Update 53 - the Peace of Venice
The following in an excerpt from The Schismatic Wars: Europe in Crisis 1590-1660 by Duncan MacCallum, Ph.D.
The Peace of Venice:
The Peace of Aussig that had brought an end to the First Schismatic War had only been signed by the two primary belligerents of that war: Austria and Denmark. While the League of Dresden and most of the Catholic princes of the Empire had come to accept the Peace of Aussig, its validity had been challenged by France and the League of Heidelberg. In fact, it was exactly the doubtful validity of the Peace of Aussig which had led to the Election of 1640, crowning Henry III of France as Emperor.
Thus, when it became time to negotiate an end to the Second Schismatic War, it became clear that a lasting peace couldn't simply be signed by the three claimant Emperors, but that all belligerents in the Second Schismatic War would have to be made signatories to the peace. Thus, a grand peace conference was called which would include all Imperial Princes of both halves of the Empire, and the extra-Imperial powers of France, Spain, England, Sweden, Portugal, and Navarre. In order to satisfy all parties, the peace conference would have to be held in a neutral country, and the Republic of Venice soon offered its services to host the peace talks.
Some parts of the peace were easier to resolve than others. France, Spain, Portugal and Navarre were able to quickly agree not to change any of their borders in Iberia, as little land had changed hands. An agreement between the various colonial powers to ratify the de facto changes of ownership of various colonies also could be easily settled. This meant that England, the Netherlands, and France gained territory in the Americas at the expense of Spain, and the Netherlands and Denmark gained territory in the Eastern colonies at the expense of Portugal. As most of these changes have already been discussed elsewhere, there is no need to go into any more detail here. [1]
Sweden's only demand at the peace table was the land of Trondelag, which it had occupied in its intervention against Denmark. At first, King (and German Emperor) Frederick of Denmark had been unwilling to give up anything to Sweden. However, once it became clear that his choice was between giving up a portion of Norway or surrendering more Imperial land to France and the Netherlands, Frederick relented. After all, Sweden was, at this time, much less of a threat to Danish power than France or the Netherlands were. The surrender of Trondelag finally gave Sweden the Atlantic port it had been desiring for decades as Trondheim was a much better port in a much better position than the remote St. Petersburg on the White Sea.
With the situation outside of the Empire resolved, the discussions at the Peace of Venice turned to coming up with an equitable division of the Holy Roman Empire. It was clear at this point that at least a bipartite division of the Empire into Northern at Southern portions (along the lines of the agreements made at the Third Diet of Bayeruth) was necessary. At first, France pushed for a tripartite division, making the Western lands occupied by the League of Heidelberg into a third Empire with the French King at its head. However, it soon became clear that France didn't even have the support of its allies in England, Portugal, and Navarre for this proposal. Thus, the Holy Roman Empire in the South and the Empire of the German Nation (informally the 'German Empire') in the North were confirmed as the only two Western European powers entitled to refer to themselves as an 'Empire'.
However, any movement beyond this point in discussion was fruitless as long as the various Imperial Princes couldn't agree upon a common methodology of determining how the Empire would be divided. There were two competing geo-political philosophies at the time which shaped two very different ideas of what a division of the Empire should look like. The first philosophy was that of legalism which argued that any division of the Empire or redistribution of land would have to be made according to Imperial Law. While legalists were often willing to admit that law on its own was not always sufficient to resolve succession disputes, they argued against giving land to anyone who didn't have even a weak claim to it. Legalists felt that the goal of peace was justice, and that justice could only be achieved through law. Thus, in the eyes of legalists, dividing up the Empire arbitrarily would only weaken the rule of law leading to further war and destruction. [2]
Opposed to the legalists were the followers of the new philosophical school known as 'rationalism'. Rationalism, at the time of the Peace of Venice, had not yet reached the level of philosophical refinement or the degree of influence, that would characterize it in the 18th century. In fact, many historians of philosophy refuse to refer to the philosophies of the various parties present as 'rationalism' (instead calling it 'proto-rationalism'), as they argue that most politicians and diplomats at the time would not have known that the rationalist arguments of philosophers such as Pierre Desmoulins supported their positions.
