The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618

An Inevitable War? 61

signs that tension was abating by 1618’, and ‘there was no inexorable
slide towards war’. Schmidt likewise denies ‘the inevitability of the out-
break of war in 1618’, and observes that ‘the historiographic construct
of an almost unavoidable war appears anything but compelling’.^70 The
respected German historian Johannes Burkhardt confirms these views of
the state of the Empire in 1617:

None of the well-known earlier religious and political confronta-

tions had actually led to war. The most recent perception is that the

potential for confessional conflict was declining again, and that the

Empire had entered into a peace process and commenced promising

settlement negotiations.^71

The chronological approach adopted in Chapter 1 draws attention first
of all to the long period over which the events usually cited actually
occurred. The administrator of Magdeburg was denied his seat in the
Reichstag in 1582, the same year in which the archbishop of Cologne
turned Protestant and precipitated the Bishops’ War. By 1617 these dis-
putes were history, 35 years in the past, which in those days was most
of an adult lifetime, while even the seizure of Donauwörth was already
a decade ago. The chronology also shows that the incidents were spread
relatively evenly across the 35 years, whereas to reach a critical situation
conflicts tend to become progressively more frequent and more severe.
Crises are intrinsically unstable, that is they either escalate or cool off
but they cannot long maintain a steady state, so that the history of this
period suggests a more or less regular cycle of increased tension caused
by a particular incident, followed by some years in which little more
happened and the stresses declined.
One telling indicator is that polarisation was likewise not progres-
sive, but quickly reached a limit. The Union and the League recruited
all the members who were going to join within a couple of years,
peaking around 1611 and thereafter making no progress. The same
applies to the militant Calvinist group and their few Lutheran allies,
as the remaining core members of the Union in 1617 were essentially
the ‘corresponding princes’ of 1594, and while some of the waverers
around them had been replaced by others the group as a whole was
no stronger than it had been at the outset. The life cycle of the two
alliances is a further indicator. Defensive associations are usually at their
strongest when there is a clear current threat, but if the perceived dan-
ger declines so does the cohesion, as internal differences resurface and
concerns over cost start to outweigh anxieties over security. This is the