Treaty of Westphalia

Context

In the broadest sense, the Treaty of Westphalia may be considered the culmination of the European medieval experience. The significance of this ambitious document is often neglected, since it cannot be read simply as the treaty that ended the Thirty Years' War. It addressed social, political, economic, and religious trends, as well as other issues arising from domestic and international perspectives, in order to create a collective and enduring peace.

In the sixteenth century the Protestant Reformation had split much of Europe into opposing camps defined by religion. The rulers of Spain, France, and the Holy Roman Empire had initially pledged their support to the papacy against the then-heretical position of Martin Luther and his followers. Within a short time, however, many rulers—particularly German electors and princes from the northern states and principalities of the Holy Roman Empire as well as the kings of Sweden and Denmark—had decided to embrace Lutheranism, whether they were motivated by religious conviction, humanist inclinations, antipapal sentiment, or territorial greed.

The situation was most problematic for the Holy Roman Empire, since its Habsburg emperor, Charles V, was also King Charles I of staunchly Catholic Spain. In the early seventeenth century, the Holy Roman Empire encompassed modern-day Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Luxembourg and parts of Poland, Slovakia, eastern France, and northern Italy. It also included the United Provinces, or the modern-day Netherlands; the Spanish Netherlands, or present-day Belgium; and the Swiss Confederation, or what was to become Switzerland. Charles V undertook a series of wars to root out Protestantism. Since the empire never enjoyed the political unity of other European states, the outcome of these conflicts was compromise. The most significant treaty resulting from Charles V's wars was the Peace of Augsburg (1555), in which the empire was effectively divided between Lutheran and Catholic principalities. The Peace of Augsburg established the principle of cuius regio, eius religio, which meant that the prince or elector of a certain territory would determine the religion for all of its inhabitants. This peace agreement, however, was more of a truce and demonstrated the weakness of the empire. Additionally, by 1555, the range of Protestant confessions had come to include not only Lutherans but also groups not permitted under the Peace of Augsburg: Calvinists, Anabaptists, and Unitarians.

The climate was thus far from tolerant. After 1577, Calvinists were expelled from Lutheran states. The elector Frederick III, a Calvinist, then made the University of Heidelberg into a Calvinist seminary in the Palatinate, an important principality consisting of the Lower Palatinate along the Rhine and Neckar rivers and the Upper Palatinate to the east on the Bohemian border. Catholics were allowed to live in the Palatinate only if they worshiped in homes, while Unitarians were suppressed altogether. The struggle between Lutherans and Calvinists was as hard fought in the second half of the sixteenth century as the conflict between Luther and the papacy in the first half. As princes and electors endorsed one creed over another, a rivalry that the religious reformer and scholar Philipp Melanchthon called rabies theologica, or theological rabies, was infecting the empire and laying the groundwork for religious war.

In lands neighboring the Holy Roman Empire, the Reformation continued to spread and incite conflict. Throughout the Swiss Confederation, Protestantism was becoming entrenched in city governments and public education. The situation in France was more problematic. While the French monarchy tolerated Protestantism at first, by 1534 it had begun a crackdown on French Protestants, who were known as Huguenots. The second half of the sixteenth century witnessed the French Wars of Religion (1552–1598) and culminated in the Edict of Nantes (1598), whereby King Henry IV, seeing the economic value of granting liberties to Protestants, gave rights and privileges to the Huguenots. The United Provinces and Flanders (now the Netherlands, northwestern Belgium, and the French department of Nord) saw considerable growth of Protestantism among the literate merchant classes. Dutch economic concerns would later be major diplomatic considerations at the Congress of Westphalia.

Charles V's abdication shortly after the Peace of Augsburg temporarily settled religious controversy in the Holy Roman Empire. Other Habsburgs, though, saw themselves as defenders of Catholicism against the growing threats of both the Protestants and the Ottoman Turks. The tension between Protestants and Catholics in Europe, therefore, ought to be seen from the perspective of a wider threat to the Catholic faith, which was under attack on many fronts. In 1564 the imperial crown fell to Charles V's nephew, Maximilian II, who only added to the cauldron by preferring Lutheran to Catholic preachers and protecting Protestants from persecution. His son and successor, Rudolf II, believed that moderation and toleration served to undermine the unity of the empire. In contrast, Protestant and Catholic leaders in the Swiss Confederation, having endured the strict rule of Calvinism in Geneva, followed a more conciliatory path.

