262 Ch. 7 • The Age of Absolutism, 1650-1720
in any conflict invariably claimed that its cause was just. European power
politics swept away such theoretical considerations.
The Habsburg Monarchy
The eighteenth-century French Enlightenment philosophe Voltaire only
somewhat exaggerated when he dismissed the Holy Roman Empire, that
cumbersome federal structure of Central European states that once served
as a powerful protector of the papacy, as having ceased to be holy, Roman, or
an empire. The Holy Roman Empire included almost 300 German states.
Seven, and then in 1648, eight electors (princes and archbishops) selected
the Holy Roman emperor, invariably the Habsburg ruler. But in a Europe
increasingly dominated by absolute monarchs, the Holy Roman Empire
seemed an anomaly.
In principle, the Holy Roman emperor still commanded the allegiance of
the states of the empire. These included sizable states such as Austria,
Bavaria, and Saxony, whose rulers oversaw elaborate courts, maintained
standing armies, and paid for all this by levying taxes on their subjects and
customs duties and tolls on merchandise being carried through their territo
ries. The Holy Roman Empire also included many small principalities,
duchies, and even archbishoprics barely extending beyond the walls of
towns like Mainz and Trier. But in reality the empire had increasingly only a
shadow existence, despite its mystique as the defender of Catholicism. The
Treaty of Westphalia (1648), which concluded the Thirty Years’ War (see
Chapter 4), reflected the inability of the Holy Roman Empire to enforce its
will, conduct foreign policy, or effectively maintain an army. During the long
war, some German princes with powerful allies outside the empire had gone
their own way. Indeed, the Treaty of Westphalia specifically empowered
each member state to carry out its own foreign policy. The imperial Assembly
of the Holy Roman Empire (the Reichstag) thus had virtually no authority to
conduct foreign policy with other states. The imperial army was too small
and difficult to mobilize to be effective, and the imperial court of law was
powerless to enforce its decisions, depending entirely on the good will of the
individual states.
The strongest state within the Holy Roman Empire, Habsburg Austria,
extended beyond the boundaries of the empire itself. The Habsburgs had
ruled Austria without interruption since the thirteenth century. The old
Habsburg principle was “Let others wage war. You, happy Austria, marry [to
prosper].” Advantageous marriages brought the dynasty the wealthy territo
ries of Burgundy and the Netherlands in the fifteenth century. Charles V,
who became Holy Roman emperor in 1519, added Hungary and Bohemia.
Counting Spain and its far-flung possessions, he reigned over perhaps a
quarter of the population of the European continent, as well as the Spanish
Empire in the Americas.