Westphalia: The Last Christian Peace

By D. Croxton

This sweeping, exhaustively researched history is the first comprehensive account of the Peace of Westphalia in English. Bringing together the latest scholarship with an engaging narrative, it retraces the historical origins of the Peace, exploring its political-intellectual underpinnings and placing it in a broad global and chronological context.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Release date: Jul 24, 2013
• ISBN: 9781137333339

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WESTPHALIA

THE LAST CHRISTIAN PEACE

Derek Croxton

WESTPHALIA

Copyright © Derek Croxton, 2013.

All rights reserved.

First published in 2013 by

PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®

in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,

175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,

this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,

registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,

Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.

Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies

and has companies and representatives throughout the world.

Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,

the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.

ISBN: 978–1–137–33332–2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Croxton, Derek, 1969–

Westphalia : the last Christian peace / Derek Croxton.

   pages cm

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978–1–137–33332–2 (alkaline paper)

 1. Peace of Westphalia (1648) 2. Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648—Peace. 3. Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648—Diplomatic history. 4. Europe—History—1648–1789. 5. Europe—Foreign relations—1648–1715. I. Title.

D269.C77 2013

940.2′41—dc23                               2013002341

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.

Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.

First edition: July 2013

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

For Tanya

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Chronology Chart

Part I   Background

1 Introduction

2 The Thirty Years’ War

3 Origins of the Congress of Westphalia

4 Governments and Goals

5 Structures

Part II   Negotiations

6 The Long Beginning

7 Foreign Satisfaction

8 German Issues

Part III   Conclusion

9 Consequences

10 Foundations

11 Innovations

Notes

Bibliography

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book began at a doctor’s appointment in Garden City, Michigan. I mentioned to the physician that I wanted to write this book someday, and she told me I needed to write it immediately rather than waiting. That was ten years ago, but I started because of her encouragement and I regret that I can’t remember her name. Thank you.

The completion of this book I owe to God for giving me the perseverance to see it through.

Between beginning and ending, I am grateful to many people. Coworkers have been very encouraging. My thanks to those at American Background, AFRC, and Pragmatics for their support.

Thanks to everyone at the Making Peace conference, sponsored by Williamson Murray, for giving me the confidence to work on this book full time, especially Fred Anderson.

My Doktorvater, Geoffrey Parker, has given me ongoing encouragement and advice. He and Paul Schroeder read the manuscript and gave me useful comments. Two specialists on Westphalia have been helpful. Frau Dr. Maria-Elisabeth Brunert has answered questions and forwarded me offprints of her articles, which always offer an interesting new perspective. I am especially indebted to Professor Dr. Anuschka Tischer, who has always been ready to answer my inane questions or help me with unusual translations. She also read a version of the manuscript before it was ready, and I apologize for inflicting that on her.

This book could not have been completed without the library at the University of Virginia, which lends freely to state residents as many other state universities (I found to my discouragement) do not. I also appreciate my time at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at The Ohio State University, and am grateful to Prof. Ned Lebow for granting me a fellowship to do research there.

As always, my family has played a large role in the creation of this book: my parents, Brenda and Don Croxton, for their encouragement; my in-laws, Don and Monika Kienzle, for granting me some time at their home to write away from distractions; to my father-in-law in particular, who has been very supportive to the point of reading the manuscript and giving me his feedback; my children, Alex and Jonathan, for continuing to support me even after they found out I was not writing a Magic Treehouse book; and above all my wife, Tanya, who has demonstrated the patience of Penelope in waiting so long for me to complete this endeavor.

CHRONOLOGY CHART

Part I

BACKGROUND

The world changes, and people, too; nevertheless, nothing really new ever happens; people and centuries resemble each other closely.

—Queen Christina of Sweden, Apologies, 218 number 540

1

INTRODUCTION

LET THERE BE A CHRISTIAN PEACE

The Peace of Westphalia, signed in 1648 in the German town of Münster, was described a century later as the greatest and most important peace that has ever been concluded, not only in Germany, but in all Europe; I may even say, in the whole world.¹ A twentieth-century historian called it the majestic portal which leads from the old into the new world.² In passing through this portal, one moves from the Middle Ages to modernity. On one side, diplomacy is hemmed in by religion and confused by overlapping jurisdictions that make it difficult even to identify the main actors; on the other side, it is conducted by sovereign states in pursuit of security through balance of power. The Peace of Westphalia has been compared in importance to the charter of the United Nations—ironically, since both documents were signed on October 24. But whereas the United Nations charter has been in effect for less than a century, the Peace of Westphalia endures well over 350 years after it was concluded, and scholars have only recently begun to suggest that we are moving into a post-Westphalia international system.

What was this peace that has cast such a long shadow over international relations? Two treaties, the treaty of Münster and the treaty of Osnabrück, make up the Peace of Westphalia. Although these documents contained somewhat different provisions, they declared themselves to constitute a single peace, and in fact they were both signed on the same day in the town of Münster in 1648. Their signature ended the Thirty Years’ War between France and Sweden on one side, and the Holy Roman Empire (the future state of Germany) on the other. In many respects, it was not a particularly noteworthy treaty. The war had already lasted 30 years (1618–48), so ending it represented no great diplomatic accomplishment. Even so, the negotiations lasted for roughly 5 years (depending on how one dates their beginning), making for what is probably the longest continuous peace conference in modern history. Moreover, the Congress of Westphalia began with the express intention of making a universal peace, which meant a peace among all of the Christian states of Europe. It demonstrably failed at this, as the two largest combatants, France and Spain, continued to fight for another 11 years. Moreover, many of those states that did make peace were drawn into another great war that broke out just a few years after the Peace of Westphalia was concluded.

