← Dan Snow's History Hit
Dan Snow's History Hit
Civil War in the Holy Roman Empire
00:43:53
How one of Europe’s most devastating conflicts changed the continent forever.
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- [00:00]
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- [02:06]
Dan Snow
Hi everybody. Welcome to Dan's Nice History Hit in Germany. They still shudder at the destruction, the famine, the monstrous criminality and dislocation of the Thirty Years War. From 1618 to 1648, great swathes of Europe were given over to violence. It became a cockpit of war. Armies scoured the landscape. They lived off the land and its People like locusts. There are so many atrocities to choose from, but if you have to pick one out, you might want to talk about 20 May 1631, when the city of Magdeburg was sacked. A conquering army swarmed into the town and started looting. They set a few fires and soon the wind fanned the flames and the fire ended up consuming nearly all the city's 1900 buildings. Of 25,000 inhabitants, it's thought that only 5,000 would survive and nearly all of them had been exposed to unimaginable trauma. We have an account by a politician in the town of Councilman and he said when civilians ran out of things to give the soldiers, the misery really began. For then the soldiers began to beat and frighten and threaten to shoot, skewer, hang, et cetera, the people. It had been one of the largest cities in Germany and it took over a hundred years to recover something of its prosperity and size. The devastation was so great that a new word entered the German language, Magdeburgiserien, the Magdeburgization, which signifies utter and complete destruction, rape and pillage. The Thirty Years War was fought largely within the bounds of of the Holy Roman Empire. This was a galaxy of states and statelets and cities stretching from what is now France and Belgium deep into Eastern Europe from the Baltic to northern Italy. When Hitler is talking about the Third Reich, well, this was the First Reich. It was a very loose confederation of political units that were in practice pretty much independent, but were on paper all part of this empire. And at the top there was an emperor, there was an imperial assembly, the Diet, although its decisions weren't necessarily binding on that emperor. And indeed the Emperor's decisions were often not felt in some of the constituent parts of the empire. That emperor was chosen by seven electors, states, which pretty much by accident of history had been given that privilege. If you were the Archbishop of Mainz, if you were the Archbishop of Trier or Cologne, or if you were the King of Bohemia or the Count Palatine of the Rhine, or the Duke of Saxony or the Margrave of Brandenburg, well, you were one of the seven people that were able to elect the Emperor. But in practice, the Emperor had been a member of the Habsburg family for a long, long time. They directly ruled over great swathes of the empire. They were Kings of Bohemia, for example. So they ruled over much of modern Austria and the Czech Republic and Croatia and elsewhere. They were the most powerful family in the empire. And so their succession to the imperial throne was largely just a rubber stamping exercise. That fractious empire was no stranger to violence over its centuries of existence. But there was something so savage about the Thirty Years War in the 17th century that it still stands out. Perhaps 4 to 8 million people died from the violence, but also from the dislocation, the disease, the famine. Many regions, it said, lost up to a third of their population. So we're talking about a catastrophe on the scale of the Black Death. It left large parts of Central Europe devastated and it sets back the German people, the German economy, for generations. There are all sorts of fascinating historical consequences of the Thirty Years War and all sorts of tragic human ones as well. Tell us all about it. I'm so excited to have Peter Wilson back on the podcast. He's professor of History at the University of Oxford. He specializes in on the impact of war on European and world development and on the Holy Roman Empire. It's a difficult subject and luckily we have just the man to guide us through it. His book, the 30 Years Europe's Tragedy, is a must buy. So with our expert guide, let's take on this, well, very chunky bit of history. Here's the 30 Years War. Enjoy.
- [06:52]
Peter Wilson
T minus 10 atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima.
- [06:55]
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God save the King.
- [06:57]
Peter Wilson
No black white unity till there is first some black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off and the shuttle has cleared the tower.
- [07:10]
Dan Snow
Peter, great to see you. Thanks for coming back on the podcast.
- [07:13]
Peter Wilson
Well, thank you. Thanks for having me back.
- [07:15]
Dan Snow
I guess the thing I'd like you to explain to me first is what's the political geography of Europe in the 17th century? Because this is what everyone thinks about with the 30 Years War and the emergence of these nation states, what does Central Europe, the German lands, how are they run? Who's in charge of what?
- [07:31]
Peter Wilson
Right, well, how long have you got for that one?
- [07:34]
Dan Snow
30 seconds. Thanks.
