AP European History
AP European History
The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) is often considered the last of the European religious wars. It erupted from both religious and political rivalries between the Protestant and Catholic Leagues over issues that had festered since 1555, when the Peace of Augsburg failed to recognize the legality of Calvinism. The war, mainly fought in the Holy Roman Empire, consisted of four major phases. It began with the Defenestration of Prague, when Bohemian princes rejected Archduke Ferdinand as their king and threw several of his representatives out of a castle window into a moat of manure. The nobles chose Frederick IV as their king, and Ferdinand (now the Holy Roman Emperor) declared war, using the imperial forces and those of Habsburg Spain to bring down the Protestant rebels, who got support from the Dutch. In phase two, the Danish phase, Lutheran King Christian IV of Denmark made an anti-Habsburg alliance with England and the Dutch and marched in to help the Protestants in Germany, but lost to the Empire. Phase three, the Swedish phase, began when Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus marched into northern Germany to help the German Protestants and extend Swedish power. His death, however, crippled the Swedish effort. In 1635, wanting to halt the spread of Habsburg power, Catholic France arrived to help the Protestant Swedes and Germans, starting the Swedish-French phase. Largely a battle for supremacy between France and Spain, the war continued on German soil, devastating German lands. In 1659, the fighting between the two powers finally stopped, with France emerging as the dominant power in Europe.
Intended to end the war in 1648, the Peace of Westphalia reestablished the principle of cuius regio, eius religio, which gave to whoever controlled the land the right to choose the religion of that realm. This time, Calvinism could be chosen. France gained small amounts of Habsburg lands, and its growing power and prestige opened the door for the rise of Bourbon dominance under Louis XIV. Finally, the secularization of politics was confirmed when the pope was not even invited to the negotiation process. This devastating war weakened and splintered the German states but led to the rise of Prussia by the end of the century.
Between 1590 and 1640, much of continental Europe was also rocked by revolts. Peasants and artisans revolted mostly for economic reasons: Their taxes were high, there was a series of bad harvests in the late 1500s and early 1600s, and prices rose while wages fell. These revolts started
The Treaty of Westphalia granted a large degree of independence to the Protestant princes and served notice that the Habsburgs could no longer tightly control their realm. German princes even substantially controlled their own foreign policy, further weakening the Habsburgs. The treaty was significant because it decentralized the German states, a situation that partially explains why German unification did not occur until 1871.