the Count of Oñate, were recommending that Philip IV withdraw from his engagements abroad. With Trier, Alsace and Lorraine in French hands and the Dutch in charge of Limburg, the Channel and the North Sea, the "Spanish Highway" which connected Habsburg Spain with Habsburg possessions in the Netherlands and Austria. Philip IV could no longer physically send reinforcements to the Netherlands. On December 4, 1642, Cardinal Richelieu died. However, his war-for-fun policy continued to pay dividends for France. Spain could not withstand the continued drumbeat of French victories: Gravelines was lost to the French in 1644, followed by Hulst in 1645 and Dunkirk in 1646. The Thirty Years' War would continue until 1648 when the Peace of Westphalia was signed.
The conflict between France and Spain continued in Catalonia until 1659, with the confrontation between two Catalan sovereigns and governments, one based in Barcelona, under Spanish control, and the other in Perpingnan, under French occupation. In 1652, the French authorities relinquished the territories of Catalonia south of the Pyrenees, but retained control of Roussillon, leading to the signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, which finally ended the war between France and Spain., with the partition of the restless Catalonia between the two countries. The Portuguese Restoration War ended with the Treaty of Lisbon in 1668, which put an end to the 60-year-old Iberian Union. The autonomy of each territory was reaffirmed, within the called neophoralism and from the respect to the fueros.
The war outside Europe
The Thirty Years' War can be described as the first pan-European war in the second half of the second millennium, in which almost all major countries participated. It was a religious war, but its main reason was the competition between states for hegemony in Europe, however, due to the international scale of the war and the involvement of colonial empires, this conflict would be of a great intensity that some have baptized this event as the real World War I, before the one that occurred in the XX century. In 1580 Philip II of Spain also became ruler of the Portuguese Empire, creating the Iberian Union; As long-standing trade rivals, the Dutch-Portuguese War of 1602-1663 was an offshoot of the Dutch struggle for independence from Spain. The Portuguese dominated the transatlantic economy known as the triangular trade, in which African slaves were shipped from West Africa and Portuguese Angola to work on American plantations in Portuguese Brazil, which exported sugar and tobacco to Europe.
Known to Dutch historians as the "Grand Design" (a West India Company plan to cut off Spanish-Portuguese power in the Atlantic and establish trade as lucrative as in the East Indies), control of this trade would not only be extremely profitable (the real motivation for the war was the Dutch attempt to gain control of the Indian spice trade) but would also deprive the Spanish of the funds needed to finance their war in the Netherlands. The Twelve Years' Truce with the Dutch followed in 1609, which allowed the Southern Netherlands to recover, but was a de facto recognition of the independence of the Dutch Republic, and many European powers established diplomatic relations with the Dutch. The truce did not stop the commercial and colonial expansion of the Dutch in the Caribbean and the East Indies, although Spain had tried to impose the liquidation of the Dutch East India Company as a condition of the treaty. Minor concessions from the Dutch Republic were the removal of the plan to create a Dutch West India Company and to stop the harassment of the Portuguese in Asia. Both concessions were temporary, as the Dutch soon again took advantage of Portuguese interests, which had already led to the Dutch-Portuguese War in 1602 and would continue until 1654. At least with peace in Europe, the Twelve Years' Truce it gave Philip's regime a start to regain its financial position, however, as a consequence of its end, the Dutch Republic began to receive support from France and England at the start of the Thirty Years' War. With this, the Dutch States General began an aggressive campaign of commercial expansion to the New World, using privateers to attack and plunder the Spanish and Portuguese fleets. While Antwerp suffered from a de facto trade blockade, the Dutch had made serious advances against the Portuguese empire in Asia and greatly expanded their activities in the Caribbean. The Portuguese asked how Spanish rule could be justified if the king did not protect them against their commercial rivals. The Council of the Indies complained about the Dutch incursions into America.
By the time the truce ended, the Dutch were the aggressors in this global war for commercial interests; the initiative for an armed conflict almost always came from the Dutch side. Dutch power in Asia grew over the years. In 1619, the VOC conquered Jakarta, making it their base in the east, consolidating the Dutch position after the Siege of Batavia against the Mataram Sultanate. For the next twenty years, Goa and Batavia incessantly fought each other in the Indian Ocean as capitals of the rival Portuguese state of India and the VOC from Southeast Asia. In Java, the city of Batavia was established as the capital of the Dutch colonies in the East Indies. Batavia's administrators quickly came into conflict with the capital of Portuguese India, Goa. Then, the Dutch West India Company was formed in 1621, its creation was an initiative of Flemish and Brabant Calvinists who had taken refuge in the Republic of the Seven Provinces, to escape religious persecution, with the purpose of achieving this goal. of the "Grand Design," and a Dutch fleet captured the Brazilian port of Salvador, Bahia in 1624. The Dutch response was concentrated at sea. They took Recife from Pernambuco, on the coast of Portuguese Brazil. The Portuguese resistance reorganized from Arraial do Rio Vermelho containing the invaders in the urban perimeter of Salvador. In 1622, the Anglo-Persian Capture of Hormuz would take place in the middle of the Luso-Persian War, the defeat of the Portuguese had many consequences, including the defeat in the Mombasa War and the capture of Fort Jesus by the Imam of Muscat, supported by the Persian king, Abbas the Great, which completely changed the balance of power and trade, as it gave the British East India Company the opportunity to develop trade with Persia. The Portuguese position improved in the area in 1630 with the conquest of the island of Queshm. In the same year of 1622, Macao was attacked several times, it resisted the attempt to conquer the city, after two days of fighting, in the Battle of Macao, which would become the biggest Dutch defeat after the Portuguese recaptured it in 1625. While the Dutch failed to capture Macau in four attempts from where Portugal monopolized the lucrative Sino-Japan trade, the Japanese, with the shogunate growing suspicious of the intentions of the Catholic Portuguese, and following the Shimabara Rebellion of Japanese samurai and Christians allied to the Roman Catholics against the Dutch-allied Tokugawa shogunate, led to their expulsion from the Portuguese in 1639. Under the subsequent sakoku policy, from 1639 to 1854 (215 years), the The Dutch were the only European power allowed to operate in Japan, confined in 1639 to Hirado and then from 1641 to Deshima. A proxy conflict would also break out in Vietnam, the Trịnh–Nguyễn Civil War, in which the Trịnh Tráng faction gained Dutch support and the Nguyễn faction Portuguese support.
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The first Danish East India Company, founded in 1616 under King Christian IV, focused on trade with India. The first expedition, under Admiral Gjedde, took two years to reach Ceylon, losing more than half its crew. Portugal had claimed the island when they arrived, but a treaty with the Kingdom of Kandy was signed on 10 May 1620, and the foundations of a settlement were laid at Trincomalee on the east coast of the island. They occupied the colossal temple of Koneswaramen in May 1620 to begin the fortification of the peninsula before being expelled by the Portuguese. After landing on the Indian mainland, a treaty was concluded with the ruler of the Kingdom of Tanjore, Raghunatha Nayak, who granted the Danes possession of the city of Tranquebar (which would remain a colony of the Danish empire for 200 years) and permission to trade in the kingdom by treaty of November 19, 1620. At Tranquebar they established Dansborg and installed Captain Crappe as the first governor (opperhoved) of Danish India. The treaty was renewed on July 30, 1621, and then renewed and confirmed on May 10, 1676, by Shivaji, the founder of the Maratha Empire. The Danish-Norwegian presence was also not wanted by the English and Dutch traders. They saw that the Danes and Norwegians benefited from the protection of their navies, at no cost. However, the English and Dutch were unable to make any move to decisively nullify the Danish-Norwegian trade, due to the entanglement of all these trading nations in wars in Europe, in particular, the Thirty Years' War; the consequent ramifications on the foreign policy of each nation effectively silenced the reactions of the English and Dutch. By 1625, a factory had been established in Masulipatnam (present-day Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh), the most important emporium in the region. Minor trading offices were established at Pipli and Balasore. Despite this, by 1627 the colony was in such poor financial shape that it had only three ships left and was unable to pay the agreed tribute to the Nayak, increasing local tensions in India and the Portuguese conflict. Dutch.