- [07:36]
Peter Wilson
I think it's best to see it as a kind of collective in which the major components don't have equal powers, but in order to get things done, they basically forced to collaborate. And one of the causes of the war is the breakdown of that collaboration. So you have the position of Emperor, which is elected, but in practice is more or less monopolized by the Habsburgs, who control around a third of the whole surface area of the empire and its resources. And then you have a variety of princes and free cities. They have different ways of negotiating, different institutions and so on. But in essentially no one bit can really act properly without collaboration and cooperation of the others.
- [08:17]
Dan Snow
And let's just quickly check in on the extent of that empire. The term we use there, we're talking northern Italy all the way up to the Baltic.
- [08:25]
Peter Wilson
Exactly, yes. So it would include the whole of modern northern Italy, except for Venice, which at that point was a republic and controlled part of the mainland. It would stretch then into what is now France. So eastern France, northeastern France belonged to the empire, theoretically Switzerland belonged to the empire at this point. And it would range then into cover the whole of modern Czech Republic and into northern Germany, the Baltic coast and then westward through what would now be Belgium.
- [08:55]
Dan Snow
So the Emperor is, it could be as little as just a titular head to have absolutely nothing to do with one or two of these little statelets. Or he could really be in charge, perhaps. Odd, isn't it? They're emperors of this whole empire, but they do actually run, as you say, what, about a third of it?
- [09:10]
Peter Wilson
Yes, exactly. Yeah. You've nicely really outlined the potential options. So part of the 30 years war is really what's at stake is how that political balance may alter. So the Emperor might become more powerful or correspondingly, he might be weakened.
- [09:26]
Dan Snow
And presumably the Reformation has just thrown a giant hand grenade into this quite tricky but strangely durable system, this patchwork nature of rule in central well across a great swathe of Europe. Tell me about the effect of the Protestant Reformation.
- [09:42]
Peter Wilson
Right, well, we've got to remember, I mean, the Reformation is, that's this is early 16th century and essentially the kind of disputes over the Reformation have largely played out by the middle of the 16th century, when there is a kind of compromise peace to settle this and to try to stabilize the balance and to mean that within the empire. So before the Reformation, the empire is Christian and now we've got to accommodate two different versions of the truth. And that's the key thing. The law, politics, everything flows from the idea that there is a singular truth and now there are competing versions of the truth. And that's basically what makes the whole Reformation then so explosive. So how do you manage to live with two different versions of the truth within the same political order? And they do that by sort of compromising and using neutral terms, the word Reformation being used to mean supervision of the Church and supervision of religious practice, rather than just, you know, what the Protestants are trying to do. And they use various other kind of deliberately ambiguous terms in this settlement. And it's by and large pretty durable. There isn't much violence, there are a few minor flare ups here and there, but mostly the disputes following this sort of settlement are resolved relatively peacefully, or at least the can is kicked down the road without too much trouble. And that compares with what happens in France. So Europe's otherwise most powerful state at this time, where there is this whole series of so called religious wars, which are civil wars, or what happens in the Northern Netherlands, modern day Netherlands, where there is again a long running dispute between the Dutch and their Catholic Spanish overlords.
- [11:21]
Dan Snow
So they've hollowed out a sort of compromise. Roughly speaking, states in which the leadership or the prince want to be Protestant are Protestant and other ones remain Catholic. What shatters this equilibrium? Should we be thinking here, Peter, about individuals or should we be thinking about deep substructural history? Like, is it just that Ferdinand becomes head of the Habsburg family and decides to go on an absolute tear? What's the best way to think about this?
- [11:44]
Peter Wilson
The usual way of thinking about it is that first of all, the war is somehow inevitable. And if we regard it as inevitable, then we kind of deny human agency to these past actors. So we got to see this as a sequence of mistakes of people taking the wrong decision or reacting in a way that escalates that problem. And obviously we can talk about that in a minute. So there's that, I would say. And then the other thing I think when we're trying to understand this is that it's not either a religious war or a war about power. For some people, it clearly was very much a religious war. And they interpret everything through the lens of religion. But I think that the majority of those, especially those who are at the top with some of the levers of power, while they are not secular in their outlook, they are what I would call moderate. So for most of them, yes, they want to achieve religious goals. So that would be recatholicize the area or spread the Reformation throughout the area. But these are long term objectives which are unlikely to be achieved in their own lifetime. While they might want to help the conditions to be favorable, they're not trying to do this. And they actually have. This is the big irony of the whole thing. They have religious reasons for not pushing things too quickly because they feel that if they are to, say, exploit a military victory or a political advantage for immediate gain, especially if that means breaking an agreement that they might have made or breaking their understanding of the law, they'll lose divine favor. So that their religious faith is actually a constraint to some extent on violence.
