11 From Bohemia to the Thirty Years War
The Palatine question
The traditional starting date for the Thirty Years War is 1618, implicitly
on 23 May, the day of the defenestration, although significant military
hostilities did not commence until August of that year. According to
the usual interpretation described in Chapter 1, the Empire and indeed
much of Europe were only awaiting a trigger for the near-inevitable gen-
eral conflict to break out. Hence it might be expected that after two and a
half years, by the time of the battle of the White Mountain on 8 Novem-
ber 1620, this wider war would have been well under way. Quite the
contrary was the case. Outside the Palatinate, barely a shot had been
fired in Germany, and military action had been limited to a few minor
cavalry skirmishes. Spinola’s Spanish army had occupied the Palatinate
west of the Rhine in three months of minor sieges and cat-and-mouse
manoeuvres, and it was already moving into winter quarters, while after
the defeat of the Bohemians the Protestant Union army was looking
for a face-saving excuse to disband, as was the Union itself.^1 The latter
had received some financial and military help from England and the
Dutch, although little more than their minimum commitments under
the long-standing alliance treaties, but no other supporters, whether
German territories or foreign powers, had rallied to the cause with prac-
tical assistance. The logical next question is thus why did the war spread
to Germany from 1621 onwards when it had not done so before?
In Bohemia, Moravia and Austria there were few constraints on
Ferdinand’s freedom of action after the defeat of the revolt, in that he
was not only the ruling prince, but was also able to claim an effective
right of conquest over rebels to justify drastic measures. The Palatinate
was another matter altogether, as there were both legal and political
limitations on his powers as emperor. In the end Archduke Albrecht
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