Meanwhile, in East Asia, the Dutch had been trying to get permission to trade freely in China, without much success. In 1622 they established a position at Pescadores, but were defeated militarily by the Ming in a war that lasted from 1623 to 1624, forcing the Dutch to withdraw from Penghu and settle in Taiwan. The establishment of the Dutch of the Dutch East India Company in Anping (with the initial name of Orange and later Fort Zeelandia), in the bay of the current city of Tainan in the south of the island of Taiwan since 1624, was negative for Spain due to the flourishing trade between Chinese merchants and the Spanish colony of Manila. The Dutch presence in Taiwan posed a threat to Spanish commercial interests, and Spain, at the initiative of the Philippine Captain General Fernando de Silva, sent an expedition from the Philippines to conquer Taiwan under the command of Antonio Carreño Valdés. They disembarked in the north of the island, avoiding the Dutch who were settled in the south, on May 7, 1626, in a place they called Santiago. The port of The Holy Trinity (now Keelung) was founded in Jilong Bay, defended by a fort called San Salvador on the small island of Heping. 6 small fortifications were created to defend the fort with a contingent of 200 Spaniards with just over a dozen artillery pieces. In America, the Spanish Crown would send a powerful Portuguese-Spanish fleet of fifty-two ships with twelve thousand men in 1625, under the command of Fadrique de Toledo Osório, known as Jornada dos Vassalos. This blockade the port of Salvador, getting the Dutch surrender. That year Piet Heyn attempted an attack on Vila de Vitória, in the Captaincy of Espírito Santo, which was frustrated at the initiative of the young María Ortiz. He then goes to Luanda, which he attacks. In the same year, there was a naval engagement between a Portuguese fleet and an allied Anglo-Dutch fleet, which took place from February 1 to 24, 1625 in the Persian Gulf, perhaps the largest naval battle ever fought in the Persian Gulf. Although it was an Allied tactical victory, with the Anglo-Dutch force inflicting their losses on the Portuguese several times over, it resulted in a Portuguese strategic victory as they were able to regain control of the Persian Gulf, however it marked the beginning of the end of Portuguese control. from said gulf, as it ceased to pose a threat to its European trading rivals after 1629 due to the Portuguese side suffering nearly ten times as many losses as the combined Anglo-Dutch fleet. Also in 1625, would be the Battle of Elmina, fought near the castle of São Jorge da Mina (Elmina Castle) on the Portuguese Gold Coast in 1625. It was fought between 1,200 soldiers of the Dutch West India Company (transported by a fleet of 15 ships) that landed and assaulted the castle's Portuguese garrison. The garrison was reinforced by 200 African allies placed at the service of the Portuguese governor Sottomayor by the local caciques, resulting in a Portuguese victory. In 1628 the privateer Piet Heyn seized the fleet of the Indies in Cuba, during the Battle of the Bay of Matanzas; a second Dutch fleet sent to America established Dutch Brazil in 1630, which remained in Dutch hands until 1654. The next part was to seize the slave-trading centers in Africa, mainly Angola and São Tomé; Supported by the Kingdom of Kongo, whose position was threatened by the Portuguese expansion, the Dutch would successfully occupy both territories in 1641. Given this, King Philip III of Portugal authorized the creation of the Portuguese East India Company to deal with the its Dutch rival in the East. Also in 1629, the Battle of the Duyon River took place between the Portuguese forces commanded by Nuno Álvares Botelho, recognized in Portugal as the last great commander of Portuguese India, and the forces of the Sultanate of Aceh (allied with the Ottomans), who were Led by General Lassemane, they achieved an absolute victory for the Portuguese whereby the strength of their formidable fleet of the sultanate came to an end. The presence of the Spanish in the north of the island of Taiwan and the Dutch in the south led to a rivalry between the two powers. The Spanish in Taiwan managed to repel the first Dutch naval aggression in 1630 organized by Pieter Nuyts. The loss of one of the annual supply ships sent from Manila caused the Spanish on the island to go inland in search of provisions. As a consequence, in 1636 there was an uprising of the indigenous people of the Tamsui area, who destroyed the Spanish fortification, killing 30 of its 60 defenders, but it was later rebuilt.
In addition, In North America and the Caribbean, during January 1624, a small English expedition had established settlements on the island of San Cristóbal in the Caribbean although those islands were claimed by Spain since the islands were discovered by the Spanish in 1498. French colonists soon joined them and local cooperation between the two nations against the Caribs developed. Already in 1625/26, the island served a French brig as an escape and base. Soon after, the two fortifications became Fort Charles and Fort Pointe de Sable. Even during the war between their home countries in Europe, Anglo-French cooperation continued in the Caribbean. Only after the conclusion of the peace treaty between England and France in Europe in July 1629 did a brief shooting break out over the territorial division of the island. Meanwhile, English colonists had also founded a first settlement on neighboring Nevis Island in 1628. Another Dutch maritime campaign, led by Admiral Jacques l'Hermite and the so-called Nassau fleet, had sailed around Cape Horn. to attack Spanish territories from the other side of the South American subcontinent and although news of this expedition was scant, newspapers did their best to follow its course. Although L'Hermite had died in early June 1624 in Peru and his fleet had left for Indonesia. Also, between September 25 and October 17, 1625, a Dutch expedition led by Balduino Enrico (Boudewijn Hendricksz) tried to seize the island by besieging San Juan for several months in the Battle of San Juan. Ultimately, however, he proves unable to capture the city's fortress and has to retreat. To protect their precarious position in Albany from the nearby English and French, the New Netherland Company founded the fortified city of New Amsterdam in 1625, at the mouth of the Hudson, encouraging settlement from the surrounding areas of Long Island and New Jersey. In Canada, in the midst of the Anglo-French War, an English force led by David Kirke launched a campaign against New France in 1628, targeting the French colony of Quebec under Samuel de Champlain. The force sailed up the St. Lawrence River and occupied Tadoussac and Cap Tourmente. Kirke quickly razed the French settlements and then blockaded the St. Lawrence. The English managed to capture a supply convoy bound for New France, severely damaging that Catholic colony's ability to withstand attack. Winter forced the Kirke brothers to return to England, where King Charles I, hearing of the successes, increased the number of Kirke's fleet to return in the spring. Champlain, whose residents were on the brink of starvation, expected a relief fleet to arrive. The fleet was intercepted and captured by the English on its way up the river to Quebec. Kirke, now aware of the desperate conditions in Quebec, demanded surrender; Having no choice, Champlain surrendered on July 19, 1629. The English occupied the colony with Kirke as governor. In 1632, Charles I agreed to return the lands in exchange for Louis XIII agreeing to pay Charles's wife's dowry.. These terms became law with the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. The lands of Quebec and Acadia were returned to the French Company of the Hundred Associates.
In the same year 1629, in the midst of the Anglo-Spanish War, the Anglo-French colony of the islands of Saint Kitts and Nevis had grown enough to be considered a threat to the Spanish Antilles. The English colonists had been recruited to the number of almost 3,000 troops, and had been supplied with cannon and ammunition. Accordingly, orders were given to the commander of the Armada de Sotavento, in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, to clear out the heavily armed French and English colonies. In autumn, then, two Spanish fleets arrived. The first consisted of seven galleons and three other ships under the command of Admiral Fadrique de Toledo and his assistant Vice Admiral Antonio de Oquendo. The second fleet was made up of ten galleons under the command of Admiral Martín de Vallecilla. Later she would escort the annual Silver Fleet. The Spanish expedition, under the command of Admiral Fadrique Álvarez de Toledo Osorio, first approached Nieves Island, taking it and destroying several English ships anchored there. Later, Spanish soldiers were sent ashore to destroy the islands. few newly built structures and taking the colonists prisoner. When Nieves was occupied by Spanish forces, the hacendados were abandoned by their servants and slaves, who swam toward the Spanish ships shouting "liberty, joyful freedom" 34; preferring collaboration with the Spanish to the yoke of their English patrons. On September 7, 1629, the Spanish moved to the sister island of San Cristóbal and burned down the entire settlement. After being stopped by a storm, Admiral de Toledo's fleet appeared off San Cristóbal and bombarded the French fort Basseterre for the first time. Later, he landed troops on a beach near Fort Charles. The English repulsed the first attacks in a prepared trench system, but thanks to their superior numbers, the Spanish finally broke through the English defense. The French commander Du Roissey then evacuated 400 French settlers from the island. As the Spanish razed Fort Charles, the remaining English and French colonists on St. Kitts surrendered. The expedition represented a great Spanish success: 129 cannons, 42 mortars, 1,350 muskets, ammunition, 3,100 prisoners and half a dozen prizes had fallen into the hands of Admiral de Toledo. In the weeks that followed, de Toledo continued to attack smaller Anglo-French settlements, for example, on Hispaniola. Leaving Saint Kitts and Nevis on October 4, 1629, he took 800 Catholic settlers to Cartagena while the other 2,300 were returned to Europe on Spanish ships. However, no Spanish garrison was left behind, so the English were soon able to return. As a consequence of the Battle of San Cristóbal and under the terms of the surrender, the Spanish agreed to ship some 700 of the colonists back to England. Other settlers, estimated at between 200 and 400, managed to escape capture by fleeing into the hills and forests. After the signing of the Treaty of Madrid in 1630 between the English and Spanish crowns, the Spanish left, handing over the island to England. The escapees returned to their plantations, thus forming the nucleus of a new phase of colonization. It had turned out to be a costly fiasco for England, whose merchants lost profitable markets for Flemish cloth due to heavy customs duties after the war.. From the spring of 1630, they increased their colonization efforts in the Caribbean (particularly the Bahamas), using Tortuga as a base for a long time. Dutch on the island, eliminating a center for Dutch piracy, which weakened both piracy and Dutch trade in the Caribbean. In 1633 the Spanish invaded Saint Martin and Anguilla, expelling the French and Dutch inhabitants. The two joined forces to repel the Spanish and it was during a naval battle of San Martin in 1644 that the Dutch commander Peter Stuyvesant, later Governor of New Amsterdam, unsuccessfully besieged Fort Amsterdam and was forced to retreat with the loss of hundreds of men, resulting in an unsuccessful effort to recapture the island until its return in the Peace of Westphalia. In 1638, when Sweden was a great military power, a colony of its own was established in North America with the mandate to establish Protestant domains between Florida and Newfoundland for commercial purposes, founding New Sweden and being colonized by Swedes, Finns and Estonians at the service of the Company. South Sweden, as well as retired Dutch and German shareholders from the war front.