By the early seventeenth century, the empire was far from unified. As of 1600, the Jesuits had restored the authority of Catholicism in many Austrian parishes that had adopted Luther's reforms. A good example of religious division can be seen in the kingdom of Bohemia, which then included Lusatia and Silesia (encompassing the present-day Czech Republic as well as parts of eastern Germany, Slovakia, and southern Poland). By the mid-sixteenth century, most of Bohemia was Protestant. Holy Roman Emperors Ferdinand I and Rudolf II had attempted to outlaw Protestantism in Bohemia. However, they were unable to enforce such edicts, since most members of the nobility and burgeoning middle class were Protestants and only the peasants remained firmly Catholic.

The seeming religious freedom that existed in Bohemia and other areas not only strengthened the princes but also guaranteed instability, which threatened the Holy Roman Empire and eventually invited outside influence. In addition, by the early seventeenth century, the economic prosperity once enjoyed by many German states had been undermined. The bulk of economic trade no longer flowed from the Mediterranean across the Alps and up through the German principalities but instead was being routed directly to northern Europe by sea. This was largely because England and the Netherlands, rather than Spain and Portugal, had come to dominate the Atlantic and many trade routes. Major German banking families were in steady decline. By 1600, the various currencies used within the empire were becoming unstable. As the economic situation worsened, the population continued to increase, which amplified the potential for unrest among the peasantry.

As is often typical during periods of economic instability, many tenaciously clung to religious beliefs. This served to rekindle strife over religious divisions. What formerly had been more of an academic debate between Catholics and Protestants was quickly becoming more heated. In the Rhineland, for example, Jesuits in Cologne argued that Luther should have been burned at the stake, while in Heidelberg a Calvinist theologian suggested a crusade against the papacy. Protestant princes formed the Protestant Union in 1608. In response, Catholic leaders formed the Catholic League the following year. Both had outside support; the French king, Henry IV, offered support to the Protestant Union, while the Spanish Habsburgs stood ready to help fellow Catholics. In 1617 the Habsburg Archduke Ferdinand, a fervent Catholic, was made king of Bohemia and two years later became Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II.

By the second decade of the century, Europe was a tinderbox brimming with economic turmoil, social unrest, and religious division. It merely needed some rapid series of events to set it alight. In Prague on May 23, 1618, a group of Protestant nobles, angry at the growing influence of Catholicism—and particularly the appointment of Archduke Ferdinand to the Bohemian throne—tossed two representatives of Holy Roman Emperor Matthias and their secretary out of a window. The three survived, but the action was an affront not only to the empire but also Ferdinand and the Catholic League. Ferdinand immediately sent two armies into Bohemia. In response, the Calvinist elector of the Palatinate, Frederick V, organized a counterforce. By the end of November 1618, Protestant forces had captured Pilsen, the Catholic stronghold in Bohemia. The following spring, Matthias was dead and Ferdinand had become his presumptive heir as Holy Roman Emperor. The Bohemian Diet declared that Ferdinand was deposed as king and offered the Bohemian crown to Frederick V, who accepted.

The deposal of Ferdinand as Bohemian king should have solidified Catholic and Protestant factions, but instead it demonstrated that religion was one of several factors in the conflict. Frederick V's father-in-law, James I of England, a Protestant, advised him not to accept the Bohemian crown. Dutch Protestants offered no real assistance, and the Lutheran Duke of Saxony Elector George I (a populous eastern German duchy on Bohemia's northern border) sided with Ferdinand rather than Frederick. This was most likely because the duke not only hated the Calvinists but also saw the potential for territorial gain. With little backing and his forces defeated by the Catholic League at the Battle of White Mountain in November 1620, Frederick V was forced into exile. The Bohemian Protestants were defeated, and their land was confiscated. Ferdinand, who had become Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II by this time, was restored as Bohemian king, and he proceeded to sell former Protestant estates to Catholics, thereby creating a new Catholic nobility in Bohemia. The initial salvos of the Thirty Years' War in Bohemia were over, but many yearned for vengeance.