While the more philosophical aspects of Pierre Desmoulins' writings may not have been widely read until they were picked up by the later rationalists of the 18th century, his political works were at least well-known by the time of the Peace of Venice. Desmoulins, as a French Huguenot who had come to the Netherlands as a child (his father was a officer in the army of Henry III of Navarre whofollowed his King to the Netherlands), had centred much of his early work around the philosophical justification of Bourbon rule in the Free Netherlands. His early philosophy was grounded in Protestant criticism of medieval Church and dynastic law, although he eschewed the Calvinist idea of predestination in favour of a cosmology in which humans play as much of a role in shaping the particulars of the world as God.
For Desmoulins, human power was always a corrupting influence on the state of the world. It was this corrupting influence which had led to the abuses of the Catholic church but had also led to the creation of personal unions where a single King ruled multiple Kingdoms. For Demoulins, every personal union was a manifestation of human greed, and the breakup of large personal unions into smaller pieces was the work of God. For Desmoulins, God's plan was always to create balanced, medium-sized countries throughout Europe by breaking up large empires (such as had occurred during the Dutch Revolt), but also by allowing smaller states to fuse together (such as the formation of the Burgundian Netherlands). Desmoulins was harshly critical of succession law as an integral part of international politics, as it was succession law which mandated the creation of personal unions and the division of realms amongst multiple sons. Desmoulins illustrated these ideas with his slogans of “One country; one king” and “God created the countries of the world; man created its laws.” In fact, the modern use of the word 'country' to refer to any medium-sized polity whether it was part of a larger bloc or a confederation of smaller entities can be traced to the writings of Desmoulins. [3]
According to Desmoulins' early political works, God's plan for the world was this patchwork of medium-sized countries, and it was the job of virtuous rulers and government officials to make this plan come to be. For Desmoulins, the only way to know how God meant to divide Europe was to use the one human faculty which was most pure and closest to God: that of reason. A politician or diplomat was to think about what international borders made were most rational regardless of human-created inheritance laws or personal unions, and use this idea of rationality as the basis for political division.
While Desmoulins' later work describing the rational intellect as the source of all human knowledge had only just been published at the time of the Peace of Venice, his earlier, more political, works had been written in the 1620s and 1630s and had been read by many present at the peace conference. In particular, Emperor Charles VI had made use of Desmoulins' arguments to justify his annexation of the Upper Palatinate (which by law was a part of the Palatinate but was “rationally” a part of Bavaria), although Charles' disregard for the rule of law dated back to the time when he served as Regent of Bavaria.
According to Desmoulins' ideas, the Holy Roman Empire had fallen prey to the Schismatic Wars largely because it was too large and too decentralized to be ruled effectively. Thus, it would have to be divided into smaller polities according to rationalist principles. While two of these polities, the Empire of the German Nation and the rump Holy Roman Empire, had already been created by the Third Diet of Bayeruth, the failure of the two Emperors from occupying the Western Imperial lands necessitated the creation of additional polities.
The easiest place to break off additional polities was in Italy. Spain's victory over Savoy led to the surrender of most of the territory of Piedmont (including the City of Turin) to be appended to the Spanish Duchy of Milan. Savoy was thus only left with Savoy proper, Nice, Saluzzo and a thin strip of Piedmont connecting these lands. However, in exchange, Savoy and the Swiss Confederation would be granted full independence from the Holy Roman Empire. The experience of fighting together against Spain together with gaining independence from the Empire at the same time would lead to close ties and a permanent alliance between the Swiss Confederation and Savoy. Eventually, this would result in the expansion of the Swiss Confederation to include Savoy and become the Alpine Confederation later in the 17th century.
The existence of Savoy, the Swiss Confederation and the Republic of Venice separating Italy from the rest of the Holy Roman Empire made it clear to all parties that it was necessary to firmly separate the Kingdom of Italy from the rest of the Empire. The Peace of Venice would ratify the agreement between Austria and Spain which would pass the title of King of Italy to Spain in exchange for Luxembourg and the Franche-Comté. This transfer of the title of 'King of Italy' was technically illegal according to Imperial law [4], but was accepted due to rationalist principles arguing that Italy shouldn't rationally have the Holy Roman Emperor as King. Franche-Comté, which was still firmly occupied by Austrian and Spanish troops would be accepted by all as Austrian territory. The status of Luxembourg would not be resolved until land in the rest of Germany could be divided up.