Although there were many defeats inflicted on the Protestants in the combat front against the English, there was not the same fate in the combat phase against the Dutch, since the resurgence of the slave trade from Africa and the resurgence of pressure fiscal are examples of situations that contributed to the end of the Spanish prosperity experienced shortly before the Thirty Years' War, which would lead to the diversion of the wealth of Portugal from the Habsburg monarchy to support the Catholic side in the conflict, creating tensions within the Iberian Union. The link between Brazil and the Spanish Crown, as well as the monarchy of Felipe IV, was established in a subtle and secondary way. The “marginality” attributed to the area was expressed in the writings of the inhabitants of the territory between the XVI and centuries. ="font-variant:small-caps;text-transform:lowercase">XVII when they mentioned the lack of help from the Spanish crown, as well as the absence of records of the activities carried out in America and the brief mention of the territory in the documents that record the weight of Felipe's monarchy in the rest of the world. In addition, the will of his father, Felipe III, despite numbering his various territorial possessions, did not include Brazilian lands. Even the Portuguese Crown and those who occupied the lands understood that, before and during Habsburg rule, Brazil was of little importance.
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The Captaincy of Pernambuco, the richest of all the Portuguese possessions, is conquered by the WIC in 1630, through a new and powerful fleet with sixty-seven ships, the largest ever seen in the colony, under the command by Hendrick Lonck. The occupied territory is renamed New Netherlands covering seven of the nineteen captaincies in Brazil at that time. However, much of Brazil remained in Portuguese hands, who were a constant threat to Dutch rule. In 1631, a Portuguese-Spanish squadron defeated the Dutch at the Battle of Abrolhos and managed to land troops in Pernambuco. However, in 1637, the Dutch conquered the last pockets of Luso-Brazilian resistance in New Holland. Starting the government of Count Mauricio de Nassau. The following year, the Dutch took São Jorge da Mina in Guinea after the Battle of Elmina, initiating attacks on trading posts on the West African coast, with the aim of securing slaves for sugar production in the conquered territories in Brazil. In 1637, the Dutch founded the first trading post on the banks of the Mekong. In the future, its influence spread to the entire South China Sea. Trade was mainly between Cambodia and Japan. Starting in 1641, Portuguese ships were prohibited from trading in Japanese waters, while Chinese and Dutch were not. In an attempt to circumvent the ban, the Portuguese transported their goods on Chinese ships. A Portuguese-Spanish fleet failed to land in Pernambuco again in 1640, being destroyed near the island of Itamaracá. The war for Brazil restarts. Meanwhile, the Dutch were conquering Sao Tome and Principe and Luanda in Angola (as the Kingdom of the Congo joined the Republic of the Seven United Provinces of the Netherlands against Portugal in 1641), both of which were slave supply centers, said Dutch occupation of Angola would encourage a war of Portuguese reconquest of Angola. Dutch forces took control of Luanda and signed a treaty with Queen Nzinga of the Ndongo Kingdom. Nzinga unsuccessfully attacked the Portuguese at Fort Massangano. She recruited new fighters and prepared to face the Portuguese in battle again, but Salvador Correia de Sá led the Portuguese forces from Brazil to drive out the Dutch and reassert control in Angola. Nzinga's forces withdrew again to Matamba. In addition, there would be Battles in Goa in 1638 and 1639 between the Portuguese and the Dutch, in which the Dutch would later intervene in the Sinhalese-Portuguese War for which Ceylon would be besieged by the VOC, with support from the Kingdom of Kandy, from 1640, defeating the Portuguese and their Indian allies laskiriñña. With this victory, the Dutch gained access to a large port which they later used as a convenient naval base for attacking Goa and other Portuguese South Indian defenses. They also gained access to the Sri Lankan cinnamon trade and achieved a permanent foothold on the island. On July 14, 1641, after a hard fight that lasted five months, Malacca was conquered by the Dutch VOC, in what was the culmination of the war in Indonesia and the greatest blow to the Portuguese empire in the east, depriving it of an important control of the strait. WIC Admiral Jan Corneliszoon Lichthardt captures the island of São Luís from the Portuguese, beginning Dutch rule in Maranhão. The Dutch take Axim in present-day Ghana in 1642. Simultaneously, the Cambodian prince Ponheya Tyan, with the complicity of Malaya Muslim merchants, organized the overthrow and assassination of King Ang Non I. With their help, he converted from Buddhism to Islam changed his name to Ibrahim and married a Malay woman. After acceding to the throne, the new king sent a letter to the Governor-General of the Dutch East India Company in Batavia: Anthony van Diemen. In May 1642, a Dutch emissary arrived in Cambodia with two ships and congratulated the king on his victory over the usurpers, and also warned him against the influence of the Catholic monarchy of Spain and Portugal, which had influence under the previous rulers and were enemies of his country, the new monarch granted many privileges to his new co-religionists, who were mostly merchants and feared competition with the Dutch, they managed to convince the king to break relations with the latter, which would generate a war between the Netherlands against Cambodia in 1644. In the same year of 1642, the Spanish presence in Taiwan put an end to the offensive of a Dutch fleet that conquered La Santísima Trinidad and expelled the Spanish from the island of Formosa.
In 1642, the Danish-Norwegian colony in India declares war on the Mughal Empire and begins raiding ships in the Bay of Bengal. Within a few months they captured one of the Mughal emperor's ships, incorporated it into their fleet (renamed the Bengali Prize) and sold the goods at Tranquebar for a substantial profit, but the following year Holland and Sweden they declare war on Denmark-Norway in the middle of Torstenson's War. Danish and Norwegian factory holdings increasingly fall under Dutch control. The Nayak send small bands to assault Tranquebar.
There would also be a Dutch expedition to Valdivia, with the aim of establishing a colony in the abandoned ruins of the Spanish city of Valdivia, in the Kingdom of Chile. On its way to this city, the expedition sacked the Spanish settlements of Carelmapu and Castro in the Chiloé province. The Dutch arrived in Valdivia on August 24, 1643 and gave the colony the name of Brouwershaven, in honor of its captain Hendrik Brouwer, who had died several weeks before this milestone. The colony had a short life and was abandoned on October 28, 1643. However, this occupation generated great alarm among the authorities of the Viceroyalty of Peru, who decided in 1645 to refound the city of Valdivia and start construction. of a system of maritime fortifications to prevent the occurrence of other similar projects. Also in 1646 was the Battle of La Naval de Manila in which Spanish forces repelled several attacks by Dutch forces attempting to invade Manila in the Philippines, which coupled with the decisive victory at the Battle of Puerto de Cavite the next year, abandoned their efforts to capture Manila and the Philippines, and Spain retained the Captaincy General of the Philippines. In 1647, the Kingdom of the Congo and the Kingdom of Dongo, with the help of Jaga warriors, would participate in the last successful campaign against the Portuguese and their African allies and the Kingdom of Benguela, at the Battle of Combi.
The process of Hispanic expansion, which began in 1560 and lasted until the second decade of the XVII century, was It was consolidated with the expulsion of the French and Dutch, in addition to the defeat of indigenous groups that resisted, as a result of numerous conflicts, as the Pernambucan insurrection of the Luso-Brazilians dissatisfied with the WIC administration broke out. Between 1648-1649, the Battles of the Guararapes were fought, won by the Luso-Brazilians in the State of Pernambuco. The first battle took place on April 19, 1648 and the second on February 19, 1649. The Luso-Brazilian forces were led by the landowners André Vidal de Negreiros and João Fernandes Vieira, the African Henrique Dias and the indigenous Felipe Camarão. In the same year, 1648. In Rio de Janeiro Salvador Correia de Sá e Benevides prepares a fleet of 15 ships under the pretext of bringing aid to the Portuguese besieged by the warriors of Queen Nzinga in Angola. They left Rio de Janeiro on May 12 and, thanks to contacts with Jesuit priests, managed to recapture Luanda on August 15. The campaign lasted from 1648 to 1652, recovering Angola and the island of São Tomé for the Portuguese.
