8 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
Catholic France and the Muslim Ottoman Empire, which was agreed
under Suleyman in 1536 and lasted in substance until the French
Revolution.^9 Even the distant Netherlands felt the effect, as hostilities
between Spain and the Turks in the Mediterranean deprived Philip II of
the naval and other resources he needed to be able to suppress the Dutch
revolt quickly in the 1560s.
Imperial institutions
Before discussing events in the Empire it is necessary to outline certain
aspects of its structure and institutions which have a significant bear-
ing on them. Two important measures formalised the framework and
led the move out of the Middle Ages, the Golden Bull of 1356, which
established the seven electors for the offices of king of Rome (effectively
emperor designate) and emperor, and theEwiger Landfriede(Permanent
Peace) of 1495, which abolished the practice of feuding and placed the
threat of the Imperial ban (outlawing) over anyone who resorted to
arms in furtherance of a dispute within the Empire. During the fifteenth
and the first half of the sixteenth centuries a process of reform estab-
lished the principal institutions of the Empire and the procedures of the
Reichstag (Imperial Diet), the highest assembly and law-making body,
resulting in a significant shift in the balance of power away from the
emperor in favour of the estates in respect of taxation, lawmaking and
the administration of justice. During this period the estates also gained a
practical role in the administration of the Empire, as the lack of an effec-
tive executive had been a major weakness in the past. Thus in the early
sixteenth century the ten Imperial circles were created, those for Bavaria
and Austria effectively dominated by a single member each, whereas
at the other extreme the Swabian Circle had over a hundred members,
while the lands of the Bohemian crown and Imperial Italy were not
included in the system at all.
The circles provided at least some help in organising the large num-
ber of constituents of the Empire, which may have approached or even
exceeded 1800 at times as territories split or merged due to inheritances
and marriages. In principle these included all entities whose ruler or rul-
ing body owed fealty directly to the emperor, and these ranged from a
few substantial principalities such as Bavaria, Brandenburg and Saxony,
down to a large number of Imperial knights whose possessions might
have amounted to little more than a village and its fields. Alongside
them were the free Imperial cities and a wide range of ecclesiastical insti-
tutions, from bishoprics with vast lands to modest abbeys, monasteries