In short: the Peace of Westphalia took a long time to make and failed to achieve anything like universal peace, even in Christian Europe. It is therefore ironic that it has been one of the most celebrated treaties in history. A century after it was signed—long after most treaties have become irrelevant—Voltaire argued that its principles still endured, and Rousseau gushed that the Peace of Westphalia may well remain the foundation of our political system for ever.³ Another 100 years later, in 1866, French statesman (and historian) Adolphe Thiers claimed that the Peace of Westphalia continued to embody the highest principle of European politics.⁴ To this day, a further 150 years on, scholars commonly date the beginning of modern diplomacy to 1648. And it is not only an academic matter: even statesmen mention the Peace of Westphalia as though it is immediately relevant to modern international relations.⁵ Recent books speak of The End of Westphalia or moving Beyond Westphalia, but only with question marks; apparently scholars believe that we are still in a Westphalian system, which might, after nearly four centuries, finally be yielding to a new international order.⁶

Clearly, no peace treaty between France, Sweden, and the Holy Roman Empire over 350 years ago has any direct relevance to the modern world, especially since the Holy Roman Empire does not even exist anymore. The last political echo of the peace came in 1903, when Sweden declined to pay off its mortgage on Wismar, allowing the port to become definitively and unambiguously a part of Germany. Even that faint ripple, however, occurred long ago. Why do these treaties warrant such attention in our time?

The Peace of Westphalia has been celebrated since the day it was signed, but the reasons have shifted dramatically over time; and, of course, some people doubted its benefits from the beginning. At first, the Peace of Westphalia was acclaimed as an end to a long and bloody war. After the peace riders had spread the news across Europe and people had once again grown accustomed to the fruits of peace, the treaty continued to be honored in the Empire as something like the Magna Carta of Protestantism, the guarantee that Lutherans and Calvinists could practice their religion freely.⁷ For German Catholics, on the other hand, the end of religious unity in the Empire was a bad thing. It not only meant the permanent admission of heresy to the country, but also came with negative political consequences: the breakdown of central rule and the domination of estates (the political subunits of the Empire). Religious diversity was a direct cause of political weakness, opening the Holy Roman Empire up to plunder by foreign powers.

For non-Germans, the political weakness of the Empire was a benefit—in fact, it was the fundamental reason behind the peace. What impressed Rousseau was not that the Empire had been completely dismantled, but rather that it had been transformed into a confederative structure that was capable of defending itself but incapable of being an offensive threat. It was therefore a stable force—neither a power vacuum nor a powder keg—at the center of Europe, and helped keep international relations on the continent from becoming too aggressive. This was the same reason advanced by Adolphe Thiers in 1866 (ironically, at a time when Germany was on the verge of becoming united at last). By then, the religious significance of the Peace of Westphalia had been overtaken in the minds of most Germans by its nationalist implications. Embarrassed by their defeats at the hands of Napoleon, they began to view Westphalia as the key obstacle preventing them from forming a unified nation as France, England, and other European states had done. They blamed France, not only because Sweden (which had been equally responsible for the Peace of Westphalia) had long ceased to be a threat, but also because France still retained the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine that it had acquired in 1648.⁸

These provinces became the visible manifestation of France’s age-old policy of keeping Germany weak, and one of the first acts of the newly united German nation was to reclaim them (following the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–71). Over the next half-century, the Peace of Westphalia became important chiefly as the occasion for the French conquest of Alsace and Lorraine, as French and German scholars tried to prove that the provinces belonged properly to their nation. Germans claimed to discover an ancient French policy of expansion toward the Rhine, while French historians tried to unearth evidence that Alsace properly belonged to France all along (as in a 1919 work called Alsace is French by Its Origins, Its Race, and Its History).⁹ These debates uncovered some interesting historical facts, but their polemical nature advanced historical understanding very little. The controversy died down in the interwar period, but arose again during World War II: in 1940, Hitler’s government erected an exhibit in Münster that called Westphalia France’s greatest triumph—Germany’s deepest shame.¹⁰ Two years later, the Nazi press declared that their goal was to win the Thirty Years’ War and overcome the Peace of Westphalia.¹¹

Most of these issues have been forgotten today. Germany is once again unified and has accepted the loss of Alsace and Lorraine. Hardly anyone views it as a threat to international security; it is now a peaceful, defensive-oriented state by inclination rather than by force. Religious toleration is taken for granted across the Western world, so Protestants do not devote much attention to a treaty signed over three centuries ago. The Peace of Westphalia is no longer celebrated or decried for what it declared, but for what it implied: that treaties are made between independent governments, and no one else.

It hardly seems controversial to say that international treaties are agreements between national governments because we are accustomed to thinking of the world as divided geographically into about 200 governments that exercise exclusive authority within their borders and do not interfere in the internal affairs of their neighbors. Governments meeting this definition qualify as sovereign, and the system as a whole is known as a sovereign state system. Virtually the whole landmass of the world is divided among sovereign states, and these states (or governments) are like marbles in a bag: they bounce against each other frequently, but always remain distinct. Borders sometimes change, but they are always adjusted among sovereign states.

Events of the last two decades have challenged the idea that national governments are the only actors in international politics. Criminal and terrorist organizations, such as drug cartels and al-Qaeda, operate independently of the governments that (often involuntarily) host them and produce effects in other nations. International news is full of references to failed states that are unable to control violence within their borders. When it spills out and affects other countries, the international response is not only to replace the existing government, but to build up a new government that will be capable of performing its basic duties, a process known as nation building. The very concept of borders, which are essential to sovereignty, seems to be becoming obsolete as issues such as refugees, environmental questions, crime, and terrorism cut across internationally demarcated boundaries. Communications (cell phones and the Internet) and even weapons (intercontinental ballistic weapons) make traditionally geographic problems such as information security and defense into international issues that can strike anywhere regardless of physical location.

