The Origins of the Thirty Years War? 5in 1610, so that a Huguenot rebellion broke out in 1620 and trou-
bles continued up to Richelieu’s siege of Huguenot La Rochelle in 1627
and 1628.
Although the rivalry between France and Spain continued through-
out, it nevertheless receded into the background for much of the time
during which France was wrestling with its internal problems, while
Spain’s energies and resources were taken up by the war with the
Dutch. Hence this latter long-running struggle became a central feature
of the international situation during the crucial years leading up to the
Thirty Years War. By the beginning of the seventeenth century Spain
was still a great power, indeed the greatest power in Europe, but past its
peak and facing the classic problem of having too many commitments
but insufficient resources. This was most apparent in Philip II’s inabil-
ity to suppress the revolt in the Netherlands quickly, or at all, and in
the spectacular failure of his armada sent against England in 1588, but
equally symptomatic were the four state bankruptcies in the fifty years
from 1557 to 1607. The twelve-year truce agreed in 1609 was a reflection
of Spanish weakness, as the terms were decidedly unfavourable, allow-
ing the Dutch to go on harassing Spain’s overseas colonies and trade,
and to keep the Scheldt estuary closed, thereby maintaining the block-
ade of Antwerp, the most important commercial centre in the Spanish
Netherlands. The Dutch had used theirde factoindependence to good
effect in the fields of trade and industry, which together with French
subsidies was how they were able to finance the continuing war, but a
considerable part of their progress had been at the expense of outmoded
and inefficient Spanish competition. The revolt had initially centred
around religion, but in the intervening years political and especially eco-
nomic issues had become increasingly significant, to the extent that by
the time the question of renewing or ending the truce came to be con-
sidered religious questions were, as Asch notes, ‘ultimately of secondary
importance’.^5 The truce had shown the Spanish that even if they could
barely afford to fight the Dutch they could certainly not afford to allow
them the commercial freedom which would accompany peace.
The tensions between Spain and France also had a bearing on the war
in the Netherlands, aggravating the former’s problems with the so-called
Spanish road. To sustain their war effort the Spanish needed to send
men, military supplies and money to the Netherlands, but because the
Dutch had clear superiority at sea this had to be done mainly over land.
The shortest route, directly across France, was out of the question, so the
delivery columns had to start from the Spanish possessions in northern
Italy, which meant crossing the Alps, making the process slow, arduous