46 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
core groups varied a little from time to time, but in general the mili-
tants centred around a small number of Calvinist principalities, while
the more conservative Lutheran territories were usually to be found
among the moderates. Sometimes there was an element of closing ranks
to preserve an appearance of Protestant unity, but this hid rather than
bridged often fierce differences of opinion, reflecting the equally fierce
inter-confessional hostility between Calvinists and Lutherans.
The Palatinate
The Palatinate had been a dissenting voice in the Reichstag since the
1560s, but its position at the centre of the opposition in Imperial insti-
tutions did not stem exclusively from its Calvinist religious affiliation.
It was also a principality struggling to reassert the status and political
influence it had previously enjoyed. The Palatinate was traditionally
the senior of the three secular electorates within the Empire, and it
shared with Saxony the control over any interregnum between emper-
ors. Since the Reformation, however, Saxony had in practice become
the leading Protestant principality, with the Palatinate’s relative decline
in prestige accentuated by its adoption of the minority Reformed con-
fession. During the fifteenth century the Palatinate had also had a
wide sphere of influence in the western part of the Empire, where
many of the smaller territories had looked to it for leadership and per-
haps protection, while their counts had often taken positions in the
elector’s service. This regional system had declined following the Refor-
mation, as the Palatinate remained Catholic while many of its clients
became Protestant and broke away from its tutelage, a process which
had only been partially reversed when a few later turned Calvinist, like
the Palatinate itself. The fragmented nature of the core Palatine territo-
ries around the Rhine, from Heidelberg and Mannheim to Bacharach,
had mattered less when the intermediate lands of the lesser nobility
had been implicitly associated, but thereafter it was a considerable dis-
advantage. So too was the fact that a large part of the electorate’s own
territory, the Upper Palatinate, was detached and some 150 miles to the
east of Heidelberg, and moreover it remained stubbornly Lutheran and
rebelliously inclined.
The anti-Habsburg stance of the Palatinate also long preceded the
advent of Calvinism, dating back to the Middle Ages, and dynastic
rivalry was at its heart. The electors of the Palatinate, like their rel-
atives the dukes of Bavaria, were Wittelsbachs, and in the fourteenth
century the Bavarian line had provided an emperor, while at the begin-
ning of the fifteenth a Palatine elector had been king of the Romans and