- [13:19]
Dan Snow
Interesting. Should we start with the revolt in Bohemia? Because that A is often heralded as the start and B, kind of put a bit of meat on the bone describing some of those things that you've just been outlining so Bohemia, roughly speaking, chunks of modern day Czech Republic, part of this Holy Roman Empire. Tell me about how the Habsburg family relate to this part of the world.
- [13:41]
Peter Wilson
Well, Bohemia is a kingdom, so it gives them a royal title. The Habsburgs don't have a royal title, they're archdukes, which is a title they invented in order to try to be bigger and better than any of the other German princes. But being a king is better still. It's a kingdom, so it's got status. It's a relatively rich and populous area as well, so it's definitely worth having. And with the Habsburgs throughout this whole time, we've got to remember they've always got one eye looking eastwards at whatever the Ottoman Sultan's going to do. And the Habsburgs, they're a European power. The Sultan is a world power. And it's very lucky for the Habsburgs throughout this that he's too busy most of the time fighting the Persians. But the threat to the Habsburg lands is omnipresent from the Sultan. So having money from Bohemia, having money from the rest of the Empire, having money from Austria is essential to keep this border defense that they set up in Hungary going. They want to hold on to this. And it's also whoever is the King of Bohemia has one of these electoral titles. So there's only seven of those. And having one in your bag is going to be good to make sure that your relations will then be elected the next emperor. And at the point when the problems break out, we have Emperor Matthias, who's childless and is ailing. And so he has basically signaled his relation that Austrian lines have been split. That's again a weakness. Archduke Ferdinand of the Styrian branch, which ruled the kind of area to the east, he's the successor designate, but he's got to be approved by all the other electors. So having an electoral title in the bag is worth having. The problem that they've had in Bohemia like they had in Austria to some extent, is the spread of Lutheranism and other forms of Protestantism amongst the nobility. And it's with the nobility you've always got to negotiate in order to get your taxes and so on. And they have granted concessions to these nobles in 1608, the so called famous Letter of Majesty. And that basically has allowed a group of nobles to set up what is a parallel government. And it's an attempt to kind of claw back power which is going on slowly. That creates a difficult situation by 1618, because the leaders of this parallel government, basically they've had lucrative Court positions. So that's still within the Habsburg's gift. And they have been losing these, and these have been reassigned to those nobles who are either Catholic or have converted back to Catholicism. And so a group within the Bohemian nobility feel on the back foot, and they feel that the population is either indifferent or they're not going to support them. And so they manufacture a crisis and that's the defenestration. So they burst into the castle where the government is based, where the Emperor's representatives aren't very many of them there. They pick the two, they throw them out of the window. They remember that the secretary is in the room as well. He gets thrown out too. They all survive. It fails in a sense, but it's a deliberately violent and provocative act to create a situation from which there can't be a going back. They're trying to create a conflict and.
- [16:49]
Dan Snow
They get a conflict. They get one hell of a conflict. Initially, Bohemia puts a Protestant on the throne, right, very briefly, the Winter King with his wife, who's Charles I's sister.
- [17:00]
Peter Wilson
Yes, that's right, yeah.
- [17:01]
Dan Snow
So bringing a little mini English connection in there. But the Habsburgs respond with an overwhelming force.
- [17:07]
Peter Wilson
They do, eventually, yes. I mean, one of the things about this supposedly being inevitable or not, I mean, no one is prepared for this. So the man you mentioned, Frederick V of the Palatinate, the man who is eventually elected by the Bohemian rebels as the replacement king, he's been busy trying to manufacture another crisis by picking a fight with one the bishops in the Rhineland, none of them have troops as well. I mean, the Habsburgs are in the process of disbanding the last of their field troops that they've used in a short war against the Venetians. Everyone else is tied to garrisons in Hungary, so it takes them a while to get going. And this is one of the reasons why the conflict escalates. So in the meantime, the Habsburgs say to the rebels, lay down your arms. It's like the equivalent of, we don't talk to terrorists, we're happy to negotiate, but you've got to lay down your arms. They're not going to do that. They're all sounding out which prince in the Empire will support us, who will send us money. The Emperor gets some money from Spain. Eventually he does deals with the Bavarians, who are really the other big player in the Empire, and also the Lutheran Saxons, and they provide troops and this combined force that eventually invades Bohemia two years later. And the main block of this force triumph just outside Prague at the the battle of White Mountain in November. And that's the truly decisive victory. And that's the reason why Frederick V is only a Winter King. He lasts a very brief time, so.
- [18:33]
Dan Snow
He'S a Winter King. The Habsburgs are back on the throne of Bohemia, Bohemia's back under their sway. So this is a nice open and shut case, surely. Why do things escalate so radically from this point on?