Sovereignty is so fundamental in our era that the United Nations Charter states at the beginning that it is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.¹² The Peace of Westphalia has generally been credited as establishing this international norm; unfortunately, it contains no explicit declaration comparable to the one in the United Nations Charter. It does not even use the word sovereignty, which does not exist in Latin; the concept of sovereignty was relatively new and had been developed in European secular languages, not in classical or church Latin. Moreover, even though the Peace of Westphalia mentions related Latin concepts—supreme dominion, superiority—these are not in the context of establishing rules for international relations. Instead of sovereignty, the Peace of Westphalia begins with the medieval-sounding injunction, Let there be a Christian peace. This certainly did not strive to create a new political order; to the contrary, it explicitly states as its goal to return things to their state as of 1618, prior to the war.

What are we to make of this treaty? Was it the first modern peace? Or was it perhaps the last medieval peace, focused on a moral order and centered on Christianity? No simple reading back of modern concepts will give us the answer: we must, in a sense, understand the peace on its own terms. But that doesn’t mean we can’t understand it on our terms as well. The key is that we have to appreciate the assumptions and aims of statesmen in the 1640s in order to assess the meaning of the peace, for its time and for ours.

BAROQUE DIPLOMACY

No one can claim to understand the seventeenth century, its values and modes of thought, one historian has written, who has not studied the peace of Westphalia.¹³ While this is possibly true, it is equally valid to turn this statement on its head: no one can claim to understand the Peace of Westphalia who has not studied the values and modes of thought of the seventeenth century. Although there was, of course, no single mode of thought in the seventeenth century, people did share certain assumptions and approaches in common. Especially in the first half of the century, this common ground can best be summed up as Baroque. Baroque is a term applied by later ages to trends in the visual arts of the early seventeenth century—originally in a derogatory sense—but it has been usefully applied to literature, drama, and music as well. It has not been widely used in a political context, although it seems reasonable that such a thoroughgoing trend in intellectual life would at least touch all forms of public interaction, especially if it had some fundamental and deep-rooted cause. The following is not an attempt to prove that there was such a thing as Baroque diplomacy, but instead attempts to use Baroque concepts to understand the psychology and intellectual background of statesmen in the early seventeenth century.¹⁴

When you think of the seventeenth century, you might think about witch trials, such as those in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692. The seventeenth century was, indeed, the great era of witch hunts; witchcraft and magic were widely assumed to be true, even among the learned.¹⁵ Witch trials indicate a deep sense of unease, of people who believed not only that the devil was actively at work in the world, but that he had a mass of secret followers to carry out his wishes. This is a good place to start understanding the Baroque, since unease might qualify for the best one-word characterization of the period. Witchcraft and devil-worship were the symptom of a problem that ran deeper and which manifests itself in every aspect of Baroque life.

On a basic level, the uncertainties and discomforts of life explain much of the unease. Any illness could lead to death, and, even when it fell short of that, there were still few ways to relieve pain. Poor eyesight was uncorrected by glasses, poor hearing by hearing aids, poor digestion by Pepto-Bismol. The wealthy had servants, who could alleviate certain problems, but no one could make a rash or an ulcer go away. It must have required a great deal of patience just to put up with all these inconveniences that would drive a modern person to distraction.

Such physical problems, however, were common to any premodern society. There were other issues, structural ones, that made the seventeenth century a particularly hard time. For one thing, the economic situation grew worse in most of Europe during the first half of the century. After years of population expansion and economic growth during the 1500s, things reversed in the 1600s. Wars and plagues reduced populations across the continent, while governments ratcheted taxes ever higher in order to finance their own expansion at home and abroad. And although governments were willing to enforce their rules and their taxes with armed soldiers, they faced an unprecedented amount of resistance. Some people turned to banditry, either waylaying individuals traveling through the countryside, or organizing themselves into large bands capable of raiding a noble’s house and overwhelming his servants. Others expressed their discontent by rebelling in defense of their rights. Revolts varied from small noble conspiracies to mass peasant movements to provincial wars of independence. The 1640s—the decade of the Peace of Westphalia—was so full of rebellions that it is sometimes considered a time of general crisis in Europe: revolts shook Catalonia, Portugal, Sicily, Naples, France, the Ukraine, and England, where Charles I was deposed and beheaded.¹⁶

Apart from economic problems, the Baroque was beset by intellectual and spiritual upheaval, which yanked the rug from underneath cherished certainties. Close contact with Asia and Africa, together with the discovery of entirely new peoples in the Americas, challenged assumptions about how all human societies functioned: whatever the rule, there seemed to be an exception somewhere. And how did those people in the Americas fit into the biblical scheme? How did they get separated, and from which of Noah’s three sons did they originate? Traditionally Shem was the ancestor of the Arabs and Jews, Ham of Africans, and Japheth of the rest of the world, but the Indians didn’t seem to fit into any category. The earth itself seemed to move beneath people’s feet. The solidity and immobility of the earth seems like one of the basic facts of experience; but, according to Copernicus, it is actually hurtling through space. If he was right, what else could people believe without questioning?

Then there was the religious division within Christianity. There had been heresies and sects from the time of early Christianity, and in 1054 the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches had permanently divided the religion. In the fourteenth century, Catholicism itself was split between two popes, one in Rome and one in Avignon, in southern France. But these disputes, although serious, lacked the radical questioning of church doctrine that marked the Reformation of Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli in the sixteenth century. Luther not only denied the authority of the pope, as the Orthodox Church had done, but questioned the whole nature of divine grace as the Catholic Church taught it. Moreover, whereas the schism with the Orthodox Church had divided two regions that were already widely separated geographically, the Reformation occurred right in the heart of Catholic Europe. Suddenly, people were finding their own neighbors, subjects, and children converting to this new faith. As a result, almost everyone began to question his or her own beliefs. Some were convinced by the new interpretations of Christianity provided by Lutheranism, Calvinism, or more radical versions of Protestantism, such as Anabaptism. Others, confronted with these challenges to their beliefs, found a new strength in their faith and became more devout than before. The early seventeenth century was the height of the Counter-Reformation, which not only involved official attempts to re-Catholicize territories that had been lost to Protestantism, but also included a renewed sense of faith among believers. Saints Vincent de Paul, Francis de Sales, and Robert Bellarmine all date from the early seventeenth century, and new religious orders such as the Lazarists and the Daughters of Charity were founded at the same time. There was no shortage of strong and sincere faith among all of the main branches of Western Christianity in the early 1600s. At the same time, skepticism became more prevalent among some. Outright atheism remained rare; even the consummate skeptic, Descartes, professed belief in God. But some people struggled with radical doubt. Blaise Pascal, one of the most famous, confronted his uncertainty about the existence of God by devising the wager. The idea is that you should bet on God’s existence by acting religious, praying, attending church, and so forth. If you are wrong, you have lost nothing; if you are right, you have gained eternal life.