One thing that was made clear in Venice was that France was by now the most powerful Kingdom in all of Europe, and that even its allies refused to have France annex vast swaths of Imperial territory. The annexation of the lands that King Henry III already held as Imperial fiefs (the French Netherlands and the Three Bishoprics in Lorraine) was the most that all powers would initially accept, although in the end Henry III would also convince the other powers to allow him to annex enough of Lorraine to connect the Three Bishoprics to France proper.
After much negotiation, it seemed that a consensus could be reached that the Imperial lands occupied by the League of Heidelberg, instead of being granted to France, would be granted independence as French allies. The Navarrese Netherlands were large enough to rationally be made into a Kingdom. The occupied lands of Jülich-Cleves-Berg along with some other smaller Imperial territories were annexed onto the new Kingdom of the Navarrese Netherlands, and the Bishoprics of Liège, Cologne, Münster, Osnabrück, and Paderborn became Dutch vassals. This almost doubled the size of the Netherlands, forcing the adoption of a new Dutch constitution which would allow representation of the new territories in the States-General in Antwerp. This 1653 constitution would grant different levels of representation to Free Provinces (the original territories liberated in the Dutch Revolt), Subject Provinces (territories captured in the Schismatic Wars as well as New World colonies), and Vassals (for now all vassals would be Bishoprics). [5]
Even with this expansion of the Netherlands, there was still a large stretch of territory from Hessen-Kassel to Lorraine which was controlled by the League of Heidelberg, but could not be reasonably annexed to either France or the Netherlands. While much of this land, including Hessen-Kassel and Southern Lorraine, was eventually returned to its original owners, the rest had to be organized into some sort of coherent independent state which was not vassalized to either Empire or to France. Louis of the Palatinate, who had now succeeded his father to the Palatine throne, as leader of the army that had defended this territory, was the clear candidate for the monarchy of the new polity. Louis also had illegally lost his family's holdings in the Upper Palatinate, and needed compensation. Thus, the new title of Grand Duke of the Rhine was created for Louis, and the members of the League of Heidelberg from Hessen-Darmstadt to Trier to Strassburg were made into vassals of this new Grand Duchy. The former Imperial Princes who were now Rhenish vassals were granted great autonomy under their Grand Duke, and in many ways the Counts Palatine enjoyed less power as Grand Dukes than they had as Imperial Electors. This resulted in instability in the Grand Duchy of the Rhine, which in turn would spark the conflicts which would eventually be known as the Rhineland Wars. [6]
With the Western Imperial land divided up amongst various new and existing polities, the question now became what to do with the Imperial Princes. Legalist arguments would allow Princes who had been displaced to return to their land if they were willing to swear fealty to their new overlord. However, rationalists amongst the diplomats soon objected arguing that the fealty sworn by the various members of the League of Dresden and League of Heidelberg to Emperor Charles had not prevented them from rising up in revolt. Instead, the rationalists argued that Princes who had been displaced should be relocated to lands where they could rule under the suzerainty of their ally rather than their enemy.
Thus, the delegates gathered in Venice adopted a policy of exchanges where Eastern Princes allied with the League of Heidelberg would exchange holdings with Western Princes allied with Austria or the League of Dresden. The Duke of Württemberg, whose lands had been occupied by Austria, was given Luxembourg, which had been occupied by France, as compensation while Austria annexed Württemberg to its own territories. The Duke of Lorraine, who lost a great deal of land to France and the Grand Duchy of the Rhine, was compensated with Ansbach, while the Prince of Ansbach obtained a portion of Eastern Lorraine as a Rhenish vassal. The Princes of Nassau and Anhalt similarly exchanged lands so that each could remain with his own ally as overlord.
The one Prince who had lost the most land of all was the former Duke of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, who had also been made an Elector of the German Empire. However, in 1626, an arrangement had been reached between the Dukes of Jülich-Cleves-Berg and Mecklenburg which would serve to alleviate this situation. At the time, both dynasties had been reduced to a single old duke, each with a single son and many daughters. The two Dukes had agreed to marry each son to the other's eldest daughter, and agreed that, if either house was to go extinct, its lands would be inherited by the other. Of the two marriages resulting from this arrangement, that of Francis of Jülich-Cleves-Berg to Maria of Mecklenburg had proved fruitful, while that of George of Mecklenburg to Catherine of Jülich-Cleves-Berg had proved childless. This was likely due to the fact that Catherine was almost 10 years older than George. Thus, when George of Mecklenburg died in 1646, his lands would pass to Francis. The Duchy of Mecklenburg, while not as rich or populous as the United Duchies of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, was prosperous enough to serve as a base for the now-relocated Electorate of Mecklenburg.