- [18:43]
Peter Wilson
Exactly. And you could ask that question really at any of these turning points. The short answer for this is there's usually somebody somewhere that wants a struggle to go on. And that somebody is, generally speaking, somebody outside the Empire. So in this case, the Dutch basically are interested in financing anyone who is prepared to oppose the Habsburgs in the Empire, because they know that the truce that they've signed with the Spanish is going to expire in 1621, and they know the Spanish are busy helping the Austrians in the Empire. So we keep a war going in the Empire and that will carry on and tie the Spanish down and they won't be able to deploy their full forces against us, whereas the Spanish are thinking exactly the opposite. Let's send men and money to help the Austrians and we'll settle the Empire and then Austria will help us against the Dutch. And so that's one of the things that's going on in 1619-1621, a little bit longer. And plus there have been these various princes who've been, one might say, foolish enough to back the wrong side in the rebellion. And so the Emperor thinks, right, this is my opportunity to crush these people, establish better authority in the Empire. And also I have no money. And the easiest way of paying everyone who's helped me is to expropriate the lands of whoever has opposed me and redistribute them. And so that creates another set of losers who are then also then looking for who's going to get my lands back.
- [20:10]
Dan Snow
Amazing, isn't it? Okay, so we got the Habsburgs settling scores, both kind of long term and short term. They do well in the 1620s, don't they, the Austrian Habsburgs? The cause of the kind of Catholic emperors seems to be pretty effectively managed. Talk to me about going up north, because you mentioned people outside the empire. King Christian of Denmark is not part of the empire, is he?
- [20:33]
Peter Wilson
Well, just to show how complicated it is, he is, because he's also Duke of Holstein and Holstein is part of the Empire. Of course, the big problem that you've got if you're a Protestant monarch or prince at this time is what do you do with all of your sons. So the Catholics, the second and third and fourth son have this possibility of having careers in the so called Imperial Church. So around a seventh of the empire are these prince bishoprics. And that's really one of the big things that's in dispute here. So the Lutheran families, those that have converted to Lutheranism, are always thinking, well, for centuries we've had influence over this local bishopric and periodically our children have been elected bishop. That gives us political influence and it also provides a nice income for the son who can't inherit the main principality. And Denmark is in that same position. His younger sons have been placed in various bishoprics in northern Germany, which spreads Danish influence, gives them something lucrative to do and something sensible to do. And the local Catholics are saying, but what about us? We are members of the true church. These are Catholic lands. And Emperor Ferdinand ii, because he's now succeeded Matthias at this point, this is a mistake. You know, he overreaches himself. He thinks he's settled things in the southern part of the empire and he can do the same in the north. And the Danes fear this. And one of the reasons why they intervene is to secure the Danish influence in the north.
- [22:07]
Dan Snow
So, yes, it's about religion, but it's also about jobs for elite. It seems to me there's too many sons.
- [22:13]
Peter Wilson
Absolutely.
- [22:14]
Dan Snow
There's a surface of sons in the Holy Roman empire in the 17th century. So Ferdinand does have reach, Right, because he sort of tries to unpick some of that 16th century post Reformation settlement. Right. So Protestants, the north start thinking, oh, the Catholic juggernaut is heading for us as our sort of crusty old grandparents feared and predicted they might one day.
- [22:33]
Peter Wilson
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And this is the main bone of contention really, that they have. And likewise, the Danes are able to draw on funding again. The Dutch are prepared to provide some funds because equally it's hopefully going to tie down the Spanish. And the Danes are decisively defeated, just like the earlier opponents have been defeated. And Ferdinand at this point does actually listen to advice. He listens to advice from his senior general by this point, Wallenstein, who says, make a generous peace and you will gain Danish friendship. So Denmark, mainland Denmark's been overrun. All of that is returned. The Danish king is basically left alone. His sons are pushed out of these bishoprics, but that's the only real loss, despite it being decisively defeated. So the Emperor has this opportunity to settle, to draw a line under everything, but he issues this so called edict of restitution, which is all the lands that have been taken since the 16th century from Catholics have to be returned. And it's done in a kind of sweeping blanket way. So not by individual, individual court case to check all the complicated legal arrangements. No, we're sending the soldiers and they will take it over and we'll hand it back. And of course that's a convenient way also of making sure the imperial army gets paid in the meantime.
- [23:51]
Dan Snow
So this is now existential for these Protestant elites, these people that have got former monastic lands, for example, they would lose everything.