The result of these profound changes—anthropological, cosmological, and religious—led to anxiety about the world and one’s place in it.¹⁷ As a consequence, people seemed to cling to worldly hierarchies as the last vestige of order. As Shakespeare wrote in Troilus and Cressida, Take but degree away, untune that string, and, hark, what discord follows! People not only believed in rank, but carried their defense of their positions to an absurd degree. When you think of the seventeenth century, you might think about men in plumed hats crossing swords in a duel. Perhaps you think of d’Artagnan, the musketeer, or of Cyrano de Bergerac, the man with the long nose who was willing to duel at the slightest hint that his honor was being impugned. The duel was the ultimate chance to defend one’s position, risking and threatening death. That is why, although it had been outlawed in France, dueling remained popular among nobles (who were the only ones allowed to wear swords). But one did not merely defend his rank; he sought to increase it by claiming as high a status as he could get away with. The age is full of bluster and braggadocio, parodied wonderfully by German poet Andreas Gryphius in his play Horribilicribrifax Teutsch. The opening begins with a soldier exclaiming,

Lightening, fire, brimstone, thunder, saltpeter, lead, and many millions of tons of gunpowder are not so powerful as the least reflection that I make over the consequences of my unhappiness. The great Shah of Persia trembles when I walk on the Earth. The Turkish emperor has several times sent representatives to offer me his crown. The world famous Mogul does not consider his fortress safe from me. [Act I, Scene 1]

And on and on the soldiers in this play rant, exaggerating their accomplishments and abilities to an absurd degree.

Fictional characters were not the only ones ready to fight for their honor. In fact, both d’Artagnan and Cyrano, although best known from works of fiction, were real people who lived during the mid-seventeenth century.¹⁸ They even both served as royal couriers during the later 1640s, and Cyrano, at least, carried correspondence to and from the Congress of Westphalia. The real Cyrano and d’Artagnan were sensitive about their honor, and they had something to be sensitive about. Both of them used dubious noble titles: d’Artagnan called himself by one of his mother’s titles (which he did not inherit), and Cyrano used the title de Bergerac long after his father had sold the seigneury of that name. Their behavior mirrored that of participants at the Congress of Westphalia, who would claim excessive titles and defend them beyond all appearance of reason. Disputes over titles and precedence became one of the characteristic features of the negotiations, and contributed to their length.

Cyrano was also a writer, author of The Other World, usually rendered in English as Voyage to the Moon. It is one of the earliest science fiction novels, characteristic of the Baroque willingness to imagine and to explore. In it, he speculated about portable audio books and guns that could cook and spice game as they shot it. The society of the moon that he conceived turned many things on their heads; for example, the old were expected to honor and obey the young, not the other way around. This skepticism and willingness to challenge received assumptions were not limited to fiction, but extended to science and philosophy. René Descartes was a prime example. While serving in the army as a foot soldier during the Thirty Years’ War, he had a mystical experience directing him to reform science on a new foundation. The titles of his works are references to his job of fundamental renewal: Meditations on First Philosophy, Principles of Philosophy, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason. In the Discourse on the Method, he wrote that if you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things, which almost seems to be a motto for the whole period. In his most famous statement, Descartes figured that the only thing he knew for certain was that I think, therefore I am; everything else depended on that crucial bit of information. On similar lines, Francis Bacon wrote Novum Organum, promoting inductive logic over the traditional deductive sort that had held sway during the Middle Ages.

Naturally, not everyone accepted the new ideas. Galileo was condemned for advocating the heliocentric worldview (by then nearly a century old) of Copernicus, and died in 1642 while under house arrest. Cyrano himself, although open to new ideas, denied that vacuums could exist. But the trend of tearing things down to fundamentals in order to build up a new, more solid basis for knowledge spilled over into other fields, including politics. When Thomas Hobbes set about his famous work, Leviathan, on the basis of government, he emphasized the importance of getting fundamental definitions correct: [A] man that seeketh precise Truth, had need to remember what every name he uses stands for; and to place it accordingly; or els he will find himselfe entangled in words, as a bird in lime-twiggs; the more he struggles, the more belimed. Since definitions were so fundamental, older (and presumably less precise) works were likely to be flawed, so Hobbes set about making up his own definitions. He began, therefore, not with the society, nor even with the individual, but with how individuals think—the same point that Descartes and Bacon had tackled.

The Baroque put considerable value on the individual and his distinctiveness. In Cyrano’s Voyage to the Moon, the main character tries to convince the inhabitants of the moon that Earth has people in it. No one thinks this is credible, but one person jumps to his defense: If he is a man, all men are free. Is he then not free to imagine what he wants . . . ? Can you force him to have only your visions? The value of the individual is readily apparent in Baroque art, for example, Rembrandt’s penetrating self-portraits. Paintings show their subjects as individuals, not as ideal types.

