The Origins of the Thirty Years War? 3even longer established and more intense had been the rivalry between
the French monarchy and the dukes of Burgundy. The two issues became
entwined, together with the Habsburg connection, through a series
of inheritances, some sought-after and others accidental, in the latter
years of the fifteenth and early years of the sixteenth centuries. In 1477
Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy died at Nancy in the last battle of
the Burgundian Wars with France, following which the French seized
Burgundy itself, but his Netherlands possessions, principally modern
Belgium and Holland, passed to his only surviving child, the 19-year-old
Mary. She promptly married the Habsburg Archduke Maximilian of
Austria, the later Emperor Maximilian I, and after her own early death
in a riding accident their son, known as Philip the Handsome, inherited
the Netherlands, becoming ruler when he reached the age of 16 in 1494.
Two years later Philip married a Spanish princess, Joanna of Castile, a
good but not spectacular marriage, as she was only the third child of
Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, but following two unex-
pected deaths and much political in-fighting she inherited Castile in
1506 and Aragon in 1516. By then Philip was already dead, having
predeceased his father the emperor, and as Joanna was deemed to be
mad their 16-year-old son became co-ruler and regent, as well as inher-
iting Habsburg Austria and being elected emperor as Charles V soon
afterwards, in 1519.
Thus instead of rival but separate powers on its borders France
was suddenly faced with Habsburg Spain to the south, the Habsburg
Netherlands to the north, and the Habsburg-led Empire to the east,
all under a single powerful and able ruler. The resulting perception of
Habsburg encirclement became the enduring central feature of French
foreign policy, and it was particularly significant both in the approach
to and in the course of the Thirty Years War. France had already crossed
swords with Spain under Ferdinand II of Aragon in the first phase of
the Italian wars, which commenced in 1494. These were a complicated
series of conflicts extending over more than sixty years and involving
many minor principalities and various outsiders, but in which rivalry
for influence between France and Spain played a significant part. In the
latter respect Spain under Charles V was the clear winner, securing the
major territories of Naples and Milan, and emerging at the high point
of its power.
Charles proved to be the first and last head of the vast combined
inheritances of Habsburg Austria, the Burgundian Netherlands and the
crowns of Castile and Aragon, as when he retired in 1556 he passed the
Habsburg inheritance, and with it the family candidacy for the Imperial