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The Thirty Years' War - Military Campaigns
The Thirty Years' War resulted from a local rebellion, but the admixture
of religion transformed it into a European conflict that lasted for more
than a generation and devastated Germany. In 1618 Bohemian nobles opposed
the decision of Emperor Matthias (r. 1608-19) to designate his Catholic
cousin Ferdinand king of Bohemia. Instead, the nobles elected Frederick
of the Palatinate, a German Calvinist, to be their king. In 1620, in an
attempt to wrest control from the nobles, imperial armies and the Catholic
League under General Johann von Tilly defeated the Protestant Bohemians
at the Battle of White Mountain near Prague.
The Protestant princes, alarmed
by the strength of the Catholic League and the possibility of Roman Catholic
supremacy in Europe, decided to renew their struggle against Emperor Matthias.
They were aided by France, which, although Roman Catholic, was opposed
to the increasing power of the Habsburgs, the dynastic family to which
Matthias and Ferdinand belonged. Despite French aid, by the late 1620s
imperial armies of Emperor Ferdinand II (r. 1619-37) and the Catholic
League, under the supreme command of General Albrecht von Wallenstein,
had defeated the Protestants and secured a foothold in northern Germany.
Emperor Ferdinand II
In his time of triumph, Ferdinand overreached himself by publishing in
1629 the Edict of Restitution, which required that all properties of the
Roman Catholic Church taken since 1552 be returned to their original owners.
The edict renewed Protestant resistance. Catholic powers also began to
oppose Ferdinand because they feared he was becoming too powerful. Invading
armies from Sweden, secretly supported by Catholic France, marched deep
into Germany, winning numerous victories. The Catholic general Tilly and
Sweden's Protestant king, Gustavus Adolphus, were killed in separate battles.
Wallenstein was assassinated on Emperor Ferdinand's orders because he
feared his general was becoming too powerful. After the triumph of the
Spanish army over Swedish forces at the Battle of Noerdlingen in 1634,
a truce was arranged between the emperor and some of the German princes
under the Treaty of Prague. France then invaded Germany, not for religious
reasons but because the House of Bourbon, the dynastic family of several
French and Spanish monarchs, wished to ensure that the House of Habsburg
did not become too powerful. This invasion is illustrative of the French
axiom that Germany must always remain divided into small, easily manipulated
states. (Indeed, preventing a united Germany remained an objective of
French foreign policy even late in the twentieth century.) Because of
French participation, the war continued until the Peace of Westphalia
was signed in 1648.
- The Counter-Reformation
and Religious Tensions
- Military Campaigns
- The Peace of Westphalia
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