Rembrandt reveals his character in a quiet sitting for a portrait, but Baroque art more commonly expresses emotion outwardly and energetically. Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s statue of David shows him about to launch the stone that would kill Goliath; his twisted posture, pursed lips, and wrinkled forehead demonstrate that he is tense and determined. Compared to Michelangelo’s stoic portrayal of David before his battle, Bernini’s statue engages the viewer more directly and reveals the struggle at the moment of combat. The same techniques were used in religious art, such as Bernini’s Ecstasy of St. Theresa. The observer can hardly look at the statue without feeling the overwhelming power of God’s love as she experienced it. In painting, Peter Paul Rubens’s Fall of the Damned vividly portrays nonbelievers being thrown willy-nilly out of heaven and devoured by demons as they plummet.

Baroque art is engaging because it was made to be engaging. It is a public art, designed to motivate, inspire, and convince people. As one would expect, governments were quick to use this method of reinforcing their authority, especially at a time of insecurity and insurrection. These range from Van Dyck’s casual but regal portrait of Charles I, to Velazquez’s representation of Ambrogio Spinola’s magnanimity at the surrender of Breda, to Rubens’s grand cycle of paintings of French queen Marie de Medici. Naturally, this form of propaganda resulted in exaggerations, and the absurdity of Rubens’s work rivals the braggadocio of Horribilicribrifax. Marie ruled only briefly, accomplished little of note, and died in exile after quarreling with her son—not much material for a cycle of 24 paintings in which she is sometimes portrayed as a classical goddess. Although Rubens managed the difficulty admirably, it is hard not to think of the great difference between his portrayal of Marie and the reality of her life.

Grandiose portrayals could therefore be a façade covering a more humble structure; or, to put it another way, there was a difference between a figure’s public portrayal and his private character, like the difference between a character in a play and the actor who portrays him. Shakespeare explained it as All the world’s a stage, and the Baroque was comfortable with this distinction between roles and actors, public and private. The contrast between appearance and reality, between public role and private conscience, reappeared frequently. And yet the Baroque did not attempt to abolish this distinction between public and private, to make everyone transparent and authentic. To them, it was a natural state of things; it was just a question of adapting to it. One part of adapting to it meant that everyone had a role to play. People might be equal before God, but they were definitely not equal in society; there was a top and a bottom, a hierarchy that kept things in order and prevented anarchy. One of the favorite Bible verses of the era was the Wisdom of Solomon 11:21: But you have ordered everything according to measure, number and weight.¹⁹ This was widely regarded as necessary, not an unfortunate side effect.

At the top of the social as well as the political hierarchy stood the king. The few nations without a monarch—Switzerland, the United Provinces, Venice—were exceptions that fit into contemporary schemes only with difficulty. Even kings were ranked one against another, but all kings came before rulers who carried a lesser title, such as the duke of Savoy or the grand duke of Tuscany. On the other hand, they all ranked below the Emperor, ruler of the Holy Roman Empire. There could be only one legitimate Emperor, so there was no need to say the name of his empire with his title; he was simply the Emperor.

Today, most people view government (at least in theory) as a service provided to society (a collection of individuals with a common bond). We tend to think that people have a right to be represented in their government, or at least to have their interests represented, and that each society has a right to its own government. Therefore, it seemed natural when, after 1990, a number of societies broke away from their multinational governments and formed their own: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Armenia, Uzbekistan, and so forth. Similarly, it seemed natural that East and West Germany would be united into a single government, and the continued division of Korea into northern and southern parts seems an anomaly. Some of these same ideas existed in the seventeenth century. The English recognized themselves as distinctively English and different from the rest of Europe. The French saw themselves as a single people, and even had a motto to support it: one faith, one law, one king. Even the Germans, whose government was highly fragmented, had a definite idea of a German nation to which they belonged. Thus, governments were commonly called republics—from the Latin res publica, or public thing—or commonwealths. These names literally indicated that society is a shared good.

The idea of a cohesive national society was, however, countered by an equally powerful idea: that the king owned the state.²⁰ Louis XIV is famous for allegedly having said I am the state (L’état, c’est moi). More commonly, the king was not said to be the state, but to possess it. He inherited the kingdom like property. The thing about heritable rulership is that one never knows for sure who will end up in charge. Because royal families frequently intermarried with foreigners, sometimes a person would come to govern a country where he is not a native. This occurred, for example, when the Hanoverians succeeded the Stuarts as kings of Great Britain; the first Hanoverian ruler, George I, did not even speak English. Although Great Britain and Hanover eventually separated again in the nineteenth century because of different inheritance laws, more commonly the practice of primogeniture resulted in the consolidation of kingdoms under a single ruler. The first Stuart, James I, was also James VI of Scotland; his descendants ruled both England and Scotland until, in 1707, the two kingdoms were united into the single realm of Great Britain. The marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella united the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile under their successors. By the seventeenth century, the king of Spain was also king of Portugal, Naples, and Sicily, and duke of Milan and Burgundy. The king of Poland was also grand duke of Lithuania; the king of Denmark was also king of Norway and duke of Schleswig and Holstein; the king of Sweden was grand duke of Finland and duke of Estonia. Virtually every realm seemed to be a conglomeration of several formerly independent territories, and royal titles consequently stretched on to the point that some monarchs began adding an et cetera at the end in case they missed anything.

The increasingly grandiose titles corresponded to a growing sense of royal prerogative. The Age of Absolutism was just getting underway in the early seventeenth century, but all of its pretensions were fully present. The king claimed to rule by the grace of God and was answerable only to Him, with no restrictions on how he behaved to their subordinates. Sixteenth-century thinker Jean Bodin had defined sovereignty—the right to rule—as indivisible, and rulers used this theory to justify the concentration of power in their hands.

Theories of absolutism often belied a ruler’s actual authority, however, which was usually limited—sometimes sharply—by three factors. First, rulers often ruled different realms, with different laws and customs, which their people were reluctant to change. Second, government had grown to the point that ruling was an arduous task that individual monarchs often had trouble handling. Third, there existed a tradition contrary to absolutism in which the monarch was required to listen to the advice of his subjects, and this tradition was often expressed in concrete terms through councils and representative assemblies that claimed a voice in government.