These dynastic exchanges, while defended as “rational” by those who had brokered the deal, caused much short-term disorder. While some of the dynasties being relocated (such as Württemberg and Jülich-Cleves-Berg) were simply a single powerful family and its retainers, others (such as Nassau) consisted of a number of closely related branches who each had their own land. Much conflict was felt in Anhalt as the various branches of the House of Nassau fought over who would get the best land in the dynasty's new small, poor, territory. Additionally, the exchange of territory had often happened between dynasties of different faiths, meaning that in many places a Lutheran Prince was reigning over a Catholic populace or a Calvinist Prince was reigning over a Lutheran populace. Sometimes, the ruler succeeded in converting his people to his own faith, as the Duke of Lorraine did in Ansbach. However, in other cases, it was the ruler himself who converted (as Eberhard of Württemberg did when he moved to Catholic Luxembourg). In some other lands, both ruler and subjects refused to convert, resulting in ongoing religious turmoil.
The division of the Empire by the Peace of Venice resulted in lands which would go on to have vastly different fates. The rump Holy Roman Empire was now overwhelmingly dominated by the various branches of the Austrian Hapsburgs. The process of centralization and consolidation begun by Charles VI would be continued by his successors Matthias II and Maximillian III. By 1700, the Holy Roman Empire would be transformed from a decentralized elective monarchy to an absolute hereditary monarchy.
The Spanish Kingdom of Italy would travel down much the same path as the Holy Roman Empire, albeit much slower and with more resistance. The Italian Princes had always enjoyed more autonomy than their German brethren, and many of them (such as Genoa and Florence) were powerful in their own right. The second half of the 17th century would see repeated attempts by Ferdinand VI of Spain and his third son Mathias (who would succeed Ferdinand as King of Italy) [7] to restrict the power of the Italian Princes. These attempts would often result in war, and an inevitable Spanish victory in which the Italian Princes would give up their power bit by bit. The Kingdom of Italy would never become as centralized as Austria, Spain, or France, but would succeed at reducing Genoa and Florence to the status of weak vassals.
Unlike its Southern counterpart, the German Empire would never have a strong hereditary monarchy. The existence of five Electors, each of whom had large holdings within the Empire, prevented the dominance of any one state within the Northern Empire. While Denmark-Silesia held the Imperial title more often than any other power, there were still times throughout the lifetime of the Northern Empire when the Electors of Brandenburg, Saxony, and Mecklenburg would take a turn at the helm. However, the lack of any strong non-Electoral Princes within the Northern empire meant that the rights of the non-Electoral Princes would be continually eroded until only the Electors held any real power. The smaller states of the Northern Empire would be broken up by division of inheritance (which was enforced by the Emperor and Electors), and the resulting small pieces would eventually be mediatisized [8] into one of the Electorates. By 1750, there were very few non-Electors left who still had Imperial immediacy in the Northern Empire.
The Grand Duchy of the Rhine was perhaps the Imperial successor state that best retained the constitutional arrangement of the old Holy Roman Empire. While the title of Grand Duke was hereditary rather than elective, the various Counts, Free Cities, and Bishoprics that made up the Grand Duchy of the Rhine enjoyed great autonomy. Furthermore, the principle of cuius regio, eius religio, now obsolete in the Lutheran German Empire and the Catholic Holy Roman Empire, was still followed in the Grand Duchy of the Rhine, where Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist states lived alongside one another. It is partly this religious diversity and legal conservatism which facilitated the instability that would lead to the Rhineland Wars of the second half of the 17th century.
