An Inevitable War? 67single cohesive event. There were several stages, each bringing in differ-
ent participants in circumstances which varied from those at the outset,
and which were as much consequences of the preceding stage or stages
as of wider and longer-term conflicts. Thus although Franco-Spanish
hostility was certainly a major factor in the latter years of the war France
was not involved at all at the outset, and only marginally or vicari-
ously for a good many years afterwards. Likewise the most notable thing
about the war in the Netherlands in this context is that the Bohemian
war did not cause its resumption, as the parties adhered to their orig-
inal truce, which lasted until 1621, by which time the Bohemians had
been defeated and the Palatinate had been partially occupied by Spanish
troops. There is an element of truth in Trevor-Roper’s implication that
the ‘German war’ might have been settled at this point, but the reasons
it was not were principally Emperor Ferdinand II’s political and finan-
cial debts to Maximilian of Bavaria, together with the princely pride and
intransigence of the principals, all of which, like the continuation of the
fighting in the Empire after 1621, had little to do with the war in the
Netherlands.
This is not to suggest that any of these considerations are irrelevant,
as both the international aspects and the tensions within the Empire
contributed to a situation with the potential for war. They may indeed
have been necessary preconditions, which is why they have been dis-
cussed at some length here, but they were not of themselves sufficient
causes. Hence more specific factors need to be identified. The logic of
the internationalist view, however, is that these were essentially fortu-
itous, and that had war not followed on from the revolt in Bohemia
it would, given the wider situation, have been triggered by some other
event. Apart from the fact that this is purely speculative, as the Cold
War analogy indicates, such a war would have been a different war, at
a different time, possibly with different participants and with different
outcomes. For the origins of the war which actually occurred we must
now turn to Bohemia.