The Origins of the Thirty Years War? 19election as had initially occurred in Cologne, the cathedral chapter here
split into two factions, Protestant and Catholic, each of which claimed
the election for its own candidate. In the Protestant case this was the
fifteen-year-old second son of the elector of Brandenburg’s heir, whereas
the Catholic majority elected the second son of the duke of Lorraine.
An armed confrontation followed, but little actual fighting, as in the
following year a truce was agreed on the basis that the claimants split
the bishopric, one taking mainly the lands on the left, the other mainly
those on the right of the Rhine.
The second case had a longer previous history. The free Imperial city
of Aachen had an important status in the Empire, as emperors desig-
nate had traditionally been crowned as kings of the Romans there, but
it was also a city divided between the confessions. Although it remained
Catholic as the Reformation progressed it nevertheless accepted Protes-
tant immigrants, particularly from Flanders and Artois, who helped to
develop the economy but also began to make converts. Following the
peace of Augsburg in 1555 the Protestants sought unsuccessfully to have
Aachen included in the small group of free cities where both confessions
were recognised, while their efforts to secure the right to open worship,
with their own church and pastor, gave rise to complaints and Impe-
rial pressures which induced the council to impose restrictions, barring
non-Catholics from holding any civic offices in 1560.
Despite this the relatively tolerant climate in the city continued to
attract immigration, as when in 1567 the entire Calvinist community
from Maastricht moved in. By the 1570s some 40 per cent of the popula-
tion were Protestants, both immigrants and converts, and they were well
established in the upper levels of society and in the guilds, as well as hav-
ing become economically indispensable to the city. In 1574 the council
revoked the prohibition on non-Catholic office-holders, and although
this was officially to benefit only those who subscribed to the Augsburg
Confession that was no more than a gesture to accommodate practical
politics in the Empire at the time. In consequence the confessions had
reached parity on the council by 1576, with the Protestants sometimes
actually in the majority.^16
These developments increasingly discomfited the rulers of the neigh-
bouring Catholic territories, including the duke of Jülich, who as the
emperor’s official representative in his capacity as overlord of the free
city had a particular interest in Aachen. Complaints both from the duke
and from the Catholic hierarchy to the new Emperor Rudolf II led to
a rather desultory Imperial inquiry, but the council nevertheless felt
it prudent to take a harder line. This they did in 1580, when they