Unlike in Asia, Dutch successes against the Portuguese in Brazil and Africa were short-lived. Years of settlement had left large Portuguese communities under the rule of the Dutch, who were by nature traders rather than colonizers. Although they were eventually driven from Brazil, Angola, and São Tomé, the Dutch retained the Cape of Good Hope, as well as Portuguese Asian trading posts in Malacca, the Malabar coast, the Moluccas, and Ceylon. of Spain to provide protection against these attacks globally increased the resentment of the Portuguese and were important factors in the outbreak of the Portuguese War of Restoration in 1640. The war resulted in the loss of Portuguese rule in the east and the founding of the empire Dutch colony in the conquered territories. British interests also benefited from the protracted conflict between its two main rivals in the East.
Simultaneously, the potential for conflict between the Ottomans and Venice was still present, as evidenced in 1638, when a Venetian fleet attacked and destroyed a fleet of Barbary pirates who had sought protection in the Ottoman port of Valona by bombarding the city in the process. Sultan Murad IV was enraged: he threatened to execute all Venetians in the Empire and prohibited Venetian trade. Finally, and since the Ottomans were still at war with the Persians, the situation calmed down and the Republic paid the Ottomans an indemnity of 250,000 coins. However, a similar episode in 1644 had a completely different result. The Knights of Malta, encouraged, resumed attacks on Muslim shipping throughout the Mediterranean. Its economy of the Republic of Venice, which had once prospered due to its control over the oriental spice trade, had suffered as a result of the opening of the new Atlantic trade routes and the loss of the important German market due to the War. Thirty Years. In addition, the Republic had been embroiled in a series of wars in northern Italy, such as the Mantuan War, and was further weakened by an outbreak of the plague in 1629-1631. In July 1644, an Ottoman ship bound for Egypt, carrying the former black eunuch head of the harem, the kadi of Cairo, and many pilgrims bound for Mecca, was besieged and captured by the Knights of Malta. In response, the Ottomans in 1645 amassed a sizeable fleet with no set objective, although many believed it would sail on Malta. Finally, the Turks landed on Crete in 1648. The Venetians had to defend their last major island in the Aegean alone, as Austria was recovering from the Thirty Years' War and Spain was at war with France. However, the Republic of Venice still had a powerful fleet, and the Turkish siege of the last Venetian stronghold on Crete dragged on. Between 1645 and 1648, the Ottomans captured almost the entire island, and in May 1648 began a siege of the capital Candia (present-day Heraklion). The Venetian blockade of the Dardanelles was a severe humiliation for the Ottoman Empire and made it impossible to supply properly to the expeditionary force in Crete. Over the next ten years, after the Thirty Years' War had ended, Spain managed to make peace with France and Austria resumed the war with the Turks. However, in the end, in 1664, the Turks made peace with Austria, and the Venetian fleet was finally defeated, and the island of Crete fell after a ten-year siege.
Peace of Westphalia
After four years of peace negotiations, peace was finally concluded in October 1648 and after thirty years, the war finally ended. Attempts at mediation and the search for peace had already been made in the 1630s, but the parties constantly tried to find moments that were more appropriate, that is, more would be gained by peace than by continuing the war. In 1638, preliminary negotiations began in Hamburg sometimes referred to as the "Hamburg Congress". The discussions focused on establishing the conditions to start peace talks. There was no result from these discussions due to the fact that France had no interest in a conference or in peace. From the imperial side, the German states were not recognized as equal bargaining parties and the withdrawal from this position occurred gradually and was not final until 1645. In December 1641, an agreement was signed to begin real peace negotiations.. The plan was for negotiations to begin in March 1642, but the first diplomats arrived in Osnabrück and Münster in the summer of 1643 and French envoys did not arrive in Münster until March 1644, at the same time that the Swedish negotiator Johan Oxenstierna was entering the Osnabrück. The Imperial Envoy Maximilian von Trauttmansdorff arrived last of all, in November 1645. In Münster, the Catholic parties negotiated between France, Spain, Bavaria, representatives of the Elector of Cologne, Mainz and Trier, the Catholic States, and negotiators from the Netherlands. Protestants with representatives of the emperor. In Osnabrück, negotiations took place between the Protestant parties of Sweden, Brandenburg, Saxony, Württemberg and Hesse, as well as German Protestant statesmen and representatives of the emperor. France and Sweden presented their demands in the summer of 1645 and thus negotiations could begin. The parties were now prepared to make peace. After the defeat at Jankov, Emperor Ferdinand III realized that peace was the only option and France wanted peace in order to direct all its forces against the main enemy Spain and thus be content with minor territorial gains in a peace deal.. The Swedes rejected a proposal that Christian of Denmark act as mediator, and the parties eventually agreed to the papal legate Fabio Chigi and the Venetian envoy Alvise Contarini. Finally, the success of the Protestant side in 1648 and the looting of Prague had convinced the emperor that it was time for peace. The negotiations were delayed because the delegates did not have a position of power that would allow them to go beyond the negotiating framework. Therefore, they had to send letters by post or courier to the capital of their home country. He took two weeks to Stockholm and at least four weeks to Madrid to send a message. The Peace of Westphalia could finally be signed in October 1648 and consisted of two different treaties; in which Sweden and the Emperor were the central parties to the treaty and France and the Emperor the other. The Westphalian Treaties conclude the Thirty Years' War and, simultaneously, the Eighty Years' War, although Mazarin insisted on excluding to the Burgundian Circle of the treaty of Münster, which allowed France to continue its campaign against Spain in the Netherlands
As a consequence of these treaties, France achieved important territorial advantages in Alsace and the Rhenish border, Sweden was left with western Pomerania and various German enclaves in the North Sea and the Baltic, becoming a member of the Empire. Brandenburg expanded into eastern Pomerania and obtained some territories in western Germany, while the Duke of Bavaria retained the upper Palatinate and the status of elector, which would be restored to the heirs of Frederick V, along with the lower Palatinate, a fact that resulted in the increase of the imperial electoral college to eight members. For its part, the formal independence of Switzerland was accepted by the Empire. This institution suffered the most, since the recognition of the sovereignty of princes and cities emptied the imperial title of its content. The consecration of the religious freedom of the princes, who would impose their faith on their states, extended to Calvinism and put an end to the cycle of religious wars that had bloodied Europe since the XVI, as Article 7 recognized Calvinism as a Reformed faith and removed the ius reformandi requirement that if a ruler changed his religion, his subjects had to do the same. These terms did not apply to the hereditary lands of the Habsburg monarchy, such as Lower and Upper Austria. Article 5 reconfirmed the Augsburg agreement, established 1624 as the basis, or "Normaljahr", for determining the dominant religion of a state, and guaranteed freedom of worship for religious minorities. It has been argued that they were a "great turning point in German and European legal history," for they went beyond normal peace agreements and effected important constitutional and religious changes in the Empire itself.
The Viennese Habsburgs, despite some concessions, strengthened control over their patrimonial possessions, governed from Austria. The big loser in this protracted conflict was Germany as a whole, subjected to terrible devastation for three decades – especially in regions like the Rhineland, which lost two-thirds of its population – and affected by material losses that took decades to repair. For their part, England and the Netherlands established themselves as maritime powers, which would lead to great commercial and colonial development, but also to a military rivalry between them. France confirmed itself as the new European power, although it still had to settle its rivalry with Spain.
The French army of the Prince of Condé defeated the Spanish at the Battle of Lens in 1648, which was followed by negotiations. The political entities that took part in them were: the Holy Roman Empire under Ferdinand III, France, Spain, the United Provinces, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark-Norway, Portugal, and the Papacy. The peace conference progressed by leaps and bounds due to this series of warlike situations. All European countries participated in the international conference except England, Poland, the Ottoman Empire and Russia (although the “Grand Duke of Moscow” is included in the list of allies, at the insistence of Sweden). The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 was the result of these negotiations. Ferdinand resisted signing until the last possible moment, doing so on October 24 only after a crushing French victory over Spain at Lens, and with Swedish troops about to take Prague.
Negotiated over several years, they are signed in two separate places, for reasons of precedence and religious incompatibility:
- In Osnabrück between the Sacro Empire, Sweden and the Protestant powers.
