Epilogue 261Despite this there have been repeated attempts at structuralist inter-
pretations of the long-drawn-out conflict. As mentioned in Chapter 2,
Wilson has pointed to the problems of fitting such a complex event
into one or more of the convenient categories put forward, notably
the internationalist view, the state-building concept, the ‘general crisis
of the seventeenth century’, Marxist interpretations, ‘confessionalisa-
tion’ and religious war.^1 However even among less theoretical historians
there is still a lingering attachment to some kind of general explanation.
It is hard to dissent from Wilson’s broad observation that ‘what should
properly be called the Thirty Years War was a struggle over the political
and religious order of central Europe’, but his apparently more specific
statement that ‘it was fought about the meaning of the Imperial con-
stitution’ presents difficulties of definition and interpretation.^2 Others
contend that the Imperial constitution was ‘the one central issue’, or
that the war was ‘a struggle between competing visions of the consti-
tution of the Holy Roman Empire’, but the precise meaning of such
neat encapsulations remains problematic.^3 None of these concepts are
‘wrong’, however, and indeed almost the opposite is the case, as they all
contain elements of truth, which of itself demonstrates that attempts to
categorise the Thirty Years War by means of comprehensive theories are
never likely to be satisfactory.
Wilson has also noted that the war is traditionally narrated as ‘a series
of chronological phases, each beginning with the entry of a new major
belligerent’, commenting that ‘most historians have sought refuge in
this convenient framework when marshalling their material’.^4 Again
there is some truth in this implicit criticism, but nevertheless the central
fact remains. On each occasion during the thirty years when one side
seemed to be nearing a defeat which might have brought the war to an
end a new belligerent, or substantial additional support from an exist-
ing one, did indeed appear. Thus Emperor Ferdinand II was successively
rescued by Maximilian’s Catholic League, Wallenstein, and the Spanish,
while the anti-Habsburg side depended first on Mansfeld and Bethlen
Gabor, then on Georg of Baden-Durlach and the ‘Mad Halberstädter’,
next on Christian IV of Denmark, after him on Gustavus Adolphus of
Sweden, and finally on France under Richelieu. The key point in inter-
preting the war, however, is to recognise that none of these newcomers,
or the various minor participants, simply replicated their predecessors or
the original combatants in terms of motivation and aims. Each had their
own interests to defend and their own ambitions to pursue, so that as
the combatants progressively changed so did the nature and direction of
the war, reflecting a corresponding mutation of its ongoing causes. Put