The Course of the War

Religion was certainly the primary cause, the primary purpose, behind the beginning of the Thirty Year’s War, as we’re going to see. Historians tell us that it was not the only motive for this war. Other motives included a desire on the part of some, as we’ll see, to remove the royal family, known as the Hapsburgs, who were the royal family of Germany, the southern part of Germany at this time, for many generations. And the Hapsburgs supplied the rulers for many of these regions for a long period of time. Well, there were some who wanted to get rid of this ruling family. And then, there were also some, like France and perhaps Sweden to some degree, who were sort of looking to grab some land—they were looking to enlarge their territory at the expense of the Holy Roman Empire.

Let’s notice that the spark that was provided that began the Thirty Years’ War was the Protestants in the area called Bohemia, which is now modern-day Czechoslovakia. The Protestants of Bohemia refused to accept a Catholic ruler and instead chose their own Protestant ruler. Emperor Ferdinand determined that a Roman Catholic ruler would be maintained on the Bohemian throne, and so he sent his Catholic forces against the Bohemian Protestants. The Protestants were fairly handily beaten. After defeating them, Ferdinand set about attempting to eradicate Protestants from Bohemia. Moreover, he also directed an attack against some of the Protestant states—neighboring states—who had tried to assist the Protestant Bohemians, like Rhineland, for example, in the western part of Germany. And so, here we have the first phase of the Thirty Years’ War, starting in about 1618, as an attempt to whip these Bohemians into shape, to put a Catholic ruler on the throne of Bohemia, and then it sort of expanded from there.

The success of the Catholics against Bohemia, and then Rhineland and some other neighboring states alarmed Northern Germany and Denmark. They were outside of, not a part of, the Holy Roman Empire. But, as a result of their witnessing what was going on by the forces of the Catholic Church under Emperor Ferdinand, King Christian IV—and yes, that was his name, King Christian IV—of Denmark and Norway entered the war on the Protestant side, thus beginning the Danish phase of the Thirty Years’ War. The Danish forces weren’t much of a match for the forces under Emperor Ferdinand, either. And so, much of Northern Germany was overrun or threatened by the victorious Catholic armies. In the wake of all of this warfare, and all of these territories which had been defeated, and so on, the Catholics made stringent demands upon the Protestants, even these ones who were not within the area of the Holy Roman Empire.

Well, the Catholics might have made their victory almost complete had they not divided among themselves, and had other forces not entered the picture. In 1630, Gustavus Adolphus, the King of Sweden, who, by the way, was staunchly Lutheran, invaded Northern Germany, and he drove out the Hapsburgs, that reigning royal family. But, many of the Protestants in Germany were really un-desirous and unappreciative of the help from Sweden, not that they weren’t pleased that somebody had come to their aid, but because they had suspicions about what Adolphus’ purpose might be. They were afraid that he was wishing to claim the territory, to go all the way to the Baltic Sea, and thus expand the borders of Sweden. Adolphus won several victories over the Catholics, but he was killed in 1632, and without his able leadership the Swedes were unable to make further gains. They were never defeated, but a stalemate would ensue.

The fourth and final phase of the war came when France broke this stalemate in 1635. France was not really motivated to come and help the Protestants. They were largely Catholic themselves, but they entered the fray on the Protestant side with the motivation of not only protecting themselves, protecting their territory, but also a desire for territory. The fact that France was Catholic certainly illustrates the fact that there were other purposes, that there were other intentions that were at hand here, rather than just religion.

So, here we have this very long struggle which takes place in the central part of Europe, what we refer to now as Northern Germany, stretching up into regions to the north and all the way down into Czechoslovakia of today, and even in France. The long struggle would finally be concluded in 1648 by what is called the Peace of Westphalia. Westphalia was a region in the west-central part of Germany, and that’s where the parties met to draw up this peace settlement. The Peace of Westphalia stands today as one of the greatest peace settlements in European history.

Results of the War

What were the results of this war? Well, the first result was that neither side, neither the Catholics, nor the Protestants, won a clear-cut victory. The Peace of Westphalia was a compromise settlement. It was agreed that the areas that were Catholic in 1624 would remain Catholic; and the areas that were Protestant as of 1624 would remain Protestant. Also, the independence of the Netherlands and Switzerland was finally given formal recognition as a part of this settlement. And Calvinists were finally granted recognition. Those were some of the things which came out of this Thirty Years’ War. The compromise thus worked out seemed to be a fairly successful one, and it lasts—well, not in true measure to this day—but if one looks at the religious demographic of Germany in that part of the world today, it still largely falls out along those lines. The northern part of Germany is primarily (and I don’t know what the statistics are these days) principally Lutheran, and the southern part is principally Catholic.

The war was terribly costly, though. Can you imagine a war going on for a period of thirty years? It was one where the loss of life is unable to be accounted for. There was a great deal of property loss. There was, obviously, lower productivity. Some of the German states across which these contending armies would march back and forth for this thirty years lost half or more of their populations, and of course, their productivity, their farming, any productivity that they might have been able to produce, was minimized. And the war so demoralized the people that it took some of these areas literally hundreds of years to recover from its effects. And so, that is the Thirty Years’ War and a little bit about how it came about, and a little bit about how it played out.