- In Münster between the Empire, France and the other Catholic powers, in addition to the peace between Spain and the Dutch Republic
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The war between France and Spain is not included in its provisions. A total of 109 delegations attended at one time or another, with talks split between Münster and Osnabrück. The central ideas of the Westphalian peace were:
- The Peace of Prague was incorporated into the Peace of Westphalia (which also incorporated the Peace of Augsburg, although the dates of the land possessions that had been established through the Peace of Prague were again established from 1624 to 1627, which favored the Protestants). The Calvinists were, in this way, internationally recognized, and the Edict of Restitution was again rescisded. Speyer's first Diet was accepted.
- Territorial redeployments:
- France gained recognition of its possessions in the bishops of Metz, Toul, Verdun and part of the Alsace (Belfort, Ferrete County, Sundgau and the forty imperial villas of the Landvogtei of Haguenau). I also got Breisach and Philippsburg. Territories at the expense of the Archdiocese of Austria and SIRG. He also acquired a vote at the German Imperial Diet.
- Sweden obtained the Western Pomerania (at the expense of Brandenburg to inherit it), Wismar, Poel and the Archbishops of Bremen and Verden. He also gained control over the mouth of the Oder, Elba and Weser. Like France, he got a vote at the German Imperial Diet. Denmark, which claimed for itself the so-called Elba duchess was ignored.
- Bavaria acquired a vote in the Imperial Council of Electors and preserves the High Palatinate.
- Saxony received Lusace, lost by the Kingdom of Bohemia
- Brandenburg obtained the central Pomerania once signed the Stettin Treaty (1653), the Archbishopric of Magdeburg as Duchy (to the death of Augustus of Saxony-Weissenfels in 1680), the Obispado of Minden and Halberstadt.
- Switzerland was recognized as a completely independent nation.
- The United Provinces were recognized as an independent nation (before their rebellion, the previous century, they had formed part of the Habsburg monarchy) and they surrendered Erkelenz's fortress to the Netherlands and Gennep to Brandenburg. Münster Treaty.
- To the German states (about 360), they were given the right to exercise their own foreign policy, but they could not wage wars against the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. The empire, as a political entity, could still undertake wars and sign treaties.
- The possibility of election of the Roman emperor was abolished livete imperatore (in the life of the reigning emperor).
- The Palatinates were divided between the restored Elector Palatino Carlos Luis (son and heir to Federico V) and the Elector-Duque Maximiliano de Baviera (which meant the division between Protestants and Catholics). Carlos Luis obtained the Bajo Palatinado (Palatinado renano) and Maximiliano maintained the Alto Palatinado. It creates a 8. election seat for Carlos Luis.
- The Principality of Transylvania was included in the peace treaties as an ally of the French and the Swedish, and Transylvania was considered a sovereign country, a stabilizing power in the region. Their territorial gains were recognized in the 1645 Lins Peace, for which he received the seven Hungarian counties of Tisza (Szatmár, Szabolcs, Bereg, Ugocsa, Zemplén, Abaúj, Borsod).
Questions that remained unanswered, especially on the issue of troop withdrawal, were clarified in the following months, since the peace treaty did not affect the order for the demobilization and withdrawal of troops. Decision on these issues was entrusted to the Nuremberg Executive Congress, which began in April 1649. The transfer of soldiers to civilian life was problematic in many places. Some earlier mercenaries formed bands that roamed the country, while others served as guards to protect themselves from those same gangs. A certain advantage of the failed agreement between France and Spain was that the soldiers were able to find more employment in the continuation of the war between the two countries. Venetian announcements of the Cretan war against the Ottomans also offered many mercenaries the opportunity to continue their military service. The fighting did not end immediately, as demobilizing more than 200,000 soldiers was a complex affair, and the last garrison Swedish did not leave Germany until 1654.
This peace created the geopolitical relations of a Europe that persisted until 1815 and beyond; the nation-state of France, the beginnings of a unified Germany and a separate Austro-Hungarian bloc, a diminished but still significant Spain, smaller independent states such as Denmark, Sweden, and Switzerland, along with a division of the Netherlands between the Dutch Republic and what became Belgium in 1830.
In the empire, the validity of the Augsburg Religious Peace Ordinance was confirmed, the "reservation clause for the clergy," which was the cause of the conflict, was abolished, and the limits of the possessions of the Catholic church to the state from January 1, 1624. In addition, the Calvinists were also officially recognized on an equal footing with Lutheranism, and the Imperial Diet was decided by an agreement between the old and new factions, which which basically prevented religious issues from causing conflict within the empire. However, freedom of religion remained allowed by the territorial prince, but individual freedom was not allowed. The authority of the emperor was withdrawn, the rights of the imperial state were strengthened, and the consent of the imperial states was required for war with foreign countries and the enactment of law. Thus, the "freedom of Germany" it became "freedom of the German states". Imperial princes received the right to enter into alliances with each other and with foreign states, as long as these alliances were not directed against the emperor or the empire. Amnesty was granted to all disgraced princes and cities, trade restrictions and embargoes imposed during the war were lifted, and free navigation on the Rhine was introduced. At the same time, the mouths of all major rivers through the which trade was carried out ended up in the hands of other countries. For the Holy Empire, the Peace of Westphalia meant the loss of real power for the emperor and greater autonomy for the more than 300 resulting states. The Empire breaks up into a multitude of small, virtually independent states: their possessor has only very little authority while the Turks threaten its eastern borders. In addition, its weakening opens the door to the advent of modern States, a prelude to the rights of peoples to self-determination, therefore to the advent of modern democracies.
The Westphalian Treaties raise and initiate the need for a political equilibrium “that operates by and in the plurality of States”. In this sense, these agreements reveal the end of a traditional order and the progressive establishment, and later, the domination of a new order. This new order put an end to the idea of a perpetual earthly peace administered by "a last-day [European] empire" returning to the idea of a pastoral authority. From now on, the principles of human administration will be based more and more in the primacy of the reason of State. These treaties appear, therefore, as a temporary pivot, a threshold of passage from an authoritarian order of a pastoral type to the progressive establishment of a governmentality based on a political rationality that favors the political economy of the sovereign State, the latter in itself a foundation. of modern and contemporary international law. Proof of this new order would be that peace was later denounced by Pope Innocent X, who considered the bishoprics ceded to France and Brandenburg as property of the Catholic Church and, therefore, his to assign them, issues based on the old order. from Christian universities. which were relegated by the new order of reason of state. He also disappointed many exiles by accepting Catholicism as the dominant religion in Bohemia, Upper and Lower Austria, all of which were Protestant strongholds before 1618, reviling the extent to which it had elevated its power the new modern state against the old medieval state.
Historiography has pointed to the peace of Westphalia as the peace in which the first international system was created, the Sovereignty of Westphalia, the secularization of politics was advocated —thus ending the wars of religion—, and building the first step towards the destruction of corporate society for the benefit of the individualist ideology outlined in Leviathan (Hobbes), where people freely give up their ability to act violently as well as their will for the benefit of the prince, who passes to centralize violence (absolutism). Regarding ideas, the war advanced the idea of national sovereignty among the elites, with language as a unifying factor, prefiguring the birth of modern liberal conceptions of the State and the consequent future nationalisms. Well, in earlier times, there were overlapping political and religious loyalties. Under the new law, citizens must first respect the laws of their governments, and not those of neighboring powers, be they secular or spiritual.
Other Treaties
- Treaty of Vic (Vic-sur-Seille) signed on January 6, 1632 between the Duke of Lorena, Carlos IV, and Luis XIII.
- Liverdun Treaty: Signed on June 26, 1632 in Nancy, the capital of the Duke of Lorena, being threatened directly by the French, the Duke of Lorena had to re-sign a treaty with Louis XIII of France. The latter makes the main places returned but the duke must yield to the king, for four years, the cities of Stenay, Dun-sur-Meuse, Jametz and Clermont; this city will definitely be delivered to France in exchange for compensation. On the other hand, Carlos IV de Lorena promises to pay tribute to the king for the Duke of Bar within a year.
- Treaty of Charmes: it was signed on September 19, 1633, between Richelieu and Charles IV in the house of Chaldron, known as the house of the Lobos, owned by the Duke of Lorraine; the ducal army yields the city of Nancy to the French army five days later. On 25 September, the king himself settled in the ducal city, appointing a governor: the Baron of Brassac (Jean de Galard de Béarn, born in 1580, Count of Brassac, Baron of Saint-Maurice and Rochebeaucourt). He settled in the governor's palace on October 1, 1633.
- Treaty of the Pyrenees: between Spain and France, November 7, 1659: The fortress of Pignerol, Artois and the Rosellion are also annexed to France
- Treaty of Vincennes: between France and Lorena, 1661.
- Treaty of Andrúsovo: between Poland and Russia in 1667.