Lastly, carved out of two very different parts of the old Empire were two federal states, the Netherlands and the Alpine Confederation, as alike as they were different (of course, the Alpine Confederation did not yet exist at the time of the Peace of Venice, as the Savoyard Revolt had not yet succeeded at displacing the House of Savoy in favour of a division of Savoy into self-governing cantons [9]). Both were religiously diverse states where much power was delegated to the local government. The Alpine 'cantons' carried much the same executive power as the Dutch 'provincial states'. However, while the Alpine Confederation was distinctly republican in nature, the Netherlands were a Kingdom. Of course the Dutch Kingdom was, legally speaking, a personal union between all Provinces where the States-General of the Free Provinces had the right to elect the King. It was still a Kingdom nonetheless.
While the Peace of Venice had succeed at dividing the old Empire into more 'rationally'-sized polities, and while many of these polities would succeed at centralizing into strong states, many of these polities would not. While the Peace of Venice is largely responsible for the creation of many of the countries we know from the geography of today's Europe, it was also responsible for the creation of a number of failed states, the most conspicuous of which was the Grand Duchy of the Rhine. While the Peace of Venice ended the Schismatic Wars, it can also be thought of as starting the Rhineland Wars.
Footnotes:
[1] See Update 43 for the islands which were captured in the Caribbean by England, France, and the Netherlands, see Update 48 for the changes in South America, and Update 51 for the changes in Africa and Asia.
[2] You can think of 'legalism' as the school of thought which led, in OTL, to the Holy Roman Empire undergoing very little change between 1648 and 1800. In OTL, it was largely the fear of another 30 years' war which kept the patchwork of small Imperial Princes around.
[3] 'Medium-sized' means between the population of Denmark and that of France. So, in TTL, the HRE would have been too large to be a 'country', while the Grand Duchy of the Rhine is a little bit too small. TTL's international political system is based upon the idea of equality between medium-sized 'countries' whether or not they are idependent, part of a larger entity, or made up of smaller entities. This system is, in some ways, TTL's counterpart for OTL's 'Westphalian Sovereignty'.
[4] Illegal in the sense that the various titles of King of Germany, King of Italy, etc. which go with the Imperial Crown belong to the Crown not to the Emperor. Legally speaking, the Emperor would have to at least get the approval of the Electors to trade away such a title. However, at this point in time, traditional Imperial law is considered obsolete, and Charles VI and his successors will successfully turn the rump Southern lands into an absolute Hapsburg monarchy.
[5] Basically, the Free Provinces have representation in the States-General, while the Subject Provinces have their own individual Provincial States, but are not part of the States-General. This gives the Free Provinces more political power, which in turn means that the tax burden falls heaviest on the Subject Provinces, as they have no mechanism by which to band together against the monarch. It should also be noted that the monarch of the Navarrese Netherlands is elected by the States-General, so the Free Provinces have a say in this election while the Subject Provinces don't.
[6] The Rhineland Wars are going to be the big European conflicts of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, equivalent in size to OTL's Wars of the Spanish and Austrian Succession.
[7] I think I will mention this later, but, for various reasons, Ferdnand VI of Spain has consolidated his holdings into three Kingdoms, one for each of his three sons. Spain is of course the richest and will go to his eldest son. Italy is still filled with revolt-prone vassals, so it will go to his youngest son. The rest (the former Kingdoms of Mallorca, Sardinia, Naples, and Sicily) will go to his middle son as the Kingdom of the Four Sicilies.
[8] Mediatizied literally means “making mediate” as in removing Imperial immediacy. Basically the small states are being forced to become vassals of one of the Electors.
[9] As I probably won't actually write an update on this, what's going to happen to Savoy is this. While the Spanish King of Italy is busy in a war against Florence, the Duke of Savoy decides it's time to launch a revanchist war to retake Turin. He raises a large mercenary army and levies huge taxes to make it happen. He takes Turin, but is faced with a revolt at home. He hopes to force the King of Italy to make peace and then return with his army to crush the revolt, but the King of Italy stalls, and eventually the revolt succeeds at overrunning all of Savoy. The revolters (who turn out to have been backed by Switzerland) are able to convince the King of Italy to recognize them as the legitimate government of Savoy, and the Duke of Savoy is forced into exile. Savoy is divided into self-governing cantons (probably two in Savoy proper, one in the narrow stretch of what's left of Piedmont, one in Saluzzo, and one in Nice) and is made a part of the Swiss Confederation, which renames itself the Alpine Confederation.
