The Holy Roman Empire, Sweden, and France in the Thirty Year War, 1618-1648

By Af Jochnick

This book is about the section of the Thirty-Year War, relating primarily to the struggle between the Holy Roman Empire, Sweden, and France. Jochnick analyzes the incentives and objectives of these three dominant entities in the war, their conduct, the impact of the War on other countries, the eventual peace treaty, and its consequences for all participants.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781643501994

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The Holy Roman Empire, Sweden, and France in the Thirty Year War, 1618-1648

Af Jochnick

Copyright © 2018 Af Jochnick

All rights reserved

First Edition

Page Publishing, Inc

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc 2018

ISBN 978-1-64350-198-7 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64350-199-4 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

Acknowledgments

Any book is hard to write, and without help, not much will be accomplished.

I have been lucky to have had dedicated and competent persons willing to step in and expend some of their scarce, valuable time to help me.

My wife, Liz, has acted as the principal editor. She has also, as in the past, obtained source material, often from remote places, difficult to locate.

Alistair Dinwiddie has made the maps. A member of a famous, multigeneration mapmaking family from Scotland, Alistair skillfully turned almost unreadable scribble into fine and clear maps.

Our daughter, Ann, has reviewed the work and proposed useful corrections.

Our friends Tom Jahn and Henning Hamilton have both assisted by valuable comments and suggestion and by providing important books.

Our grandson Nico has prepared a beautiful cover page.

Thank you all for your great efforts.

Introduction

The Thirty-Year War is considered to have started in 1618, exactly four hundred years ago. Why is it worth spending time on an event so far back in time? For one thing, the war was one of the most cataclysmic events ever to hit Europe. Some 35 percent of the people in the Holy Roman Empire died, and a huge amount of property was destroyed. Percentagewise, it was a far greater catastrophe in terms of lives lost than even the Second World War. On the positive side, at war’s end, in the Westphalian Peace, important political and religious issues were settled—in some instances, permanently. Rules were adopted, defining the nature and rights of independent states and, on the diplomatic side, of the conduct of international conferences.

The Thirty-Year War has often been thought of as a religious conflict, because the principal cause was Emperor Ferdinand II’s intense desire to roll back the Reformation in the Holy Roman Empire. It started as an argument between the emperor and some Protestant opposition groups in the emperor’s principality, Bohemia. They rejected the emperor’s policies and took control of his principality. While the emperor was able to defeat the insurrection, he was not willing to stop at this point. He now chose to pursue his ambitions to restore Catholicism as the exclusive religion by military means. As a result, a small hostility turned into a big war. Eventually, it came to involve numerous outside countries, many with no real interest in the original dispute

This work is not intended to offer a complete account of the war but will instead concentrate on the involvement of Sweden and France, two countries for whom the war came to be of great importance.

Why did they enter the war, what were their objectives, and to what extent were such objectives realized?

There will also be a focus on the identity of, and performance by, key individuals in these countries and the empire and the significance of such individuals. Finally, there will be an attempt to assess the consequences of the war and the 1648 peace on other major participants and the population of the Holy Roman Empire. This is a limited approach, and readers must be reminded that many—possibly significant—events in the Thirty-Year War are not covered.

I

The Beginning

A. The Holy Roman Empire in 1600

In the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Holy Roman Empire covered what is today

Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, a chunk of Western Poland, and parts of Belgium, Holland, and Denmark. It consisted of a large number of principalities, free cities, and other political entities with populations varying from a million people to a few thousand. While they were all part of the empire and recognized its emperor as their ruler, the emperor’s rule was more nominal than real. These states and cities all felt they had authority to run their areas, big or small, as they saw fit. The rulers of the bigger political entities were referred to as electors, and a small number of them, seven altogether, had the prerogative of electing the ruler of the empire.¹

The religious conflict, between Catholics and Protestants in the empire, was initiated by Martin Luther, nailing his statement of objections on a church door in Wittenberg in 1517. An attempt to establish peace within the empire was made by the agreement in Augsburg in 1555. It confirmed the rights of citizens to be of either Lutheran or Catholic faith, and the different principalities and other entities were entitled to decide which faith their local government would follow. The individual citizens could practice their religion freely, regardless of the faith their government chose to adopt. An uneasy peace followed the Augsburg settlement, interrupted by local conflicts between members of the two faiths. In addition, the Calvinists received no protection under the Settlement.

