An Inevitable War? 57the Union’s principal problems, that it was a marriage of convenience
between groups with differing outlooks and objectives. The Palatinate
and its Calvinist allies saw it as both a means of defence and of poten-
tial counter-attack in a Europe-wide struggle against what they perceived
as a Habsburg-led Catholic campaign to eradicate Protestantism. The
Lutheran member princes, on the other hand, albeit with differing
degrees of emphasis, viewed it strictly in terms of the Empire and of self-
defence, particularly against any Catholic attempt at forcible recovery
of secularised church property.^58 Thus, says a modern study, ‘Calvinist
internationalism and activism were juxtaposed to Lutheran regionalism
and legalism, a fundamental contradiction which shaped the history
of the Union from the outset’.^59 Meanwhile the cities, anxious not to
become the next Donauwörth, were principally concerned with the pro-
tection of their own independence and commercial freedoms against the
ambitions of powerful Catholic neighbours.
This basic divergence of interests warns against the common histori-
ographic oversimplification of discussing the Union and the League as
though they were homogeneous bodies with single definable aims and
intentions. On the contrary, Gotthard’s study of Württemberg shows
that this assumption cannot validly be applied even to individual mem-
bers, as there were strongly differing and shifting opinions among the
duke’s leading councillors. Württemberg was probably the most cau-
tious of the leading members, attempting at crucial points to apply the
brake to the Palatinate’s impetuous approach. The cities too were anx-
ious not to be drawn into risky ventures, and from 1610 onwards they
regularly sought to control and limit the Palatine leadership and the
princes in general. Religious hostility exacerbated these internal ten-
sions. Thus in 1608 a Pfalz-Neuburg prince pointedly doubted whether
the margraves of Ansbach and Kulmbach could be considered genuine
Lutherans, while the Württemberg theologians in Tübingen were as hos-
tile to Calvinism as those in Dresden. In 1617 one of the councillors
advised the duke that an alliance with the Calvinists could obviously not
enjoy God’s blessing, while another stated unequivocally that as much
danger threatened from the Calvinists as from the Catholics, echoing
his colleague in adding that an association with them was an affront to
God’s honour.^60
Self-interest and political rivalries were further divisive factors and
obstacles to recruiting. Thus when Hessen-Kassel joined it was inevitable
that the rival Hessen-Darmstadt branch of the family would not.^61 The
Lutheran prince of Pfalz-Neuburg was a founder member of the Union,
but he was also the senior relative of Friedrich IV of the Palatinate,