The "Thirty Years War" and the Conflict for European Hegemony, 1600-1660

136 Pages·3.82 MB·English

by  S.H. Steinberg

FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN HISTORY
General Editor A Goodwin
Professor of Modern History, The University of Manchester
in the Foundations of Modern History series
I. R. Christie Crisis of Empire: Great Britain and the American
Colonies 1754-1783
Geoffrey Finlayson Decade of Reform: England
in the Eighteen Thirties
J. R. Jones Britain and Europe in the Seventeenth Century
R. F. Moore Liberalism and Indian Politics 1872-1922
A. G. R. Smith The Government of Elizabethan England
S. H. Steinberg The Thirty Years War and the Conflict for
European Hegemony 1600-1660
Gwyn A. Williams Artisans and Sans-Culottes:
Popular Movements in France and
Britain during the French Revolution
Further titles to be announced.
FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN HISTORY
The Thirty Years War
and the conflict for European hegemony 1600-1660
by S. H. STEINBERG
W • W • NORTON & COMPANY • INC •
NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT © 1966 BY S. H. STEINBERG
Library of Congnu Catalog Card No. 61-19505
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
General Preface
In this volume Mr. Steinberg reorientates and reinterprets
those complex but momentous upheavals in the heart of seven­
teenth-century Europe which historians have traditionally, but
not very felicitously, labelled the Thirty Years War. He rightly
insists that this description is misleading in a double sense -
firstly, because it imparts a fictitious unity to conflicts which pro­
liferated rather than escalated from separate regional disputes in
different parts of Europe and were never restricted to Germany
and secondly, because the Thirty Years War was only a part of
the prolonged Bourbon-Habsburg contest for European hege­
mony which underlay a period of intermittent warfare beginning,
not in 1618 but in 1609 and ending, not in 1648 but in 1659. If
we are to understand the major displacements of political power
in Europe in the seventeenth century - the decline of Spain and
the recession of Imperial authority, the independence of the
United Provinces, the short-lived ascendancy of Sweden, the
preponderance of France and the emergence of Brandenburg-
Prussia and Russia - we must, as Mr. Steinberg implies, not
confine our attention to the period 1618-48, but attempt to
follow the ramifications of political and religious conflict from
the disputes over the Jülich-Berg succession to the termination
of the Franco-Spanish war at the treaty of the Pyrenees.
The familiar ‘myth* of the Thirty Years War, as the author
makes clear, was the creation initially of contemporary propa­
gandists and of later publicists. It was given a wider currency by
literary or popular historians. It survived even the researches of
modem economic historians, who were the first to impugn its
validity, and it is significant that the cataclysmic interpretation
of the effects of the war on the economic and cultural develop­
ment of Germany was only challenged by recent historians in
consequence of the still greater devastation of the two world wars,
followed by the ‘economic miracle* of the German Federal Re­
public. The historical realities of the Thirty Years War and its
impact on the religious, political and economic life of Germany
can now, however, be depicted, as here, in a way that robs the
‘myth’ of its exaggerations and enables us to gain a more
informed insight into the motives and importance of such
V
vi General Preface
controversial figures as Gustavus Adolphus and Wallenstein. Mr.
Steinberg’s final assessment of the meaning of this crisis in the
history of seventeenth-century Germany will thus be found
acceptable and convincing, not only because it reflects the pro­
gress of recent scholarship but also because of its own independent
merits and evaluations.
Maps
Page
Europe about 1610 viii
2. Central Europe 20-21
3. The topographical background 29
Contents
General Preface v
Introduction i
i. Background and Problems 5
Western Europe 5
France and Spain 5
The Netherlands 9
Italy ii
Northern and Eastern Europe 14
Germany 19
Britain 27
2. The European Wars, 1609-1660 30
The Jülich-Cleves Succession 30
The Bohemian-Palatine War 33
The Struggle for the Grisons 42
The Danish War 43
The Swedish-Polish War 48
The War of the Mantuan Succession 49
The Edict of Restitution and the Revolt of the Electors 50
The Swedish War 53
Wallenstein's End and the Peace of Prague 63
The War of Smolensk 69
The Franco-Swedish Conflict with Austria-Spain 70
The Swedish-Danish War 74
The Peace of Westphalia 75
The Franco-Spanish War 85
The Nordic War 88
3. The Thirty Years War: Myth and Reality 91
The Traditional Picture 92
The Religious Issues 96
Military Aspects 99
Economic Aspects 103
Population 105
Industry, Trade and Agriculture 107
Cultural Life 116
Bibliographical Notes 123
Index 125
vii
Limit of theNoly Homan Empire
Spanish possessions Xristiani
»Novgorod
Austrian possessions
U S S I A
Denmark-Norway / Moscow«
dflfy Edinburgh
7//Ä Sweden
Holstein
2 United 'Provinces
Guelph 'Duchies
Brandenburg
Saxony
Silesia