Kings retained their many titles because the territories they ruled commonly remained distinct. The result was not a single kingdom, but a composite monarchy.²¹ As in the English-Hanoverian union, the two parts retained their own laws, including inheritance laws, which eventually led to their separation. Although different inheritance laws rarely became an issue, the difference in civil and criminal laws was very much a factor in making it difficult to govern more than one realm. The king of Spain might rule the entire Iberian peninsula, but even he could not ignore the differences between Portugal, Castile, and Aragon. A traveler going from Lisbon to Barcelona would have to have separate passports issued for each kingdom through which he passed, and the king who wished to raise taxes would have to use the conventional methods for each kingdom. This meant that it was very easy to raise taxes in some places, such as Castile, but very difficult to raise them in others, such as Aragon. Even smaller regions such as Catalonia, which was a part of Aragon, had their own traditions that monarchs ignored at their peril.

What was the state in this confusing amalgamation of political units? The most obvious definition is all the territories ruled by a single monarch. But this is not entirely adequate, since these territories were really distinct political units in almost every respect, saving only that they shared a common ruler. Political offices were frequently reserved to local nationals, and a Castilian could not even trade with Portuguese colonies so distinct did Portugal remain from the other parts of Iberia. On the other hand, it would sound strange to refer to Castile and Aragon as separate states, since they followed the same foreign policy, fought in the same wars, and subjects even mingled in the same military and in the same higher political offices. It was something like a federation, but it is hard to find an analogue in today’s world. It almost seems like the European Union, except in reverse. In the EU, countries share a common currency, a free trade zone, and a common immigration policy, but retain their own rulers, armies, and foreign policies. The Spanish monarchy was the opposite: each part had its protectionist trade policies and rules about who could serve in public offices, but they all shared a common military, foreign policy, and, of course, king.

All of this complicated polity rested on the governance of the individual at the top. One doesn’t need to believe in the Great Man philosophy of history (that events are chiefly dictated by the actions of extraordinary individuals) to appreciate that momentous events could hinge on the characteristics of a particular ruler. His marital relations could become the subject of international disputes. If he had trouble producing an heir, the realm would quiver at the possibility of a succession dispute. If the king was fond of fighting, the nation would spend much time at war; if he liked to build palaces, his subjects would have to pay for them.

Although it was good to be the king, it was also a major headache.²² If one knew the responsibility of rulers, fewer people would wish to be one, wrote Queen Christina, who was one of the few rulers to resign her position voluntarily.²³ Their lives were often scripted from start to finish, with little time for relaxation and none for frivolity. The best monarchs were diligent in their duties, spending long hours reading state papers, attending council meetings, and receiving officials. But it was a tedious and difficult life, so kings turned increasingly to others to manage government for them. Christina was right to say that the laziness of rulers makes them dependent on their ministers, but one did not have to be especially lazy to be intimidated by the job of governing; as she herself admitted elsewhere, the smallest states have enough business to occupy the ability of the greatest men.²⁴ Sometimes these favorites were friends of the king who used the office to enrich themselves and their families, without much concern for the nation as a whole. Other times they were ministers with a program, often very dedicated and hard-working individuals who took upon themselves the responsibilities that the king should have shouldered.²⁵

The working relationship between a king and his favorite varied widely, and depended on the personality of the monarch. A few rulers preferred to abandon everything to a favorite, leaving themselves free to hunt, drink, gamble, and seduce women (at the expense of making sure the minister was doing a good job). More commonly, kings relied on a minister to manage daily affairs, but took an interest in government and occasionally overruled their favorites; Louis XIII of France is an example. Still other rulers followed the counsel of one individual over others, but themselves took an active role in government and never let the reigns of authority get far out of their hands; Ferdinand III had such a relationship with Count Maximilian von Trauttmansdorff. A few of the most active monarchs ruled with only the advice of a council, making all major decisions on their own and participating directly in every aspect of government, often including war. Rulers of this type included Gustavus Adolphus, Maximilian of Bavaria, and Christian IV of Denmark. (Perhaps because of the great demands put on them, the early seventeenth century produced a number of extraordinary monarchs who not only governed actively, but also had impressive outside interests: Ferdinand III was a composer of note, Sigismund III of Poland was a painter (one of his paintings was thought for centuries to be a Tintoretto), and Philip IV of Spain translated Guicciardini’s histories in his spare time.) Ministers not only relieved the king of a great burden of work, but also served as convenient scapegoats when things went wrong. It was impolitic to criticize the king, but it was easy to accuse his ministers of bad policies and even treason.

The death of a monarch always brought changes to government. If the country was lucky, there was a single obvious heir to the throne; if not, there might be a civil war to dispute the successor. Elective monarchies, such as the Holy Roman Empire and Poland, might have an extended interregnum if they could not agree on a candidate right away; this also provided an opportunity for neighboring powers to intervene in their politics and support their own candidates. Once in power, a new king might follow his predecessor’s policies, but he might not. Although laws created by his predecessor were generally assumed to remain in force, there was some question whether prior treaties continued to be valid. Power was so focused in an individual that it was not clear whether his agreements were binding on his successor; were they made in the name of the state as a whole, or only in the name of the king who signed them? Most people acted as though agreements remained valid under a new king, but treaties were sometimes renewed with the current monarch’s signature to be doubly sure. Although few monarchs made wholesale changes to their nation’s laws when they came to power, it was common for them to dismiss some or all of their predecessor’s leading ministers, signaling a change in the direction of government. Political prisoners and exiles were also sometimes freed with the coming of a new régime.

