60 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
which can best be described as a dissolution decision cushioned by a
temporary stay of execution’.^67
Some specific figures may help to offset the impression that in the
years immediately prior to the Thirty Years War the Empire was an
armed camp divided into two rival alliances, the League and the Union.
In fact, of the 185 estates represented at the 1613 Reichstag meeting
well over half were members of neither. Moreover the same is true of
each of three principal sub-groups, the princes (comprising the elec-
tors, prince-bishops and territorial princes), the lords (that is the lower
prelates, counts and barons), and the cities. Even among the ecclesiasti-
cal princes and prelates more than half were not members of the League,
and more than half of the Protestant princes were not members of the
Union. Moreover the proportion of non-members was actually higher
than this, as although almost all the alliance members were represented
at the Reichstag meeting a considerable number of non-members were
not, among them some two dozen free cities, including Hamburg and
Bremen, as well as the substantial secularised bishoprics of Magdeburg,
Halberstadt and others. These figures need to be viewed cautiously, as
the number of estates does not necessarily correspond to their size or
importance, but the list does confirm that there were significant num-
bers of major territories as well as many minor ones among both the
members and the non-members. The detail behind the figures also con-
firms that both the League and the Union were essentially south German
organisations, as the League had only a few members north of Frankfurt
am Main, while discounting Brandenburg the Union had none.^68
The state of Germany in 1617
According to the traditional interpretation, Germany in 1617 was in a
state of crisis. Inter-confessional tension had escalated through a long
series of conflicts and confrontations, key Imperial institutions had
broken down, and the Empire was divided into two hostile military
alliances. Wilson sums it up: ‘Germany in the years after 1609 is almost
uniformly presented as on a “knife-edge” waiting for the “spark” that
would transform “a cold war into a hot one”’.^69 This view, which is
still widespread, underlies most general studies of the Thirty Years War,
and it is implicit in conventional presentations of the events of the
preceding decades even though the author may include a caveat qual-
ifying this interpretation. It is, however, increasingly being challenged
by modern research, both in detail and as an overall concept, leading
Wilson to conclude that ‘serious problems persisted, but there were clear