“How did the war erupt? What was it about? Who fought in its battles? And why did it last so long?”
By Zachary Twamley
TODAY, THE THIRTY Years War [1618-48] is often remembered as a religious war or a mostly ‘German’ struggle. In actual fact, there’s much more to the conflict than that. Virtually every country in Europe was sucked into its vortex; rivalries which would last generations were established here, and the continent was never the same again.
By its end, at least eight million had died, Central Europe was in ruins, and both peasants and princes alike had seen their fortunes destroyed, while others had soared beyond expectations, laying the foundations for empires which would stand for centuries more.
But how did the war erupt? What was it about? Who fought in its battles? And why did it last so long? These are among the most commonly asked questions surrounding the Thirty Years War.
In my new book For God or the Devil, A History of the Thirty Years War, I tackle the war in its massive entirety. By way of a preview, I’ve selected ten key facts about the conflict that I believe will fascinate and engage history enthusiasts of all levels.
1. It started with a bizarre act of violence
The Thirty Years War began with a scene now infamous in history: the May 18, 1618 ejection, or “defenestration,” of Habsburg officials from the window of Prague Castle. At first, this act of rebellion by Protestant citizens of Bohemia against their Catholic Austrian Habsburg rulers, remained a simple local issue. But when an army of Bohemian rebels marched to Vienna and, with the aid of outside powers, deposed King Ferdinand of the House of Habsburg, it became obvious that this was more than just a provincial dust up. Sure enough, barely 18 months after the defenestration, the Bohemian crown was offered to one of the Habsburgs’ worst enemies, Frederick V, Elector Palatine, perhaps the most important Protestant German ruler at the time. With this act, the war was guaranteed to break from its Pandora’s Box with deadly results. The fighting expanded and by the end of the 1620s, two broad coalitions had crystallized, with the Habsburgs of Spain and Austria combating the rising influence of France, the tenacity of the Dutch Republic, and the stunning military supernova that was Sweden. With so much at stake, nobody could afford to back down, and nobody did, for 30 long years.
2. No one expected it to last three decades
“This is a fight between God and the Devil,” the King of Sweden wrote to his brother-in-law the Elector of Brandenburg regarding the war. “If he is for God, he must join me, if he is for the Devil, then he must fight me. There is no third way.” But of course, this was more than just a war waged over religious differences. Sectarianism would give way to political and dynastic rivalries, the quest for glory, and sheer opportunism. Certainly, none of these factors alone could have caused and then sustained such a terrible war. However, when combined together, and fuelled by political opportunists with outsized ambition for power, the crisis congealed to create a disastrous cocktail of perpetual violence, where neither side felt willing or able to lay down their arms. At the centre of this conflict was the Habsburg dynasty, whose different branches ruled over Austria (as Holy Roman Emperor) and Spain (as its Kings). Its main rival was the Bourbon dynasty, which ruled over France. In the background, the Dutch had been fighting a war of independence against Spain since 1568, and Sweden worked to dominate the Baltic, and expand into Germany. These issues were all significant spokes in a wheel which rolled unstoppably all the way to 1648, and in many cases, beyond.
3. It was a war of king-sized rivalries
Central to the perpetuation of the conflict was the bad blood between Europe’s royal houses. These rivalries included: the French Bourbon dynasty and the Austro-Spanish Habsburgs; the Austrian Habsburgs and the Palatine Wittelsbachs; the Spanish Habsburgs versus the Dutch House of Orange; the cousins’ war in Northern Europe between the two branches of the Vasa dynasty: one Catholic and Polish, the other Protestant and Swedish. The parties in these disputes dragged their rivalries into the bubbling cauldron of the Thirty Years War, while they also contacted potential allies on the other side of those disputes, further complicating the conflict. Religion underpinned and exacerbated some of these contests, but not all. Competition between France and Spain — both Catholic powers — had been ongoing for nearly a century, and spilled over into the Thirty Years War and beyond with dramatic consequences.
4. It was actually several wars in one
It’s easiest to see the war containing several faces and phases. The Bohemian Revolution ended by 1624, but by then the war had widened. In 1625, Denmark marched in against the Holy Roman Empire and its Spanish allies. Five years later, the Swedes joined the anti-Habsburg coalition too. France entered the war in 1635 to counter its Catholic rivals in Spain. As each of these powers intervened, new war aims bubbled to the fore, and new arguments for continuing or ending the hostilities were heeded. From 1635 onwards, facing the combined strength of their enemies, the Habsburgs were fighting on borrowed time, yet they held on until 1648. Each of these phases of the war were punctuated by fascinating characters, desperate struggles, ferocious battles and endless intrigue which would have provided ample fodder for a Game of Thrones-style saga.
5. It offered a glimpse of wars to come
The battlefields of the Thirty Years War played host to a strange mixture of weapons and tactics, both old and new. Massed infantry in pike squares supported by heavy cavalry were met by formations of musketeers, whose firearms, although cutting-edge at the time, were so unwieldy they had to be secured to a spike in the ground before firing. It was like the steel of the Renaissance warrior pooled with the gunpowder mass infantry drills of the 18th century. Above all though, it was chaotic, loud, and very bloody. Commanders did their best to navigate the new battlefield innovations, but many found it safer to engage in the most common feature of 17th century warfare: the siege. In fact, pitched battles were comparatively rare; the Thirty Years War’s most decisive clashes can be counted on a single hand. Yet, we shouldn’t forget the immense challenge that confronted commanders when attempting to balance infantry, artillery and cavalry into a coherent armed force. Few individuals proved equal to the challenge, perhaps the most famous of these men was Gustavus Adolphus, the King of Sweden (r. 1611-1632).