One of the biggest challenges for any monarchy was what to do when the new king was underage. A royal minority was a time when everyone who claimed a share of power could compete for the right to make decisions in the name of the young monarch, which frequently led to political unrest and even civil wars. The chief players commonly included the king’s mother, who often served as regent; members of the royal council, especially the upper nobility; and representative bodies. In addition to this struggle between groups, it was also a time for weakening central power. People who would never question an adult monarch’s direct command often disputed the right of a regency government to issue the same order, and attempted to establish precedents that the king would be expected follow after he became an adult. A royal minority was an especially common time for a minister to seize control over the government, since the queen regent whom he served usually had little experience in politics herself. Individuals also jostled to befriend a teenaged monarch so that they would have influence over him after he came of age. Minorities were an important phenomenon during the Congress of Westphalia, since two major powers (France and Sweden) and several minor ones (Savoy, Hesse-Kassel, Mantua) were ruled by regency governments during the negotiations.

Directly beneath the king in the hierarchy of power and social prestige were the nobles. Once in power, a monarch might in theory rule absolutely, with no restrictions; in practice, however, he could rarely afford to ignore nobles and their opinions. Kings traditionally called on leading nobles to advise them, which had led to the formation of a royal council in most countries. Technically, these councils were only advisory, and their members usually served at the pleasure of the prince (i.e., only as long as he wanted them to). An unhappy nobility, however, could make government difficult. The days were long gone, it is true, when nobles kept their own private armies and the king had to wage constant war against his own vassals to keep them in line. On the other hand, nobles continued to dominate the highest offices of government and the army. A disgruntled noble governor of a province could lead it in revolt, or an army commander could turn his forces against the government. This was possible both because powerful nobles had extensive networks of clients who owed their careers to them, and because people generally recognized the right of nobles to participate in government. If a revolt could be framed in terms of opposition to a minister who was leading the king astray, it might attract wide support.

Even commoners, the lowest rung of the hierarchy, often had at least an indirect say in government. Most countries had some sort of representative institution that occasionally met to advise the king. They went under many different names—the Parliament of England, the Estates-General of France, the Cortes of Castile, the Imperial Diet in the Holy Roman Empire, and others. Often these had begun as noble assemblies, to which had been added representatives of the clergy, of cities, or of commoners in general. Because the different groups met separately, they had the appearance of a sort of bicameral or multicameral legislature. They should not be confused with modern representative bodies, however. They were not created to embody popular sovereignty, and they were not even especially representative in the modern sense—even the commons was represented by the wealthy upper crust of society. The assemblies were not called together to make laws, but rather to advise the king and to give him input on conditions around the kingdom. As a rule, they were summoned infrequently, usually only at the king’s command, which might not come for years at a time.

Even though the purpose of representative assemblies was to help the king rule, in principle strengthening his authority, they were not always cooperative. One of the chief purposes of assemblies was to approve new taxes, which was important because monarchs everywhere had a seemingly endless need for money to finance their wars. Since kings needed the assemblies’ approval, they could try to bargain for concessions before granting him money. In some places, assemblies were on the wane—Bavaria, Castile, Brandenburg—whereas in others they were still strong—England, Aragon, Sweden, the Empire. In England, Parliament was slowly becoming a genuinely legislative body with independent power. In a few places, there were no monarchs and government was directed entirely by one or more assemblies, such as the United Provinces, Switzerland, and Venice.

This governmental background brings us to the next question: who was in charge of foreign policy? Nominally, the answer was almost always the monarch. In practice, nobles not only insisted on a share in making policy, but could themselves become active players by rebelling against the government, commonly in alliance with another government. Representative assemblies might also demand a say in foreign policy. Finally, individual provinces might have their own ideas of what monarch (if any) they wanted as a to ruler. By rebelling and choosing a different ruler, they could easily become actors on the international stage, even though under normal circumstances they were merely members of a larger polity.

A country’s foreign policy goals depended on who was directing it. Monarchs were interested in the success of their dynasty, so they put a high value on marriage alliances with other high-ranking rulers and suitable apanages for their younger children. If they inherited a claim to a province or a kingdom, they were often willing to go to war to enforce their claim against others. The overarching goal of kings was honor or its equivalents—gloire (glory) in France, reputación (reputation) in Spain. There was no single definition of honor, but basic components included winning wars, acquiring territory, preserving existing territory, defending one’s religion, protecting smaller allies, and keeping one’s word. Another aspect of glory that arose frequently was an aversion to making peace at a time of weakness. It was acceptable—inevitable, really—to make peace when one was losing a war, but one should not make peace in the immediate aftermath of a military defeat, which would make a ruler appear to be giving in to superior force; better to let the monarchy go under than lose reputation in such a fashion.²⁶ The defense of religion was closely related to honor and glory, because nothing could be more honorable than to defend the true faith. Note that, while this did include extending Christianity over heathen lands, it did not usually mean spreading one’s own denomination of Christianity over other Christian lands; the main thing was to protect that domination where it was threatened, not subject new territories to it.

Representative assemblies, of course, usually had different priorities. They were interested in the royal family, but chiefly insofar as it produced a healthy heir (male if the inheritance laws required it) in each generation, thereby avoiding a succession struggle. They also tended to frown on foreign rulers, so they would seek to keep marriage alliances from leading to a foreigner coming to the throne. Sometimes assemblies could be even more ardent in the defense of religion than monarchs. One area where their priorities were almost always different from rulers, however, was finance. Both rulers and subjects wanted to promote trade, but rulers tended to be more interested in trade conflicts as a means of hurting an enemy state, while subjects were interested in the protection and extension of trading privileges. Rulers were also less concerned about the costs of their projects, especially their wars, than assemblies were. While a king had to figure out a way to finance the army every year, his other priorities usually led him to think that the goal was essential and the financing was something that would just have to be worked out. Assemblies, which represented the people who had to pay for these wars, were almost always more cautious with finances and more willing to limit the ends rather than to expand the means.