In the second phase of the conflict, the mantle of Protestant resistance was taken up by King Christian IV of Denmark. He intervened not so much to assist his fellow Protestants but primarily to acquire territory in northern Germany. Christian received nominal support from England, France, and the Netherlands, then known as the United Provinces, although none of these lands provided significant financial or military support. Unfortunately for Christian, the Holy Roman Empire found a brilliant general in Albrecht von Wallenstein, a Bohemian nobleman who sought to increase his own power by supporting Ferdinand II. In 1625 Wallenstein was commissioned to supply twenty thousand troops for the emperor's cause. By mid-1629, imperial forces had gained the upper hand, forcing Christian to renounce any claims to northern Germany. Ferdinand then confiscated the lands of those who had supported the Danish king and gave land to Wallenstein, including the North German duchy of Mecklenburg. Ferdinand also issued the Edict of Restitution in 1629, which prohibited Calvinist worship but, more important, restored all Catholic property that had been secularized since 1552, much of which had been bought and paid for. This edict convinced even Catholic princes that Ferdinand had overstretched his authority. Many had benefited economically from the decentralized structure of the empire, but Ferdinand's centralization of power, enforced by Wallenstein, was perceived as a threat.

Like Christian IV of Denmark, the Swedish king, Gustavus II Adolph, was primarily concerned about his state's political independence and economic development. For these reasons, in 1630 he positioned Sweden as the rescuer of Protestantism in the northern German states and a check against the power of the Habsburgs under Ferdinand II. While Gustavus, a Lutheran, prohibited forced conversions and tolerated Catholicism, the forces of the empire were brutal. For example, in 1631 an imperial army under Johann Tserclaes (also known as Count Tilly) massacred twenty thousand in the Protestant archbishop city of Magdeburg and even destroyed its cathedral. After the first major Protestant victory in this phase of the war at Breitenfeld in Saxony in September 1631, many of Ferdinand's allies began entering the Swedish alliance. Gustavus moved into central and southern Germany, devastating the countryside as he marched, but he was mortally wounded in battle in 1632. Wallenstein was assassinated two years later, but thanks to the imperial army's reinforcement with Spanish troops, Sweden's military advance was halted at the South German town of Nördlingen in September 1634. In May 1635, Ferdinand II signed the Peace of Prague with the Saxons; this treaty also suspended the Edict of Restitution and prohibited German princes from forming military alliances with foreign powers.

The final phase of the Thirty Years' War came as a result of France's fear of being surrounded by powerful Habsburgs in both the Holy Roman Empire and Spain. The first minister of France, Cardinal Richelieu, supported Sweden and garnered the support of Pope Urban VIII, who feared that Habsburg power might threaten his holdings in Italy. Thus, leadership of the Protestant forces passed from Sweden to France, and the war became a wider European conflict. Since the entry of France meant the infusion of forces superior to those of the emperor, many Protestant leaders began to defect from their alliance with Ferdinand III, Ferdinand II's son who had become Holy Roman Emperor upon his father's death in 1637. At the Battle of Breitenfeld outside Vienna in 1642, the imperial army suffered a loss of ten thousand troops at the hands of the Swedes. In 1643 the French won a decisive victory at the Battle of Rocroi over the Spanish on the border of the Spanish Netherlands (modern-day Belgium). By 1646, Ferdinand III had sent representatives to Westphalia to seek peace negotiations.

The war had devastated most of central Europe. The six armies—of the Holy Roman Empire, Denmark, Sweden, Bohemia, Spain, and France—were made up primarily of mercenaries who had no attachment to the places where the fighting occurred; they would fight for any faith for a fee. These armies did not respect the right of surrender; they treated civilians as legitimate targets and made rape and torture general instruments of war. As armies traveled, so did disease. Typhus, dysentery, bubonic plague, and syphilis added to the demographic catastrophe. The war, the flight of refugees, and the ravages of disease brought about a drastic population decline. By the war's end in Germany and Austria, the population had fallen by nearly one-third, from an estimated 21 million to 13.5 million. Starvation was also a consequence of the long war. Farmers saw no reason to plant crops, since there was no assurance they would still be alive to harvest them. As at Versailles at the end of World War I, diplomats gathered in Westphalia at the end of 1644 in the hope of creating a lasting peace.