64 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
the new print journalism, as Schmidt notes: ‘The media, which lived
from sensationalism in their flysheets and pamphlets, gave this tried and
trusted pattern a confessional slant, as it obviously boosted sales....The
emphasis on confessional antagonisms in radical broadsheets sharpened
the crisis in the Imperial constitution.’^76 Lurid flysheets may well have
influenced opinion and created apprehension, but this is not proof of
a genuinely critical situation. People have feared war at many times
and in many places, and sometimes it has followed, but at others it has
not. For example during the 1960s many people were uneasy about the
possibility of nuclear war, some were seriously anxious, and a few were
convinced that it was inevitable, but it did not happen.
Far from being a powder keg awaiting a spark in 1617, the Empire
itself, or more specifically Germany, was probably no nearer war than
it had been for much of the time since 1555, and by no means as near
as it had been in 1610. The evidence for this is further supported by
the conduct of the principal parties as the crisis in Bohemia developed.
There was no immediate rush to arms, and although both the Union
and the reactivated League recruited forces in 1619 and 1620 the result
in Germany was a stand-off rather than a war, which only developed
several years later, and as a result of largely external developments rather
than of a pre-existing internal situation.
Internationalist views
Many historians, particularly those writing broader studies, have sought
to fit the Thirty Years War into one or more structural frameworks,
notably the internationalist view, the state-building concept, the ‘gen-
eral crisis of the seventeenth century’, Marxist interpretations, ‘confes-
sionalisation’ and religious war. Wilson has capably analysed these and
indicated some of their shortcomings, so that a comparable critique will
not be attempted here.^77 The internationalist view requires more com-
ment, however, as it parallels the standard approach already discussed in
postulating a war which was almost inevitable. As noted earlier, British
and American historians tend to stress the international context rather
more than their German colleagues, often quite validly, but the limi-
tations of the argument are clearly exposed by a few who make it the
centre point, particularly when looking for the origins of the war. Thus
Sutherland states:
The original standard version of the Thirty Years War was
of a German-centred, predominantly religious conflict, albeit