- [24:00]
Peter Wilson
They would, they would. But we've got to remember that it's never all the Protestants. So throughout this time, Saxony, which is the big Protestant player in the empire, which is orthodox Lutheran, at this point, they're neutral, they're biding their time. They want this mid 16th century settlement to be restored, but they don't want a so called Protestant victory because they hate the Calvinists. When Calvinism has emerged since the mid 16th century and is excluded from the formal arrangements in the empire, they hate them even more than they hate the Catholics.
- [24:35]
Dan Snow
This Dan Snow's history. We're talking about 30 years war more.
- [24:38]
Peter Wilson
Coming up.
- [24:46]
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- [26:49]
Dan Snow
We are going to get some Protestant victories though, whether they like it or not, because one of the great military geniuses of European history is about to enter the conversation. Tell me about him.
- [26:59]
Peter Wilson
Right, well this is Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, who's been busy fighting in Poland. Sweden and Poland have had since the late 16th century long running conflict. He's been embroiled in trying to sort that out and Poland basically got bogged down and he doesn't like the Danes. But the fact that Denmark has been defeated and the Imperial armies are on the Baltic coast is perceived as a threat to Sweden and there's actually a gap of a year. So the settlement with the Danes is June of 1629 and basically the 30 years war has effectively ended. And so when Gustavus lands in Pomerania on the Baltic coast in northern Germany In June of 1630, he's restarting the war. That would be the anti Habsburg view. From the Habsburg's point of view, this is an entirely new war. This is a foreign invasion. But the problem is that they're overplayed their hand and they've alienated the Protestant princes. So most of the Protestant princes, including Gustavus's own father in law, the Elector of Brandenburg, they're sitting on their hands. They don't want him. Georg Wilhelm, Gustavus's brother in law, says Gustavus, he's a foreign prince and he has no business in the empire and that's his own brother in law. And he only joins the Swedes when the Swedes train their artillery on his palace and say this is a choice between me and the devil, you have to join me. So they're very, very reluctant. They don't want another war. They want things to be settled by compromise, by negotiation. Gustavus turning up forces the issue, they wait really quite a long time because it's not clear that he's the military genius, but he wins In September of 1631, a really clear victory at Breitenfeld, which is just outside Leipzig in northeastern Germany. Then they think, right, well, this guy could win, so we'll take the risk, and some of them then join him after that point.
- [28:53]
Dan Snow
So this is a very basic way of looking at it, but that's kind of. Protestant cause within the Empire is having its moment now, after a decade of setbacks.
- [28:59]
Peter Wilson
Yeah, definitely. We've got to remember that Protestant cause is to a considerable extent manufactured by Swedish propaganda, because, as I say, they are forcing a lot of these Protestant princes to cooperate with them. They cannot fight in Germany. A very significant proportion of the Swedish army is sick or dead within six months of arrival. And the only way they can fight in Germany is if they get German soldiers to help them. And the only way they can get German soldiers, basically, is if the princes are recruiting them for them. And this idea that this is a Protestant cause is to sort of smooth over the fact that what the Swedes really, after about 18 months or so of being in Germany, what they're starting to do is reorganize the Empire. So every bit that they capture is handed over to one of their. Their German collaborators, but on the terms that it is now a fief of the Swedish crown and not of the Holy Roman Emperor. So they're creating a new network within Germany that will be part of a greater Swedish Empire that will, at the very least, provide a defensive buffer and keep anyone nasty away from the Baltic.
- [30:09]
Dan Snow
And that might have happened were it not for Gustavus's astonishing victory at the Battle of Lutzen, but also simultaneously his death as well.
- [30:19]
Peter Wilson
Yes. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's arguably, the Battle of Lutzen is a draw. Valenstein, the opponent, doesn't know that Gustavus is dead and is demoralized by the end of the day. And he clears out. And if you concede the battlefield, then you seemingly concede defeat. But the loss of Gustavus is really much bigger. It negates any kind of military advantage.
- [30:40]
Dan Snow
Yes, it's a Pyrrhic victory at best.
- [30:42]
Peter Wilson
Yeah, definitely, Definitely. Yeah. Gustavus's young daughter Christina is queen. She can't lead. So everything falls to the Chancellor Ochsenstirmer, who is really quite brilliant, but he's not a military commander. So he can do the diplomacy, he can handle the finances, but he doesn't have the kind of charisma to keep this sort of loose coalition together.
- [31:04]
Dan Snow
Should we pause here and talk about why the 30 Years War is remembered as such an astonishing disaster tragedy for the peoples of this great chunk of Europe? Is it just that we keep getting these sort of bizarre accidents that ensured it was just a long series of wars, as you've already outlined? Or is there something about the animosity, the civil nature, the religious nature that made the atrocities worse? Or the way in which, as you say, the armies weren't properly funded, so they're living off the land.
