The Thirty Years War

At its height, near its birth, the Holy Roman Empire covered modern France, Germany, Northern Italy, Switzerland, Austria, the Czech Republicm, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, and parts of Denmark, Poland, (Lithuania?), Slovenia, and Slovakia, but by 1618, the year the Thirty Years War began, "the Empire was not theoretically a national Germany state, but an international state of which the vicissitudes of furtune had left only the German-speaking fragment."1 Yet, if it had just been vicissitudes, we might expect a nearly random, or simply geographically compact, HRE, but instead the grinding down of the lands of the Empire occured, in the background over hundreds of years, with a linguistic millstone.2

Now, no one should argue that the war itself was fundamentally a conflict between language groups, it was anything but. It began with the Defenestration of Prague3 and was often continued by the Catholic Emperor Ferdinand's insistence on the Edict of Restitution4 , and so could be considered a religious war. The war let loose the dynastic ambitions of more than a dozen rulers, some of whom sought self-aggrandizement through acting as Champions of their Faith, but who were generally playing a zero sum game5 . The fundamental tension within Germany was between the Hapsburg Emperors, the Imperial Party, and the Princes, eager to guard their power and privileges, representing the party of German Liberties. And outside Germany, events had meaning for the greatest European power, Hapsburg Spain, and her rival, Bourbon France, and the utility of land, like the Val Telline6 , for further wars. Nothing seems too simple for this war, with the Catholic Popes and Bourbons supporting the Protestants, and sometimes German Protestants supporting their Emperor to prevent foreign armies from getting involved. And there were the rivalries of allied Generals, some who sought not-so-much victory as fame.

In linguistic terms, the Germans were fighting each other, and the Imperial German party was at odds with the other Germanic countries, the Dutch and Swedish. The Romance speaking French and Spanish were at odds with each other, and allied with one or other German party.

Modern political theorists, for example Kissinger and Chomsky, ascribe to the end of the Thirty Years War, the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, the beginning of the modern state system and an end to the religious wars of the previous century. Wedgwood was less sure of that, and wrote "The Peace of Westphalia was like most peace treaties, a rearrangement of the European map for the next war." Certainly the German cession of Imperial privileges in Alsace to France has emerged and re-emerged as a flashpoint of conflict.7 Yet, the Treaty also confirmed certain realities, which appear to have a linguistic backdrop. The United Provinces, now called the Netherlands, speaking Dutch, were officially severed from the Germans. The Swiss, predominantly German speaking, also were officially recognized. [[Jutland]],

Footnotes1. Wedgwood, p. 302, who also relates how the country changed its name to the Holy Roman Empire of the German Speaking People "about the fifteenth century" p. 35back

2. [[history of the loss of HRE lands?]]back

3. Bohemia8 , modern Czech Republic, was neither entirely within or without the Empire. The King of Bohemia was one of the seven Electors who was able to choose the next Emperor of the HRE, and the King had been an Austrian Hapsburg for at least for the last century (p. 43). When the Bohemians heard that Ferdinand was to be their ruler, it certainly put fear into the minds of the Lutherans, Calvinists and Utraqists took those two Catholic ministers and threw them out the window. Landing on something, they survived.back

8. "The kingdom of Bohemia was only a small prvince, but the kingship carried with it sovereign reights in the duchies of Silesia and Lusatia and the margravate of Moravia. The four provinces [...] held separate Estates, made and kept separate laws. German and Polish were spoken in Silesia, German and Wendish in Lusatia, German and Czech in Bohemia, Slovak in Moravia.

"It was doubtful whether all or any of the four were within the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire.

"Bohemia, the richest province, dominated the other three. Here the movements towards religious independence, national integrity and political liberty which were stirring in the rest of Europe had attained an early maturity. The Czechs were divided from the Germands by language, and from the Slavs by religion and character; self-reliant and resourceful, they had early gained a reputation for political acumen, and their early folklore glorified the virtues of labor. They had learnt Christianity from the Byzantine missionaries, but had modified their form of worship to suit themselves; when they were later merged in the Catholic Church they maintained their native speech in the services and adopted for their patron not one of the famous saints of Christendom but their own King Wenceslas, whose sanctity rested on scarcely better authority than poopular affection.

"Inevitably they were among the first to defy the authority of Rome, giving Europe at the same time two great teachers, John Hus and Jerome of Prague, who were burnt for heresy at Constance in 1417. The reformers were condemned, but the Czechs set their national honour on their teaching, and finding a leader in Zizka and a fortress on the wide hill of Tabor, reconquered their country. A generation later, George of Podiebrad, the first non-Catholic King in Western Europe, established the religion of Hus throughout Bohemia and set up on the front of every church a sculptured chalice, the symbol of reform. The distinguishing mark of Utraquism, the new religion, was that the laity might receive the Communion in both kinds; otherwise it differed only in detail from Catholicism. Fifty years later the German reformation burst upon Europe and brought Lutheranism, followed by Calvinismm, into Bohemia.

"About this time Bohemia fell into the hands of the Hapsburg dynasty, with whom it remained." (p 69-70)

Notice how the author makes little of the difference between Catholicism and Utraquism, and ignores that the mass was given in the vernacular, a major sticking point behind the Protestant reformation itself. And why were they inevitably the first to defy Rome? Could it have been also related to being Czech within a German speaking region?

Not 10 years before the war broke out, the King before Ferdinand of Bohemia, Emperor Matthias, began cracking down on non-Catholics. "In revenge the Estates at Prague passed laws forbidding any man to settle in the country or acquire rights of citizenship unless he could speak Czech." (p. 71)back

4. Fundamentally, the Edict would return all Catholic Church lands taken since 1555 by Protestants back to the Catholics. Not even the sometimes pro-Imperial Protestant princes, notably John George of Saxony, would ever agree to such a thing.back

5. Dynasties, of course, could give up current territorial claims for a favorable marriage, although marriages during this period generally were designed to increased the cohesiveness of each of the opposing sides, for a more fulsome fissure.back

7. [[Alsace]]back

6. map of val telline, role in moving Italian troops up to the Spanish Netherlands to fight Protestants and hold Hapsburg possessions.back

For violation of Letter of Majesty, guaranteeing toleration... "In revenge the Estate at Prague passed laws forbidding any man to settle in the country or acquire rights of citizenship unless he could speak Czech."9

"For Wallenstein the centre of Europe was the Slavonic block at the sources of the Elbe and Oder; for Ferdinand it was the group of German-speaking states on the upper Danube; for the Kings of France and Spain it remained the Rhine, the Low Countries and the north Italian passes."10