Consequences
- The devastation caused by war has long been the subject of controversy among historians. The estimates of civilian losses among the population of Germany of up to thirty percent are now treated with caution (the more alcists speak of five million dead Germans). It is almost entirely true that war caused a serious disruption to the economy of Central Europe, but it is possible that it has only exacerbated trade changes, caused by other factors.
- In the armies of the opposite sides, the epidemics were triggered. The constant movement of soldiers, as well as the flight of the civilian population, led to the fact that the diseases spread far from the foci of the disease. Information on numerous epidemics was kept in parish books and tax reports. At first, this problem appeared locally, but when the Danish and imperial armies met in Saxony and Turingia in 1625-1626, the number of cases began to grow rapidly. Local chronicles mention the so-called "Hungarian disease" and the "master disease", which are identified as typhus. After the clashes between France and the Habsburgs in Italy, the bubonic plague dragged the north of the peninsula of the Apennines. During the Nuremberg site the armies of both sides were attacked with scurvy and typhus. In the last decades of the war, Germany was affected by constant outbreaks of dysentery and typhus. Medical statistician F. Printing noted that more people died in Germany because of the plague during the war than in the battles.
- Demographic loss could only be recovered by the German states until the centuryXVIII (Immigration also contributed to this increase: the Swiss to Bavaria and the French Hugonotes to Brandenburg). Also because Emperor Ferdinand III of the Habsburgs allowed substantial numbers of Jews to be resettled in Prague and Budapest, and in imperial cities "free" as Frankfurt; and other German princes also relaxed their prohibitions on the Jews.
- In the Kingdom of Bohemia, the hardships of war affected Czech cities, which had to pay the greatest amount of taxes directly and indirectly, these hardships strengthened the guilds and slowed down the economic development of the city. Although the Czech lands were protected from the greatest hardships of the war during most of the war, the population fell by one third and after the war, 20% of the estates in Bohemia and 22 % in Moravia were deserted. The Czech priest and historian Bohuslav Balbín wrote a few years after the war: That's all that's left of the castle that locked up here. In another place, a steep solitary tower, the only vestige of a village or fortress that swallowed the flames. It would not be possible to mention cities or even a castle that would not be burned.”They also marked the end of the independence of the Czech states and the emergence of a hereditary kingdom in the possession of the Habsburgs, which held these countries until 1918.
- The princes of the empire were granted the right to an independent foreign policy (ius foederationis) so the empire remained only as a set of hundreds of independent states. The decisions of foreign policy and the law of the emperor, in turn, were linked to the approval of the imperial assembly, where more than two hundred permanent members would have had to decide unanimously; thus the imperial assembly became indecent. The fragmentation of the German-Roman Empire was further strengthened.
- It has been suggested that the breakdown of the social order caused by war was often more significant and lasting than immediate damage. The collapse of the local government created landless peasants, who joined to protect themselves from the soldiers of both sides, and led to widespread rebellions in Upper Austria Bavaria and Brandenburg. The soldiers devastated an area before continuing, leaving large tracts of land empty of people and changing the ecosystem. The shortage of food worsened by an explosion in the population of rodents; Bavaria was invaded by wolves in the winter of 1638, and its crops were destroyed by packs of wild pigs in the next spring.
- By the end of the centuryXVIIIthe peasant uprisings of Upper Austria would nurture due to the policies of reform of the Empress Mary Teresa and her son and successor Joseph II during the period of the Restoration during the Metternich government to avoid future uprisings such as the War of the 30s. However, the rebellious mood among the peasants would increase again. The violent peasant uprisings finally came to an end with the abolition of servitude in the hereditary lands of the Habsburgs in 1848.
- The immediate result of the war, and yet it would last for about two centuries, was the consecration of a Germany divided among many territories, all of which, despite their continuity in membership of the empire until the formal dissolution of this in 1806, had de facto sovereignty, which strengthened German political particularism. The aim of weakening the Habsburgs was achieved by France and Sweden, becoming guarantors of Germany and strengthening the independence of the imperial states such as Prussia, the future Prussian might be intoxicated by the rise to power of this state of northern Germany. Germany's struggle for unification in the face of the intervention of the European powers that sought to prevent it resulted in the closure of the road to unification as a nation-state of Germany and the delay of Germany until the century was determinedXIX. The Peace reconfirmed the "German Freedoms", putting an end to the Habsburg attempts to convert the Holy Roman German Empire into a more centralized state similar to Spain. For the next 50 years, Bavaria, Brandenburg-Prussia, Saxony and others increasingly followed their own policies. Despite these setbacks, the Habsburg lands suffered less from war than many others and became a much more coherent block with Bohemia's absorption and the restoration of Catholicism in all its territories. It has been speculated that this weakness was one of the underlying causes of subsequent German militarism and romanticism. For German writers, and to a lesser extent Czech, the war remained remembered as a decisive moment of national trauma, being the poet and playwright of the centuryXVIII Friedrich Schiller one of the many who used it in his work. Known as the 'Great German War', 'Great War' or 'Great Cisma', for the German nationalists of the centuryXIX and principles XX. showed the dangers of a divided Germany and was used to justify the creation of the 2.o German Empire in 1871, as well as the Great German Reich planned by the Nazis.
- The economy in Germany collapsed due to inflation from 1619 to 1623, and the cities of the Hanseatic League and the cities of southern Germany involved in financial transactions were largely destroyed. Among the victors of the war was the city of Hamburg, which probably did not achieve its goal of becoming a free city, but which could settle in much of the trade in Central Germany. For the great commercial metropolises of Upper Germany, war accelerated the recession phase of the end of the centuryXVI. On the other hand, residential cities benefited from their decline, as they were able to channel large consumption flows in their direction. In the main commercial cities of the South Catholic, the war forced the decline period that began at the end of the centuryXVIand a rise in the Protestant ethic of work in the north, which would affect the future of the industrialization of Germany.
- The contemporaries spoke of a 'ffront of desperation' when people sought to make sense of the shedding of implacable blood and often at random unleashed by war. Attributed by religious authorities to divine retribution for sin, other attempts to identify a supernatural cause led to a series of witch hunts, which began in Franconia in 1626 and spread rapidly to other parts of Germany. Although war caused immense destruction, it is also attributed to the fact that it has brought about a rebirth in German literature, including the creation of societies dedicated to the "purge of foreign elements" of the German language. An example is Simplicius Simplicissimus often suggested as one of the first examples of the picaresque novel; written by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen in 1668, it includes a realistic portrait of the life of a soldier based on his own experiences, many of which are verified by other sources. Other less famous examples include the diaries of Peter Hagendorf, a participant in the Magdeburg Saqueo.whose description of the daily brutalities of the war remains compelling.
- In the lands of the Czech Crown, there was a "dark age" during and immediately after the war, as a result of many people being murdered in the region and many intellectuals had to go for religious beliefs. One of the most important Czechs that left the country was Jan Amos Komenský. In addition, post-Water seizures resulted mainly in the practical liquidation of cavalry in Bohemia and, together with the merger in larger territorial units, the extinction of hundreds of small properties. As a result, dozens of aristocratic residences, especially fortresses, would lose their meaning. Even the magnificent Renaissance castles, which mainly referred to the enormous Moorish domains of the Liechtenstein and the Dietrichsteins, were left out of the great landowners. Bohuslav Balbín as defender of Czech culture, mentions in his work that more than 80 families who emigrated disappeared from the Czech environment during the centuryXVII. On the contrary, some immigrant families became familiar with the Czech environment through marriages and participation in the state administration and, last but not least, by financing a series of baroque architecture monuments (Trauttmansdorff Thun-Hohenstein). The most important work on the issue of post-war seizures is the History of Confiscations in Bohemia after 1618 Tomáš Bílek took care of the property of the Jesuit order (he was often criticized due to a series of minor inaccuracies).
- The war was also a turning point in the European economy, with the flow of capital from the Netherlands to Sweden, the mining development technology flowing from Liège and a large number of weapons exported from Sweden to the Netherlands. In the Westphalia Congress, the Swedes were accused of destroying nearly two thousand castles, eighteen thousand villages and more than a thousand five hundred cities, burning and destroying almost all metallurgical and melting plants and mineral mines. The massive deterioration of the currency led to a monetary crisis and associated inflation. Spain, initially supported by the gold of the Americas, emerged economically and politically very weakened from the conflict
- The treaty confirmed Dutch independence, although the Imperial Diet did not formally accept that it was no longer part of the Empire until 1728. The Dutch were also given the monopoly of trade carried out through the Escalda estuary, ensuring the commercial domain of Amsterdam. Antwerp, capital of the Spanish Netherlands and previously the most important port in northern Europe, would not recover until the end of the centuryXIX. The Spanish Habsburgs finally had to accept the existence of the Protestant, free and independent Netherlands of the North. In the second half of the centuryXVII, France will become the main enemy of Holland, and even Spain will be allies of Holland.
