4 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
crown, to his younger brother Ferdinand. Thus his son Philip II inher-
ited only the Spanish, Italian and Netherlands possessions, which he
ruled for 42 years until his death in 1598, when he was succeeded by
his 20-year-old son Philip III. By the early years of the seventeenth cen-
tury this separation of the Spanish and Austrian branches of the family
and their respective territories was long established, but they neverthe-
less all remained Habsburgs, a fact reinforced by repeated intermarriage.
This gave rise to an ambiguity in respect of the Empire, in that Spain was
in one sense an outsider, a foreign power, but in another sense an insider
and part of the establishment, not only having substantial lands in mod-
ern France and Italy which were nominally within the Empire, but also
being so closely bound to the Austrian and Imperial ruling family that
many contemporaries, particularly opponents, tended to see them as
one and the same thing.
France came clearly into this latter category, but in contrast to Spain
the country was split internally by political and religious rivalries, aggra-
vated by the accidental death of the king in a tournament in 1559,
followed by the death of his 15-year-old son and successor a year later.
The old king’s widow became regent on behalf of her second son,
but growing confessional tensions quickly developed into the wars of
religion which racked France for the rest of the century, although aris-
tocratic feuding played an equally significant part. Both sides had their
extremists, Calvinists and ultra-Catholics respectively, and among the
many executions, assassinations and atrocities the most notorious event
was the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre of Huguenots (Protestants) in
- Spain provided assistance to the Catholic party, but in 1589 the
Catholic King Henri III was assassinated by a Catholic monk, a deed
which had the perverse effect of entitling a Calvinist, King Henri of
Navarre, to the French succession. The latter was already in the field
leading Protestant forces holding the south and west of the country,
and his army went on to win important battles, but also to lay siege
unsuccessfully to Paris and Rouen, rebuffs to which the participation of
Spanish troops contributed significantly. Eventually Henri converted to
Catholicism, allegedly commenting that Paris was well worth a Mass,
and he was crowned as Henri IV in 1594. Not everyone was convinced
by his conversion, however, and ultra-Catholic resistance continued
with Spanish support, leading to open war with Spain from 1595 to - Peace in the latter year was accompanied by an internal settle-
ment, Henri IV’s Edict of Nantes, a decree which made concessions
to the Protestants although not satisfying extremists on either side.
The tensions remained, and they increased after Henri’s assassination