B. Moves toward Armed Conflict

In 1607, problems intensified, as Maximilian, the elector of Bavaria, took control of

the Protestant-free city of Donauwörth and reintroduced Catholicism. The following year, some Protestant states formed the Protestant Union as a defensive move. In response, Maximilian organized the Catholic League in 1609. In 1619, Ferdinand, the ruler of Bohemia, a major principality, was elected emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Ferdinand was a member of the Hapsburg family, and he was totally dedicated to the Catholic faith. Ferdinand decided to reverse the Reformation. Despite the Augsburg settlement, he began to force Lutherans and Calvinists, anywhere in the empire, to switch back to the Catholic church.

Emperor Ferdinand II

Ferdinand was born in 1578. A member of the Hapsburg family, he was the son of Archduke Charles II of Austria and Maria of Bavaria. He received a strict Catholic education from Jesuit scholars and graduated from university in 1595. With the assistance of the king of Spain, also a member of the Hapsburg family, Ferdinand was elected ruler of Bohemia in 1617 and emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 1619. His aggressive steps to reverse the Reformation caused the start of the Thirty-Year War. Objections to his program from major principalities within his empire caused Ferdinand to negotiate a peace with certain Protestant states. Ferdinand died in 1637.

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Even before becoming emperor, Ferdinand’s aggressive actions caused events in Bohemia to reach an explosion point. In May 1618, a Protestant group, mostly Bohemian nobility, assembled in Prague, Ferdinand’s capital. They stormed his palace and threw his top assistants out a window (Ferdinand had escaped to Vienna). The assistants landed in the moat surrounding the palace and, rather miraculously, survived. To complete their insurrection, the Protestant group then selected their champion, Frederick, the elector of the Palatinate, a Calvinist principality, to become ruler of Bohemia.

Ferdinand, at the time, had no significant army to deal with Frederick and the rebels; but in 1620, he sought help from Maximilian. As head of the Catholic League, Maximilian had raised an army, commanded by the feared General Johan Tsearclaes, count of Tilly (Tilly). Ferdinand and Maximilian made an agreement under which Maximilian provided military forces in return for considerable territorial concessions from Ferdinand.

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Johan Tsearclaes, Count of Tilly

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Tilly was born in 1559 in a Walloon town in what was then Spanish Netherlands (now Belgium). He was educated in a Jesuit school and, at the age of fifteen, joined the Spanish Army. In 1585, he left Spanish service and joined the Holy Roman Empire. Tilly fought against the Ottoman Empire. He advanced quickly and, by age thirty-seven, was appointed field marshal. In 1609, he was retained by Maximilian of Bavaria to command the army of the Catholic League. He led these troops with great success and, before Breitenfeld claimed that he had never had a glass of wine, never enjoyed the favor of a woman, and never lost a battle.² He died following the battle of Lech in 1632.

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Tilly had no difficulties in dispatching Frederick and his forces in the battle of the White Mountains in Bohemia in 1620. Peace could have been concluded at that time, but Ferdinand had greater ambitions. He was now the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, not just the ruler of Bohemia, and he aimed to implement his plan of counter-Reformation in his empire.

