168
own candidate, the Protestant
Frederick V, Elector Palatine,
to rule in his stead.
Frederick’s credentials as a
Protestant were excellent, not only
because of his own faith, but also by
marriage: his wife was Elizabeth
Stuart, daughter of England’s
Protestant king James I. However,
in order to make Frederick king,
the Bohemians had to depose a
monarch who had been legally
crowned, a move that deprived
them of support from a number of
their potential allies.
In 1620, the forces of Bohemia
gathered to face those of the Holy
Roman Empire at White Mountain,
outside Prague. The forces seemed
evenly matched: the Protestants
under Frederick and Christian of
Anhalt had a larger force, but the
empire’s soldiers were experienced
and well led by the Spanish–Flemish
nobleman Field Marshall Tilly, and
renowned general Albrecht von
Wallenstein. After only one hour,
Bohemian forces were crushed—
4,000 dead or taken prisonercompared to 700 of the empire’s
forces—and Tilly entered Prague.
Frederick fled, and many of the
Protestant leaders were executed;
ordinary Protestants were ordered
to leave or convert to Catholicism;
and Bohemia was left devastated,
depopulated, and almost powerless.
The area remained overwhelmingly
Catholic into the 20th century.A destabilizing reform
What happened in Bohemia was
a symptom of the instability of the
wider Holy Roman Empire. In its
history there had often been power
struggles between emperors and
local rulers, but a general balance
of power had emerged in which
the emperor resolved to respect
the rights of the individual states
that made up the empire. This
balance was upset by the changes
of the Reformation, when Protestant
beliefs strengthened in some places
(such as Saxony), and Catholicism
prevailed in others (such as Bavaria).
A series of struggles then escalated
into armed conflict.THE DEFENESTRATION OF PRAGUE
Gustavus achieved his decisive
victory at Breitenfeld with a new,
combined-arms approach in which
infantry, artillery, and cavalry worked
together in self-supporting units.Most of the battles were in the
German and central European lands.
In a few years the Habsburg imperial
army, raised for Ferdinand and led
by skilled military leader Albrecht
Wallenstein, had crushed its rivals in
Germany, and gone on to overwhelm
Denmark. By 1629, Ferdinand was in
a position to reclaim the lands that
had passed into Protestant hands.
However, the Protestants still
had two powerful allies. One was
Sweden, under King Gustavus
Adolphus, an able military leader;
the other was France, a Catholic
country, but one that wanted to
curtail imperial power. In 1630,
Gustavus arrived in Germany with
a large army and won a significant
victory at Breitenfeld in 1631, with
financial assistance from France.
In the mid-1630s the Habsburgs
fought back, with the help of Spain.
The conflict had now become an
all-encompassing war involving
virtually every one of Europe’s
major countries in a struggle for
power. The emperor wanted to winThe [Protestant]
wound is degenerated
into gangrene; it requires
fire and sword.
Fernando Álvarez,
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169
back his lands in Germany, while
the Spanish wanted their allies the
Habsburgs in power so that they
could cross Europe with ease
in their hoped-for attack on the
Netherlands. France, fearful of being
surrounded by the Habsburgs and
their allies, continued to try to
reduce imperial power.The end and the aftermath
By the 1640s, anti-imperial forces
were regaining the upper hand.
France defeated Spain at Rocroi
in the Oise valley in 1643, while in
1645, Sweden met the imperial army
at Junkau, southeast of Prague.
Around half the 16,000-strong
imperial army was killed in this
bloody battle, and it looked as if
the Swedes would march on Prague
or Vienna. However by this point,
both sides were exhausted, and no
advance was made on either city.
The battles of the Thirty Years’
War were conducted on a large
scale. Forces of thousands cametogether in cavalry charges backed
up by firearms, and large numbers
of mercenaries were employed. The
battles were fought with professional
speed and ruthlessness, but what
came after was sometimes even
worse. Vast armies committed
infamous atrocities as they pillaged
huge areas of country to find food,
and removed anything that might
be useful to their enemies. Rural
areas suffered particularly badly
at the hands of the scavenging
troops—Germany lost around
20 percent of its population—but
trade and manufacturing were also
affected by the damage and
devastation left behind. Central
Europe took decades to recover
from the war, although countries
with strong trade networks and sea
power, such as England and the
Netherlands, fared better.
Repeated artillery battles
also wore down both armies.
Exhausted, the sides eventually
came together to make peace.THE EARLY MODERN ERA
Representatives of the empire,
Spain, France, Sweden, and the
Dutch Republic, as well as rulers
of German princedoms and cities,
and other interested parties,
assembled in 1648 in two north-
German cities, Osnabrück and
Münster, to agree the Peace
of Westphalia. The talks could not
resolve basic differences between
political and religious interests;
they did however produce an
agreement to end the war, and
the Peace established an overall
balance of power among a number
of independent nations.
Although Europe was now
permanently divided into states
that were predominantly Catholic
or predominantly Protestant, they
had agreed to learn to coexist with
one another. The Peace set the
precedent of creating agreements
between nations by means of high-
level diplomatic meetings, the like
of which have played a key part in
international relations ever since. ■As different powers intervened
in the Thirty Years' War, the conflict
morphed from a split over religion
into a clash for European supremacy
between France and the Habsburgs.CampaignsKeyFrancePolandAustria(^16351625)
1619
1630
1625
Ottoman
Empire
Denmark
Spain Rome
Austria invades Bohemia and
Frederick V’s territory in Germany.
Denmark intervenes to help
Lutherans in northern Germany.
Sweden begins a campaign against
Catholic forces in Germany.
France declares war against Habsburg
Spain and the Holy Roman Empire.
Protestant majority
Catholic majority
Sweden
Religious divisions
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