Bohemia "Warsaw
Berlin
Branche Comté
ondon
Bavaria
10 Switzerland esdrn eslau
II Savoy Traque Cracow
12 Milan Seda Mainz,
13 Papal States Paris
14 Estonia
13 Spanish Netherlands
16 Luxembourg Nevers
Zurich «^^TRANSYLVANIA
LaHochelle
fip] Graz.
FRANCE
'Bordeaux Milan 'Belgrad^
Consianiinovt
Madrid CORSICA
'Barcelona
BAROINI
100 200 soo 400
200 400 6oo JooJCnt.
Europe about 1610
Introduction
The term ‘Thirty Years War*, as applied to the struggle for
European hegemony in the first half of the seventeenth century is
as much a ‘figment of retrospective imagination’ as is the label
‘Wars of the Roses’ affixed to the dynastic civil wars of fifteenth­
century England.* The undeniable convenience of both terms,
however, together with their deeply-rooted, though erroneous,
emotional associations, will probably defy all attempts to relegate
either of them to the realms of journalism and fiction.
The traditional interpretation of the origins, course and signifi­
cance of the so-called Thirty Years War requires no elaboration.
According to this version the war began with the Bohemian
revolt in 1618 and ended with the peace of Westphalia in 1648.
It was, so we have been taught, initially a war of religion between
the German Protestants and Catholics, which the foreign powers
of Spain, France, Denmark and Sweden exploited, each for
political reasons of its own. In this way Germany became the
battlefield of Europe for thirty consecutive years. The war
completely ruined Germany’s economic and intellectual life and
left behind it a depopulated, devastated and impoverished country
which, for two hundred years, suffered from its disastrous after­
effects. The war itself has been regarded as ‘the outstanding
example in European history of meaningless conflict’.! It is on
these views (or a selection of them) that most Germans have been
reared during the past century and a half and which British and
American scholars have accepted more or less uncritically.
Such a presentation, however, does not conform to historical
realities. The Thirty Years War was never exclusively, or even
primarily, a German affair but concerned the whole of Europe.
It was, to some extent, a by-product of France’s efforts, after the
conclusion of her religious war, to break her encirclement by the
Habsburg powers of Spain and Austria. What happened was that
some regions of Germany, but never the whole Empire, inter­
mittently took an active part in, or were drawn into, the various
hot and cold wars and the diplomatic and ideological conflicts
*S. B. Chrimcs, Lancastrians, Yorkists and Henry VII (London, 1964), preface.
fC. V. Wedgwood, The Thirty Years War (Penguin edition 1957)» P« 46°«
i
2 Introduction
between the houses of Bourbon and Habsburg. This involvement
was dictated by the inescapable fact of Germany’s central geo­
graphical situation on the European continent and by the intrica­
cies of Habsburg dynastic interests. This larger struggle for Euro­
pean hegemony between Bourbon and Habsburg lasted from
1609 to the peace of the Pyrenees in 1659. Even in Germany
proper the series of hostilities, misnamed the Thirty Years War,
though terminated by the peace of Westphalia, began, not in
1618, but in 1609.
The determining context of the half-dozen major and half­
dozen minor wars of this period was not the religious antagonism
between German Protestants and Catholics but rather certain
constitutional issues within the Empire which had been germinat­
ing during the previous half century. These problems had been
raised, on the one hand, by the attempt of the emperor to
transform the loose confederation of several hundreds of prin­
cipalities and free cities into a homogeneous unit under his
effective authority and, on the other, by the efforts of most
rulers, including the Emperor in his capacity as archduke of
Austria and king of Bohemia, to crush their medieval Estates
and establish monarchical absolutism. These political struggles
were accompanied, overlaid and crossed by ideological conflicts
between the adherents of the Roman Catholic, Lutheran and
Galvinistic churches. As religion was still the pivot of men’s
political thoughts and social activities, and as even secular ideas
found expression most commonly in biblical and ecclesiastical
language, arguments of statecraft and political propaganda
readily appeared in the guise of religious or theological contro­
versy. There is no doubt, however, that all* decisions of conse­
quence were taken in the cool light of what at the time became
known as raison d'état.
Nor were the wars of the seventeenth century any more
physically destructive or morally degrading in their effects than
other wars before or since. Owing to lack of money and difficulties
of supply, all the campaigns were of short duration. The armies
involved were comparatively small, averaging each the strength
of a modem division. The main theatres of war were those few
regions which have, since Roman times, borne the brunt of
invasion. As in every such war the open country and its inhabi­
tants suffered most; the majority of the fortified towns never saw
an enemy within their walls. The fable of wholesale ruin and