- The war of the Thirty Years with the crisis of the seventeenth century restructured the distribution of previous power. Spain's decadence became clearly visible after the 1640 Crisis. The Spanish had to recognize the independence of the Netherlands in 1648. While Spain was occupied with France during the French period, Portugal declared its independence (had remained under Spanish rule since Philip II took control of the country after the Portuguese king died without leaving heirs). The Braganza family became the governing house of Portugal, ending the [[Portugal under the House of Austria
French territorial expansion after the war would give way to the future conquests of Louis XIV.
|Hispanic-Portuguese personal union]] of six decades. Although Spain suffered several defeats during the war, it was able to maintain its position in the southern Netherlands and Italy. France was seen from then on as the dominant power in Europe and would consolidate after the Nine Years' War and the War of the Spanish Succession, for which the Kingdom of Spain lost its position as a great power.
- One of the long-term consequences of the war is that France gained the status of great power and fought for European and global hegemony. The French influence gained ground in the divided German-Roman Empire: Cardinal Mazarino established the Rhine Federation in 1658, also known as the Rhine League, in support of the French interests in Germany (in part against the Turks and in part against the Habsburgs). In the territory of the Polish-Lithuaan Commonwealth, King Jan III Sobieski became the leader of the strong friendly party with the French, allowing the French to support the anti-Habsburg movement in Hungary in the 1670s. It could be said that France won over the Thirty Years War than any other power; in 1648, most of Richelieu's goals had been achieved. These included the separation of the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs (Alsace, a German-speaking land), the expansion of the French border into the Empire and the end of the Spanish military supremacy in northern Europe. In addition, the king of France was granted the right to send his representative to the sessions of the German imperial diet, although Alsace and Lorena will be the focus of the Franco-German conflicts until 1945.
- The benefits of Westphalia for the Swedes were ephemeral. Unlike the French gains that were incorporated into France, the Swedish territories remained part of the Empire and became members of the kreis Baja and Alta Saxony. While this gave them seats at the Imperial Diet, it also put them in direct conflict with Brandenburg-Prussia and Saxony, their competitors at Pomerania. The income of their imperial possessions remained in Germany and did not benefit the kingdom of Sweden. However, during the last years of the Thirty Years War, Sweden was involved in a conflict with Denmark, between 1643 and 1645, called the Torstenson War, concluded with the Brömsebro Treaty. The favourable result to Sweden of this conflict and the conclusion of the war in Europe through the Peace of Westphalia helped to fully establish the post-war Sweden as a great power in Europe and Scandinavia as a great owner of the Baltic (at the expense of Denmark), which was further accentuated after the Flood of Poland and lasted until the end of the Great Northern War. Swedish prosperity served as a prelude to finance a long-term Swedish colonial Empire and to intervene in the North affair with new rivals such as Brandenburg-Prussia in Pomerania. Although two Swedish attempts to impose its control over the port of Bremen failed in 1654 and 1666.
Winnings of the Swedish Empire. - The European wars in which Denmark participated caused him to lose his status of great power forever, in addition to ruining the Danish East India Company, and the trade in India ceased completely between 1643 and 1669, during which all the previous acquisitions of Danish India were lost, except Tranquebar, which resisted until aid from Denmark came in 1669. However, in 1648, when Cristián IV died the colony pattern, the Danish East India Company would be bankrupt and permanently weaken the Danish Empire. Two years later, his son, Federico III, abolished the colonial company. Although the company had been abolished, the few colonies would remain the real property of Denmark until trade stabilized.
- It also had a great negative effect on the economies of the nations at war. The traditional feudal class fell and, instead, a new class emerged as the Junker class, and each territorial state became an absolutist monarchy. Under these circumstances, the Hohenzollern family arose instead of the Habsburg family, which weakened its cohesion, and the political centre of the German people moved north in later generations. The Habsburgs of Austria keep their throne, but they actually survived the centuries. XVIII and XIX as Archdukes of Austria and later as Emperors of Austria, not as German Kaiser.
- According to the Marxist historiography (M. Smirin, B. Purishev, B. F. Porshnev, J. Zutis), war would be characterized as a conflict between the feudal Catholic reaction led by the Habsburgs and their allies of Poland-Lithuania against the progressive coalition of France, Sweden, Russia and the Protestant states before the rise of the bourgeois-class hegemony reinforced in the societies,XVIII It will lead them to the industrial revolution; while in countries that go out in worse condition (mainly Spain) they lose the position of centrality that they had so far in Western Civilization.
- Absolutism triumphs across the continent. In medieval Christianity, doctrines such as that of the two swords and political acustinism led to the constitution of the two universal powers (pontified and empire), which incorporates the possibility of a duplicity in power, and with it that of the balance between both within a state, where spiritual power has moral and political ancestry over temporal power, exercised by the prince, by virtue of which the prince presides over the destiny of the precepts. Intramundane ascesis of the soul in the Kingdom of Heaven depends, in this way, exclusively on spiritual power, condition of the exercise of temporal-terrestrial political power. After the Protestant Revolution, this duplicity was maintained as a characteristic of the Catholic tradition in South Europe, as the Catholic Monarchy, while in the Protestant countries it was a kind of return to the idea of a mere inexpugnable despot, which became conceivable again with the doctrine of the divine law of kings and Caesarism, since, in the face of the formidable powers of the so-called feudal popes They defended a theory that definitively affirmed the authority and legitimacy of the monarchs, placing them above the nobility and the Catholic clergy, as well as the Protestants. Consequently, the relationship of subordination between the two powers is replaced by a dialectical dichotomy taken from the doctrine of the Two realms, one of which, the earthly kingdom, is under the exclusive prerogatives of the prince, and the other, the one of heaven, falls under the jurisdiction of the church, in a relation of reciprocal exclusivity that prevents the usurpation of one power over the other, although it also prevents the Catholic autonomy. The Traditional Monarchy would lose popularity against the absolutism that the Renaissance was thickening with its humanistic theories and that the Protestant reform would victoriously throw into the field of legal definitions with the hegemony of Regalism in the French court of the Bourbons. The religious-national struggle of war strongly contributes to the decline of the state's representative assemblies (such as the Landtags of Germany or the General States of France) and to the concentration of the fullness of state power in the hands of kings. The Catholic Monarchy of Philip IV, like other European composite monarchies, had to face important internal and external challenges that questioned their political and social structure. The French monarchy was the one that was in the best position to evolve, not without difficulties, to absolutism, while the English, at no less terrible times (English Civil War), ended up finding a more pragmatic solution: the Constitutional monarchy after the victory of parliamentarism in the English Revolution. While in Germany the feudal Monarchy would remain until the centuryXIX.
- The edicts agreed upon during the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia were instruments to lay the foundations of what are still considered to be the central ideas of the sovereign nation-state. It was agreed that the citizens of the respective nations should abide by the laws and designs of their respective governments rather than the laws and designs of the neighbouring powers, whether religious or secular. This certainty contrasted greatly with the preceding times, in which the overlap of political and religious allegiances was a common event.
- The adherents of the greatest currents of Christianity in the territory of the Holy Roman German Empire (Catholicism, Lutheranism and Calvinism) obtained the same rights in it. The result of the Thirty Years War was a strong weakening of the influence of religious factors in the life of European states. His foreign policy began to be based on economic, dynastic and geopolitical interests.
- Faced with the Spanish vision and the Sacro Empire universitas christianathe French ideas that exalted the State reason as justification for international action. The State would replace other international or transnational institutions as the highest authority in international relations. In practice this meant that the State ceased to be subject to external moral norms to itself.
- The centre of political gravity of the House of Habsburg has moved to the central Danube basin. However, the Habsburg dynasty did not suffer a total defeat; it abolished the Estamento in the Austrian and Czech provinces, which created an opportunity to build absolutism centuries later. The Habsburgs retained absolute power in their hereditary lands (the lands of the Czech Crown, the Austrian lands): here the recataliation prevailed and the confiscations remained in force. They also stayed in Hungary where they had to tolerate the Protestant faith. If it has not regained its influence within the Empire, Austria, however, has strengthened its control over the hereditary territories of the Habsburgs and its army is more powerful than at the beginning of the conflict.
- The Landtags completely lose their former character of active political force after the Protestant Reformation and the Thirty Years War, which imposed the formation of the modern nation-state in the Peace of Westphalia, since to weaken the German Roman Empire Holy, the main transnational authority of the time that disputed to be a universal Empire, the primacy of the German states was proclaimed in front of both the controlled powers, as the state national. The convulsion of the Reformation has to be understood in this context as the beginning of the first nationalizations.