6. It saw the birth of legends
One of the war’s most decisive moments came with the victory by Gustavus in the September 1631 Battle of Breitenfeld. The one-day clash, which saw 23,000 Protestant troops wipe out a 35,000-man Catholic army near Leipzig, didn’t merely cement the Nordic ruler’s legend as a conqueror, it completely overturned the Habsburg supremacy, which up to that point had seemed so assured. Using innovative new infantry tactics, and redefining the use of artillery with light and heavy field pieces, the Swedish King destroyed his Habsburg counterpart Count Tilly. Just over a decade before in November 1620, Count Tilly had first shattered the Emperor’s enemies, but now it was he who was on the losing side. With this thumping victory at Breitenfeld, the Habsburg armies momentarily melted away, and Gustavus began his rampage down south into the Habsburg heartland. And the victory had far-reaching consequences: It virtually guaranteed the continuation of the war, at least until the Habsburgs could claw back some semblance of their power in Germany. This process would take some time, and the war was by no means over, but it was undeniable that Gustavus had changed everything. Not bad for a single day’s work!
7. Millions perished from war, famine and disease
The precise death toll of the Thirty Years War will likely never be known, but the sheer size of the estimates of both military and civilian losses are staggering and wouldn’t be surpassed until the conflicts of the 20th century. At least eight million people are believed to have died, while several parts of Germany saw population declines of as much as 50 per cent. The Sack of Magdeburg in spring 1631, for instance, saw the city’s population reduced from 40,000 to just 5,000 and it never recovered fully. Indeed, the tragedy of Magdeburg captures a key fact about the Thirty Years War which is often forgotten: Civilians were front and centre in the war, and as a consequence were by far the worst affected. As armies ballooned in size and tore across the countryside, they invariably ravaged the fragile agricultural system upon which the German populace depended. Food, for some civilians, became so scarce that many were reduced to eating grass, or tree bark, to survive. Marching armies didn’t just leave famine in their wake, plague travelled in their ranks too. When soldiers introduced diseases to the starving and weakened populations, the result was death on a scale not seen in Europe in centuries. Starvation and disease proved to be the most devastating weapons at the disposal of the armies of the era. As would be the case in the 20th century, throughout the Thirty Years War it was the civilians, caught in the middle and left to fend for themselves, that paid the highest price.
8. It was as much a diplomatic war as a military struggle
It wasn’t all bloodshed however. Diplomacy was a vital part of the Thirty Years War, too. It could protect allies, distract enemies, and open up invaluable opportunities. The conflict was rife with diplomatic opportunism. Before Sweden intervened in the war in 1630, there was the small matter of resolving its long-running struggle with Poland. With this in mind, the Swedes arranged for that mysterious power far to the east – Russia – to attack Poland just as Sweden invaded Germany. Without this initiative bearing fruit, Gustavus would never have been free to engage in the larger war, and history would have panned out very differently. Armies might change the shape of the war, but diplomacy was critical for controlling this shape, and when it came to making peace, particularly, the diplomatists took centre stage.
9. It took years to negotiate the end of hostilities
At its outset, both sides would have been horrified at the suggestion that fighting would drag on for 30 long years. The apocalyptic combination of famine, disease and mass migration rendered many parts of Germany ghost towns for generations. As a result of this destruction, many Germans urged the concerned parties to make peace. By 1635, in fact, the war could quite possibly have ended, had France not intervened openly against Austria and Spain. It had operated covertly against its enemies for at least a decade by that point. But once French power began to tell, calls for an end of hostilities became louder; from 1643, talk of a peace conference grew. When peace talks did begin, they dragged on until 1648. Sweden, France and the Emperor’s forces believed that if they could achieve just one more triumph on the battlefield, they could dictate terms. True enough, the war did swing the way of the French and Swedes, and the exhausted Habsburgs can be considered the ‘losers’ of the conflict. On the other hand though, Emperor Ferdinand and his successors had set in place a centralized state which would, in time, stand as the Austrian Empire we know today.
10. It marked a reshuffling of the old European order
What was the legacy of the Thirty Years War? In my view, the trauma of the war meant that Germans never again fought for their religion on such a scale. For the Habsburgs, it meant that the Holy Roman Empire would become decentralized, as powers like Prussia rose to prominence. Yet in their own lands, the Austrian Empire was positioned to become the pearl of the Danube. And then there were the new arrivals: states like Sweden and the Dutch Republic had never been so powerful, while France, under the young Louis XIV in 1648, would in time rise to dominate the 17th and 18th centuries. And then there were the losers: States like Spain suffered greatly from their war experience. As was the custom in a changing Europe though, their decline presented unparalleled opportunities for their rivals to step in. It may have taken place in Europe rather than Westeros, but the stakes were just as high, and the penalties for failure just as deadly, in this 17th century Game of Thrones.
Zachary Twamley is the author of For God or the Devil, A History of the Thirty Years War, and he has also been a history podcaster for over eight years. His book can be ordered here. You can listen to his podcast When Diplomacy Fails or follow him on Twitter at @wdfpodcast
While the 30yrs range on, the Serbs and Greeks and were in enslaved by the Moslem Turks. The Serbs and Greeks had enough problems
man this sucks