- [31:30]
Peter Wilson
Why?
- [31:31]
Dan Snow
Given the long and lamentable catalog of European wars that we get to choose from, why does a 30 years war stand out as just one of the more hideous times to be alive in the history of Europe?
- [31:43]
Peter Wilson
I think one thing is that the area where it's been fought has largely had peace for 63 years. I mean, the Empire and the Emperor have been involved in wars, but they've all been somewhere else. They've been mainly in Hungary against the Turks. So this is the first large scale violence in two generations. So it's shocking. People have read about violence elsewhere and that's one of the things why they're really nervous. They know war is very nasty, but now they're confronted with it and also it becomes a general war. I mean, it's really the Swedish intervention that makes it a general war. So the Empire's got around 11 regions in the 1620s. The war is only present in about three of those at the most at any one time after the Swedes have arrived. It's fought generally and it's fought by armies that are not properly funded. So they are forced to live off the resources of the local population. And, and to sort of quantify this, a farm, the standard farm at the time might have in seed corn and stuff stuffed in the barn and hams hanging from the ceiling in the kitchen, you know, enough to feed 500 meals across a year. So you could keep going, in other words, your family, but the margin of survival is very small. A single regiment would have at least 1,000 men plus 500 women camp followers. So you're going to consume three times the amount of what you've got stored in your farm for a year in a day. And so they're like locusts and they just eat everything up. If they're in a town, then they burn everything up because they're smash your furniture and your doors and your floorboards to keep them warm. So it's hugely, hugely destructive for a society where we're a little bit above the margin of survival, but that margin is very, very narrow.
- [33:31]
Dan Snow
And then I guess it's the fact that it just goes on for. So neither side can deliver this knockout blow. So it's. Yes, there's an intensity there, but it's the fact that it's then waged out that intensity for year after year after year.
- [33:43]
Peter Wilson
Yes, that's right. You read this in the accounts that people have left behind. So before the soldiers turn up, the writer is usually distinguishing between, you know, my side and the enemy. Once they've encountered soldiers, it's just all soldiers are terrible. And once you've encountered soldiers repeatedly, it's like, well, there's no point in rebuilding my barn. They're going to come and destroy it again, so why bother? So the level of productivity falls, the society is demoralized, people move. I mean, most of the population loss is not actually death, it's people moving, leaving, going somewhere else. And that, of course, does exacerbate things, but through the spread of the plague. So from 1631, there's several plague years and they are really, really horrendous, that makes this time of the Swedish high point also the absolute wor.
- [34:33]
Dan Snow
The war just unutterably grim. And at this point, I remember from reading you, and I remember from my undergraduate professors, with a great flourish, would announce that what you think is a great religious war is somewhat complicated by the arrival of the Catholic French. What on earth are the French up to at this point?
- [34:52]
Peter Wilson
Right. France, as I say, it had its own civil wars. It's largely got through those. If you think Three Musketeers siege LaRochelle. So on skill 1620s, the Crown has asserted authority by the late 1620s, so the French monarchy is again finally in the position to be an international actor. And they are concerned about the growth of Spanish power. They've been bankrolling the Dutch fighting Spain. And they are concerned particularly that after 1634, the emperor, with assistance of Spanish troops, has defeated the Swedes, whose position in the Empire has collapsed. They've largely retreated back to the North Sea coast. And so France is concerned, concerned that the Emperor will win out again, as he has done against the Danes, and then he'll come in and help. Spain and France will be isolated and seriously under threat. So they basically, they want to make sure the war in the Empire continues. They're not so concerned about grabbing territory or ultimate victory. They just want the Emperor and his German allies to be preoccupied. They've paid the Swedes to help them to come in in the first place, they revive those payments at a higher level. That doesn't really work. They take over some of the swed army. That's not enough. So they gradually feed in more and more troops after the late 1630s and become a full belligerent then in the conflict in the Empire.
- [36:16]
Dan Snow
Goodness me. So now you've got German statelets fighting each other, switching sides, being nimble, I suppose you've got the Catholic French fighting the Spanish and the Austrians paying money to Protestant princes to keep up the fight. I mean, it's just extraordinary, this phase. As the 1630s grinds on. Indeed, as it turns into the 1640s, does any side achieve any kind of decisive result?