In the first couple of years, following the battle at the White Mountains, Tilly’s army was Ferdinand’s principal tool. The forces, raised by some Protestant states to resist Tilly’s onslaught, were totally insufficient. The lack of unity among the Protestant rulers, despite the existence of the Protestant Union, made it hard for them to put together an effective army. The Augsburg Settlement contributed to this lack of unity, because under the Settlement, Lutherans, but not Calvinists, received religious protection in the empire. As a result, the electors of some Lutheran states, such as Saxony and Brandenburg, preferred to sit on the fence when Ferdinand started his anti-Reformation drive, hoping that their neutrality would spare them from the ravages of the emperor. The rulers of Calvinist states felt military resistance was the only option.

The war had a highly tragic impact on the population of the empire. Different troop formations, more or less trained, crisscrossed the empire, indiscriminatingly killing civilians and causing hunger and widespread destruction. Because of Ferdinand’s objectives, the war had a strong religious character, in particular during the first fifteen years. During that period, the principalities and free cities were split between those supporting Ferdinand, those actively resisting his actions, and those who tried to stay neutral. Following a peace treaty in Prague in 1635, between Ferdinand and the major Protestant principalities, the purpose of the war became more a question of satisfying territorial demands of certain participants than deciding religious issues.

C. Other Parties Get Involved

Following the defeat of Frederick, Tilly’s troops invaded one principality and free city after another and, by 1623, were approaching the northern part of Germany and the Baltic coast. Now third parties were getting concerned. The first to move was England, the major Protestant country outside Germany, and the Calvinist Dutch Republic. The British and the Dutch were looking for a power outside the empire to get involved and restrain Ferdinand and hoped to find the answer in Scandinavia. They approached both Gustav II Adolf (Gustavus) and Christian IV, the kings of Sweden and Denmark respectively. They felt Denmark was the stronger power, and Christian was more responsive and put up fewer demands than Gustavus.³ So they opted for Denmark. In addition to gains for Denmark, Christian expected an involvement in the war would be beneficial to the royal family, and he did not want Gustavus to get any of the glory of protecting the German Protestants.

With Denmark getting into the battle, Ferdinand thought more military force was needed. In addition, he felt, as emperor, he ought to have his own army. After all, Tilly’s forces were controlled by Maximilian and the Catholic League. Ferdinand’s finances were poor, but he found help from an unexpected source, Albrecht Wallenstein, an extraordinary individual. Wallenstein had risen from a family of modest means to a position of great power. Religious faith was of little concern to Wallenstein, and despite his Protestant origin, he offered to raise an army of fifty thousand men for Ferdinand. While highly doubtful of Wallenstein’s capability to satisfy this extraordinary offer, Ferdinand accepted. He had no alternative, and he agreed to compensate Wallenstein in a most generous fashion, including a duchy in Bohemia. Wallenstein retained complete control of his army and of military operations and was permitted to profit, in whatever way he could, from his exploits. Wallenstein recruited an army of around thirty thousand men.

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Albrecht von Wallenstein

Albrecht von Wallenstein (Wallenstein) has been described as the greatest military-adventurers in history.⁴ He rose from a humble beginning to a level a power in Europe second only to Napoleon. Wallenstein was born into a low-nobility family, without much wealth, in Bohemia in 1587. Despite this unpromising start, he was determined to get to the top in a society where social mobility was next to impossible. After a few false starts, he married a wealthy lady who was so fascinated by medical experiments that she killed herself, and almost Wallenstein as well. At this time, he was only twenty-three years of age; and from here on, his own skill brought him forward. He inherited substantial wealth from his unfortunate wife, and he was exceptionally talented at attracting, training, and leading mercenary troops—a necessity in wars in those days. On a couple of occasions, troops provided by Wallenstein saved Emperor Ferdinand from defeat.⁵ He was well rewarded for his services, and his influence and wealth increased. However, he remained on the sidelines, managing his own estates. Then in 1625, when Ferdinand felt he needed his own army, Wallenstein stepped forward and provided it. Wallenstein’s success against the Danes and the Protestant rulers in Northern Germany gave Ferdinand what he