One fundamental part of international relations—security—has yet to be mentioned. Obviously, no country wants to be invaded, raided, plundered, or conquered, so security is always an issue. But few Western European nations needed to fear the kind of ravaging that they had faced in the Middle Ages from the Norse, the Huns, or the Arabs. These groups had either been assimilated or defeated, so that security was less a life-or-death issue than a question of gaining a province more or less in the next succession war. (In Eastern Europe, Poland, Brandenburg, Pomerania, and Russia still had to deal with steppe raiders, and Austria and Venice had to defend against raids and wars of conquest from the Ottoman Turks.) The idea of abstracting security in this sense from dynastic or popular concerns was relatively new. People began thinking of the state as something distinct from the king, the commonwealth, and the people. To act for the benefit of the state was to use reason of state, a new term with negative connotations: amoral, un-Christian, Machiavellian. Few statesmen would admit to acting mainly for reason of state, but more of them began to analyze political and diplomatic problems in these terms: rather than asking what would bring the most glory to the king or what would be best for his soul, they wanted to know what would be best for the state.

POLITICAL MAP

The Spanish Monarchy

Because there were so many competing interests at the Congress of Westphalia, it is helpful to begin with an overview of the political map of Europe. While the outlines of most states would still be familiar to us today, the goals, interests, and relative power of those states were drastically different (see map 1.1). One obvious difference is that, since most governments were monarchical, the relationship among ruling families played an important part in the political interests of states. This was nowhere more evident than in the most powerful family in Europe, the Habsburgs, which ruled both Spain and the Empire. The rise of the Habsburgs culminated in the person of Charles V (r. 1519–56), who inherited four different realms: the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon and the duchies of Burgundy and Austria. He was also Holy Roman Emperor, which was appropriate because he ruled the greatest European empire since Charlemagne, one that stretched from Seville to Vienna and from Antwerp to Sicily.

The great conglomeration of power did not outlast Charles V, however. Even before he died, he had abdicated rulership of the Austrian lands to his younger brother Ferdinand. His son, Philip II, inherited the rest: Spain, Naples, Sicily, Franche-Comté (situated between France and Switzerland), and the modern countries of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. In 1580, Philip also inherited the crown of Portugal.

And that was the smaller part of his dominions. After Columbus discovered the Americas, conquistadors overran the great Aztec and Incan empires to bring most of Central and South America under Spanish control. These acquisitions, though great in territorial extent, were soon depopulated when the native peoples were exposed to Old World diseases such as smallpox. Therefore, they might not have helped Spain so much had they not been found to contain vast amounts of gold, and, especially, silver. Each year, a heavily guarded treasure fleet sailed across the Atlantic to Seville, bringing wealth to run the Spanish empire. Spain also ruled the Philippines, and, thanks to its Portuguese inheritance, parts of Africa, India, and Indonesia, the islands of Ceylon and Formosa, trading posts in China, and the colony of Brazil. It was a giant empire, the first on which the sun never set.

Map 1.1   Political map of Europe in 1648

Through inheritance and conquests, Spain became the greatest power in Europe in the sixteenth century. Philip II and his descendants did not get to enjoy this great inheritance in peace, however. Even without the Austrian lands, the Spanish empire was widely spread out, difficult to defend, and had enemies on every front. It was fortunate to defeat its most powerful opponent, France, in a series of wars during the sixteenth century. French kings had claims on a variety of Spanish territories—Navarre (a small kingdom in the Pyrenees), Naples, Milan, and the Low Countries—but the century ended with Spain in control of almost all the disputed lands. The bigger problem for Spain was maintaining central control over such vastly different regions, especially during the age of the Reformation. Philip II and his father maintained Catholicism strictly in Iberia and Italy, but Calvinism spread in the Low Countries and sparked a revolt there in 1568. For the next 80 years, Spanish resources would be tied down in a war to reconquer the rebellious provinces in what is now the Netherlands.

Spanish foreign policy was thoroughly centralized: the king made the decisions, assisted by his advisors, but with little interference from representative institutions. Although decision-making was centralized, however, the government had to take provincial concerns into consideration even more than most other states. Castile and Naples provided the bulk of the money and manpower for Spain’s foreign policy, whereas other provinces, such as Aragon and Franche-Comté, provided very little. It was impossible to raise taxes generally; they had to be assessed for each area separately, taking into consideration the traditions and privileges of the region. Attempts to make the empire more efficient by creating a more uniform government and a more equitable distribution of the defense burden inevitably ran into serious opposition. The government responded swiftly and with great force to provincial revolts, because it feared the bad example would spread to other provinces—a sort of early domino theory. Hence the vast effort spent in the otiose attempt to defeat the revolt in the Netherlands.

The Dutch Republic

The Dutch Revolt remained the top Spanish priority almost to the end. It combined several key concerns of Spanish monarchs: the reputation of the monarch for maintaining his authority and passing it on to his successors; the domino theory that a successful revolt would lead to rebellions in other Spanish territories; and the desire to defend Catholicism against the Calvinist rebels. Most Spanish policies centered around the revolt in one way or another. Economic sanctions aimed to hurt the Dutch economy by preventing trade with Spain and its colonies; money was invested in building up defenses of far-flung colonies against Dutch raids; and diplomatic resources went into assuring Spain a path for its troops to march from Milan to the Low Countries (the more direct sea route was usually impossible because of Dutch naval superiority). The revolt also led to foreign wars; in the sixteenth century, Spain became involved in conflicts with both England and France in the attempt to prevent them from aiding the Dutch. Both sides of the conflict, exhausted by 1609, agreed to a 12 years’ truce based on the status quo. By that time, it was evident that Spain was not going to be able to reconquer the lost provinces, but making peace seemed an even worse alternative: it would hurt Spanish prestige and give the Dutch a chance to make further inroads into Spanish trade.

What made the Dutch Revolt so difficult to defeat was the fact that the rebels did not consist of a ragtag