- [36:41]
Peter Wilson
It's very, very difficult to achieve a decisive result. For one thing, there's the nervousness of generals and their political masters to kind of risk that roll of the dice where you might lose a field army in a defeat. The other thing is the war has been fought in lots of different regions at once, and so the tendency would be a defeat in one region could be offset by a victory somewhere else and vice versa. So. So it's quite difficult to gain a preponderance. And so a lot of it is about switching troops from one area to another. And increasingly that gets harder and harder to do because resources are getting tighter. The breakthrough comes really from the French and the Swedes. Finally, by the sort of early to mid-1640s, they actually work out a viable strategy. So they have their main army opposing the emperor wherever the Emperor's main army is, and they use these much more mobile columns with a lot more cavalry that can move faster and also carry supplies with them. And they target any of the German princes who are still backing the emperor, and they basically bully them into neutrality. So one by one, the Emperor's main supporters who've been providing troops, providing resources, are knocked out. And that also causes the war to converge into fewer and fewer places in the empire, but being fought with greater intensity, which is why some of the contemporary accounts think that the last phase of the war is the worst. It is the worst if you're in the Danube Valley, for example, in Bohemia. But it's not the worst overall, because quite a lot of the parts of the Empire have been somewhat pacified. They're under military occupation by the French and especially the Swedes. But there's not so much fighting going on.
- [38:25]
Dan Snow
More 30 years war after this. Don't go away.
- [38:37]
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- [39:06]
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- [39:58]
Dan Snow
Let's come to the piece of Westphalia 1648 people might have heard at home with the Westphalian system of nation states and all this kind of stuff, are we right to accord the peace negotiations and the eventual treaty such high status in the development of a world that we might think is recognizably modern?
- [40:14]
Peter Wilson
In some respects, I would say yes. It is a remarkable attempt to settle three major wars that are going on at the same time. So there is the war in the empire, what we were calling the Thirty Years War. There is the war that Spain and the Dutch have been fighting really since the 1560s. And there is the war that breaks out as an open war between France and Spain in 1635. They declare two towns in Westphalia, Munster and Osnabruck. They declare them as neutral. So these are venues where the envoys can gather and they work out various ways in which they can overcome all sorts of protocol, disputes and stuff so they can have some serious negotiations. The Dutch and the Spanish do settle. They settle in May of 1648. So that settles that one. The Dutch Republic is acknowledged as independent.
- [41:02]
Dan Snow
And that's a huge moment people will be familiar with, you know, Elizabeth Tudor and the Spanish Armada and all of this. That is the Dutch revolt that has been raging ever since that reign. So that's extraordinary. So yes, and the Dutch Republic now exists, which will then have a huge impact on the rest of early modern history. Okay, so that's that one sorted. What about the others?
- [41:20]
Peter Wilson
Exactly, that one sorted. And no one thought that was going to be possible. So. So there's optimism. And the war in the Empire is settled by two treaties. And there are complicated reasons, but basically the Catholics have been talking mainly in Munster. And the Protestants have been talking mainly in Osnabruck. So they're signed simultaneously on 24 October 1648. And both towns, if you go there, they've got town halls preserved with portraits of all the envoys. It's really worth having a look. I mean, it's really interesting places to go and visit. And those two treaties make out up another part of the Westphalian settlement and that ends the Thirty Years War. And the one that doesn't work is the negotiations between France and Spain. They carry on in 1649 and then both sides leave. And that's really because both think they can gain more by fighting rather than settling at that point. And they're wrong. They're stuck in another 10 years of war until the Peace of the Pyrenees ends, that one.
- [42:18]
Dan Snow
Why do we talk about the Westphalian system? Is it something to do with the status accorded to all these German states and principalities and city states and bishoprics?
- [42:28]
Peter Wilson
Yeah, it is and it isn't. I mean, first of all, it's not because they've been made independent. I mean, the idea that Switzerland is made independent is nonsense. And nowhere in the piece of Svela does it say that. It just says that Basel doesn't have to pay fees to one of the imperial supreme courts. So this idea of sovereignty, that it creates modern sovereign independent states and so on, that's an invention really of international lawyers looking back from the 1860s and thinking, oh, it must have begun in the Peace of Westphalia, looking for a kind of baseline and partly because a piece of Westphalia was invoked in most international settlements up until 1815, so it was given a kind of benchmark status. So yeah, there's a lot of stuff that is inaccurate, but I think first of all, it's a genuine attempt to settle a hugely complicated conflict by allowing pretty much everyone who's involved to negotiate. I mean, some people are excluded, but the majority of those, even the very small actors, have a voice that I think is a kind of path breaking thing and something that perhaps modern peacemaking could still learn a lesson from.