- By laying the foundations of the state modern nation, Westphalia changed the relationship between the subjects and their rulers. In the past, many had overlapping political and religious allegiances, sometimes in conflict; it was now understood that they were primarily subject to the laws and edicts of their respective state authority, not to the claims of any other entity, religious or secular. This facilitated the recruitment of significant-size national forces, loyal to their state and leader; a learned lesson from Wallenstein and the Swedish invasion was the need for their own permanent armies, and Germany as a whole became a much more militarized society, reaching its maximum expression with Federico the Great of Prussia.
- The term secularization was coined during the peace negotiations and areas previously governed ecclesiastically became secular. Religion thus became the individual of the individual and not something that permeates all culture and, in the long run, would lead to religious tolerance. Generating religious freedom, a change in the structure of the Sacro Empire (being dismantled when the states gained complete sovereignty and the power of the emperor was minimized by the peace treaty) and the consolidation of French absolutism as power in the second half of the centuryXVII, generating the decline of feudalism and the rise of absolutism.
- Unexpectedly, but with great prejudice, it was with the independence of the Netherlands and the loss of important coastal areas and ports in the Baltic Sea at the hands of Sweden, that almost all major ports of Germany were under foreign control. The German states almost had no access to the sea and were therefore largely prohibited from engaging in foreign trade. Just Bremen and Hamburg, the most important German port cities, still had free access to the North Sea and world trade. This restricted the ability of the Reich to benefit from the resurgent maritime trade. Thus, Germany had not only lost influence on its future vis-à-vis neighbouring countries, but was also commercially isolated from the opportunities that opened maritime transport and the acquisition of colonies, for the benefit of countries such as England, Holland and Denmark. German colonial projects such as the African Company of Brandenburg of Pillau and later of Emden, or Austrian Colonialism, on the other hand, did not have a lasting success due to their low financial base. The long-term economic consequences of the Thirty Years War, for the colonization of large territorial conquests, which later led other European countries, are subject to controversy in the investigation.
- The relations and interactions between the Jews and the rest of European society underwent several changes during the outbreak of the Thirty Years War, marked the end of two centuries of persecution and expulsion of Jews since the centuryXIV. The Jews were harassed and persecuted and, in general, forced to flee the lands of the empire during the Middle Ages. But the ravages of war, the decimated population and the missing trade changed that attitude. The new rulers of the broken empire needed qualified merchants, so they began to reverse the expulsions and allowed the Jews to establish and assume a restricted residence. All Jews had to register in the Regional Landjudenchaften to obtain a residence and trade permit. At the end of the centuryXVIIthe Jews returned to most of the great cities and towns of which they had been expelled a century earlier. In the short term, the 30-year war significantly improved the status of Jews in central Europe, as this long conflict favored the reintegration of Jews. Many Jewish entrepreneurs of the centuryXVII They laid the foundations of their modest fortune through the rapid purchase and elimination of the rubble left in the battlefield of the Thirty Years War, indebted the monarchies of the time with the Jews of the court. In the long run, anti-Semitism and innate hatred of the Jews who culminated 300 years later with the Holocaust returned to the German lands.
- During the war a new artistic direction begins, the Baroque, which moves to the Renaissance and becomes an instrument of the Counter-Reformation.
- After the Thirty Years War, France, England Sweden and the Netherlands could become nation-states. With the flourishing of trade there was a flourishing of the proto-liberal bourgeoisie, whose absence in Germany became of immense importance for the future. The German Empire remained a flexible alliance of principalities. When this alliance became the most important peace factor in Europe for the next 150 years (up to the Napoleonic Wars), it did so at the expense of Germany's economic potential.
- In England, Ireland and Scotland, countries relatively economically devastated by the war, a civil war broke out during the Thirty Years War, which resulted in the reign of Oliver Cromwell in 1651.
- The defeat of Spain and the imperial forces also caused the weakening of the power of the Habsburgs, allowing the domination of the French Bourbons. The countries that have stayed out and “saved” will also be able to participate soon in the competition of power: like England and Russia. Peace treaties are signed in a ruined country that will take decades to recover. The other belligerents (Sweden, France) will be economically exhausted.
- The European states are gradually realizing the disadvantages of employing mercenaries, which was the almost general rule during the Thirty Years War. Europe is moving towards a professional army system: the number of the permanent army is increasing exponentially in France. In Germany, the March of Brandenburg is one of the states that begin to build a national army. The Thirty Years War contributes to the birth of the concept of modern army.
Map of Europe in 1648 following the Peace of Westphalia. The grey area represents the small German states included in the German Roman Empire. - It has been argued that Peace established the principle known as sovereignty of Westphalia, the idea of non-interference in internal affairs by external powers, although since then this has been questioned. The process, or 'Congress' model, was adopted for negotiations in Aix-la-Chapelle in 1668 Nijmegen in 1678 and Ryswick in 1697; unlike the system of the Vienna Congress of the centuryXIX, these were to put an end to wars, rather than to prevent them, so references to 'balance of power' can be melted.
- The Peace of Westphalia did not mean total peace in Europe, as conflicts continued in several places around the 1660s. The conflict between France and Spain continued until 1659 and within France an uprising broke out against the government of Cardinal Mazarino, the so-called Fronda. In the British Islands, in 1648, the Second Civil War broke out, where the troops of the king and parliament faced each other. Since the English Parliament in 1651 banned merchant ships from other countries from importing goods to English ports from countries other than their own, the war between England and the Netherlands broke out. In Sweden, Charles X Gustav ascended to the throne in 1654 and had to defend the territories conquered in Germany, but also to deal with the hereditary enemies: Denmark, Russia and Poland. To support the army, it must remain in the country where the war took place. It was never considered breaking the peace of Westphalia, but with Poland only the stagnation prevailed and there were several unresolved disputes. In July 1655, therefore, the war broke out with Poland and in 1657, Denmark declared war, triggering the Second Nordic War. Peace in the North was not concluded until 1661 with the Treaty of Cardis between Sweden and Russia. In turn, the Portuguese war of independence against Spain continued on the Iberian peninsula until 1669 and the Luso-Dutch colonial conflict remained until 1663.
- The war also had consequences abroad, as the European powers spread their struggle through naval power to the overseas colonies. In 1630, a Dutch fleet of 70 ships had taken the rich exporting areas of Pernambuco (Brazil) sugar from the hands of the Portuguese, but had lost everything in 1654. There were also fighting in Africa and Asia. The destruction of the Koneswaram temple in Trincomalee in 1624 and the Ketheeswaram temple accompanied an extensive campaign of destruction of five hundred Hindu shrines, the Saraswathi Mahal Library and the forced conversion to Catholicism in the Tamil country made by the Portuguese after the conquest of the kingdom of Jaffna. The country witnessed the battles of the Thirty Years War and the general hostilities of the Eighty Years War; Portugal and later the Dutch and English used strong built from the destroyed temples, including the Fort Fredrick in Trincomalee, to wage naval battles with the Dutch, Danish, French and British, the beginning of the loss of the state Later, the Dutch and the English succeeded the Portuguese as colonial rulers of the island.
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Written propaganda had its breakthrough during the Thirty Years War and was disseminated in various forms, such as pamphlets, newspapers, flyers, and printed books. The objective was to highlight one's own side and blacken the opponent. The opponent was often accused of striving for world domination or instigating atrocities. For his part, it was claimed that God was on his side. The size of the pamphlets varied between four hundred and three hundred pages, with an average of between ten and thirty pages. The brochures usually contained a verse, which was supplemented by a picture. In this way, both literate and illiterate people could participate in the message of the flyers. Propaganda could also be spread by reading aloud to assembled groups of people. The propaganda was ordered and paid for by the princes and monarchs engaged in the war and was often based on prejudice and humor; Exaggerations and caricatures were important elements.
In Sweden, the government used propaganda to prepare the population for entry into the ongoing European war by issuing open letters to the population. These were read in churches during prayer days and are called prayer day posters. The main way propaganda was spread was through the post office and along postal routes.
The event, known as the Sack of Magdeburg, was the largest massacre of the Thirty Years' War, for which hundreds of pamphlets and leaflets were distributed. It became an effective anti-Catholic propaganda tool for Protestants. The city was largely destroyed by fire and was left almost completely depopulated after more than 20,000 deaths.
The Cologne correspondents of the southern German newspapers added an extra layer of interpretation to maritime events on the colonial front and prepared them for a specifically German news market by highlighting their relevance to the political situation within the Holy Roman Empire Germanic.
It is said that the victory of the Protestant coalition helped in the long run to propagate in the collective imagination the Black Legend of the Catholic Inquisition and the Spanish Black Legend as a humiliation to the defeated Catholic countries.
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2003
George Lucas
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