- [43:38]
Dan Snow
Okay, and let's do the strategic wins and losses, the politico playbook version. So we've got the cause of the Habsburgs within the empire. What have they got to show for their 30 years and of unimaginable blood and treasure? Right.
- [43:53]
Peter Wilson
They actually come out surprisingly well. They have a special opt out rule from most of the so called religious clauses, which is granting freedoms or recognizing freedoms for Protestants. So all of their lands, except for a Very small part in Silesia, which is now Poland. They are officially Catholic and they don't have to tolerate Protestants. So that's a major victory because the second element of that is they don't have to restore any of the nobles that they've exp appropriated. And it's a large number and half of the population of Bohemia and Moravia change landlords as a result of the Habsburgs taking the land from those Protestant nobles who've opposed them and giving it to the Catholic loyalists. And it's those loyalists that basically sustain the Habsburg monarchy until 1918. And their descendants in fact are still beneficiaries until the 1940s when they're expropriated by the communists. And one of them them in fact survives Liechtenstein, originally from Bohemia and eventually becoming a prince of the Holy Roman Empire and now as an independent state. So it's a kind of curious quirk of history that still survives. So the Habsburgs do pretty well and they.
- [45:09]
Dan Snow
Well, they've got whole of Bohemia, which is where it all began, and they also are still acknowledged as the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire and they will go on being the hereditary titular rulers of the empire for another several generations.
- [45:22]
Peter Wilson
That's right. And they've also learned, I think, a salutary political lesson. So they change the way that they interact with the German princes. They are much more successful at playing a more prescribed constitutional system. So there are some constitutional checks that become a bit clearer as a result of the peace. And they actually are very successful in the later 17th and into the 18th century playing this system and getting the maximum they can from the empire to help them on their rise, in fact to being a great, great power in their own right. So by the late 17th, early 18th century, Austria has emerged as really one of the great powers. It sustains itself despite briefly losing the Imperial title in the 1740s. So the long term consequences are broadly positive for the Habsburgs and yet broadly.
- [46:11]
Dan Snow
Positive for all these much, much smaller, often Protestant German principalities as well.
- [46:16]
Peter Wilson
Yes. So Saxony comes out well, thanks to having supported the Emperor at his hour of need. They get in fact a portion of Bohemia that's transferred to Bavaria thanks to backing the Habsburgs, comes out with half of the Palatinate. They're actually one of the real losers. And the Protestant line of the Palatinate dies out fairly quickly anyway. So it was somewhat all a waste of time. They're making peace really at the expense of the much, much weaker players. So the Bohemian and some Austrian nobles have lost out, the Palatinate loses out, the Habsburg cede a bit of land, France. They cede part of Alsace to France. That's not really such a great loss. And the Swedes come out very well. They've gained lands which the Danes had originally coveted in northern Germany. So those bishoprics that the Danes had been holding are then switched to Swedish possession.
- [47:09]
Dan Snow
If it weren't for the intensity and longevity of this war and the scale of it, would we remember it? So do we remember it in terms of its outcomes? Did it change Europe and the world in fundamental ways, or is it because it was just so horrific that we remember remember it?
- [47:23]
Peter Wilson
I think it's primarily the latter. Yes, it's seared onto the popular memory in central Europe. And some of that is still present there today. I mean, the public consciousness of the war as being a great disaster, that's definitely there. And despite there being subsequent disasters in the two world wars, it's not entirely gone away because of that. So it's definitely remembered because of that. And I think it's misremembered from the way in which the Westphalian settlement has been interpreted. But nonetheless, I think that that Westphalia has something of a significance as a way to bring a settlement to a complicated conflict through a peace congress. And that is sort of repeated. All the other great European wars through until the end of the Napoleonic wars really follow that kind of congress model.
- [48:12]
Dan Snow
Well, Peter Wilson, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Your book is called the 30 Years Europe's Tragedy. Tragedy. And thank you for trying to gallop us through it. Appreciate it.
- [48:22]
Peter Wilson
Thank you very much.
- [48:26]
Dan Snow
Thanks very much for listening, everyone. Before you go, I'll tell you that ever at the cutting edge, the bleeding edge of what's new and exciting, after 10 years of the podcast, you can finally watch on YouTube. We are moving fast and breaking things here, folks. Our Friday episodes each week will be available to watch on YouTube. And you can see me. You can see what we're talking about out. I'd love it if you could subscribe to that channel over there. Just click the link in the show notes below and you can watch it on your phone, your tablet, or even a tv. Or even a giant cinema movie screen, if you have one in your underground lair. See you next time, folks.
- [49:12]
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