Lands of Red and Gold #54: Slings and Arrows...
Lands of Red and Gold #54: Slings and Arrows...
Okay, this is much, much delayed, but also I believe the single longest post I've ever written for LRG or even DoD before it. Here's, finally, how the outcome of the Thirty Years' War was changed by Aururian contact.
For those who find the geography of the Holy Roman Empire difficult (like me), Kaiphranos and Valdemar I have between them come up with a map of the changed outcome. This map is linked to
https://www.alternatehistory.com/decadesofdarkness/PeaceofNuremberg.png, and I'll also add it as a separate post in this thread after this one.
Anyway, on with the post...
* * *
“Call no man happy, until he is dead.”
- Herodotus,
Histories I. xxxii
* * *
“Everything that belonged to the use and commodity of man was and is there... Nature seemed to make the country [Bohemia] her storehouse and granary.”
Jedidja Frühling-Feld,
History of the Twenty Years’ War, 1869.
* * *
In history as it is usually known, the conflict which would be called the Thirty Years’ War became one of the most devastating wars that Europe had ever seen. Fought mainly in the territory of what would later become Germany, what began as a religious struggle within the Holy Roman Empire expanded into a broader struggle which drew in most of the major European powers, and became the longest-lasting continuous war in modern history.
The war originated from unresolved religious conflict within the Holy Roman Empire, which had been temporarily halted by the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. That peace established that, in most cases, the ruler of a state could choose the religion of their realm, and require their subjects to convert to that faith (
cuius regio, eius religio). Exceptions were made for Lutherans living under the rule of a Catholic prince-bishop, who were permitted to still follow their religion, although a prince-bishop who converted to Lutheranism would be required to relinquish his realm.
Augsburg was an incomplete peace, since the only religions it recognised were Lutheranism and Catholicism. It ignored the more radical Anabaptist sects, and did not address the emergence of Calvinism as a separate faith in the second half of the sixteenth century. Moreover, Augsburg’s provisions were often unenforced; some bishops who changed religions refused to abandon their realms, leading to fresh struggles.
Religious conflict returned to the Holy Roman Empire during the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Neighbouring powers had a keen interest in this contest, whether from genuine religious fervour or as a pretext for territorial and economic gains. The staunchly Catholic Spanish branch of the Habsburgs were displeased over the relative religious tolerance of their Austrian relatives, and directly intervened in some struggles. Conversely, the Lutheran realms of Denmark and Sweden sought to support their co-religionists, partly from religious unity, and partly from a desire to extract economic concessions in northern Germany.
The immediate trigger for what became the Thirty Years’ War was a contest over the inheritance of Bohemia. Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia was elderly and had no immediate heirs. On his death, his lands would be inherited by the devout Catholic Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria. Several of the Protestant notables of Bohemia feared Ferdinand’s succession as a threat to their religious liberty, and supported an alternative Calvinist candidate, Frederick V, Elector of the Palatinate. Nevertheless, in 1617 Ferdinand II was duly elected as heir apparent by the Bohemian estates.
In May 1618, Ferdinand II sent two Catholic emissaries to administer Bohemia in his absence. A group of Protestant notables responded by hurling the emissaries out of the palace window into a pile of manure. This event, famously called the Defenestration of Prague [1], marked the start of the Bohemian revolt, and the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War.
As events played out historically, the Thirty Years’ War is traditionally [2] divided into four stages: the Bohemian revolt, the Danish intervention, the Swedish intervention, and the French intervention.
The Bohemian revolt saw religious conflict spread throughout the Bohemian estates, and into neighbouring regions such as Austria. The Protestant Bohemians named Frederick V, Elector Palatine, as King of Bohemia, and he eventually accepted. The revolt had some early success, with one Bohemian army reaching Vienna, but it was gradually crushed by a combination of Imperial and Spanish forces. Not all of the divisions were along religious lines; after due consideration [3], the Protestant John George I, Elector of Saxony, invaded Bohemia in support of the Imperial forces.
Bohemia was re-occupied before the end of 1620; Frederick V’s brief reign (almost exactly a year) saw him derisively referred to as the Winter King. The war continued in the Palatinate, Frederick V’s ancestral lands, which were invaded and gradually occupied by the Spanish [4]. Frederick V was outlawed from the Holy Roman Empire, with his lands given to Catholic rulers, and his title as Elector handed to his distant relation, Maximilian I of Bavaria.
Frederick V withdrew to exile in the Dutch Republic, which in 1621 had restarted a separate war with the Spanish. From there he agitated for restoration of his ancestral lands, without success. He remained banned by Imperial edict. He had a boating accident in January 1629 where he nearly drowned, and he lost his eldest son Frederick Henry. The near-drowning had severe effects on Frederick V’s health, and he died in November 1632.
In 1624, the war nearly ended. The Protestant forces were reeling, with the Bohemian revolt crushed and the Palatinate occupied. However, the situation changed when Denmark intervened in support of the Protestants. Christian IV, King of Denmark, was also the Duke of Holstein, part of the Holy Roman Empire, and feared the success of the Catholic forces. He also received generous French subsidies to support his armies; national interest trumped religion here, since Catholic France held strong fears about being encircled by the equally Catholic Habsburgs.
The Danish intervention lasted from 1625-1629. As with the Bohemian revolt, despite early success, most of the military victories were on the Catholic side. Denmark was a wealthy kingdom, and received French subsidies, but found itself strategically isolated. England stood aside, France was busy with internal religious struggles, Sweden was engaged in a war with Poland, and the northern German Protestant powers of Brandenburg and Saxony preferred to maintain their precarious peace.
The leading Catholic generals were Albrecht von Wallenstein, who had grown rich by confiscating the estates of Protestant Bohemian nobles, and Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly. Between them, Wallenstein and Tilly pushed the Danish forces out of the Holy Roman Empire, and eventually occupied mainland Jutland. Nevertheless, they lacked the naval power to occupy the Danish islands, and eventually the two sides negotiated the Treaty of Lübeck. This stipulated, in effect, that Christian IV could keep Denmark provided that he withdrew his support for Protestant forces in the Holy Roman Empire.
With the withdrawal of Danish support, the course of the war turned even worse for the Protestants. The remaining Protestant forces were largely crushed; only the single Baltic port of Stralsund remained defiant against Wallenstein and the Imperial forces. In 1629, the Emperor announced an Edict of Restitution which claimed to be enforcing the provisions of the Peace of Augsburg. In practical terms, the Edict meant that significant parts of Protestant territory and property were to be transferred to Catholic rule, and interfered with some Protestants’ practice of religion. In some ways this was a miscalculation on the Emperor’s part. The Edict widened the war from a religious contest into a dynastic struggle for control of territories, and turned many lesser German princes against the Emperor.
Still, in the short term, the war was apparently almost won. Forces within Ferdinand II’s court, led by Maximilian I of Bavaria, turned against Wallenstein. While an excellent general and in command of a large personal army, his political loyalty was questioned, and he was dismissed from service in September 1630.
With hindsight, Ferdinand II probably considered that a mistake.
For on 20 July 1630, Swedish forces under the command of Gustavus II Adolphus landed at Stettin, in Pomerania, marking the beginning of the Swedish intervention in the war (usually dated 1630-1635). Gustavus Adolphus’s motives for entering the war have never been entirely clear, but he shared a common religion with the Lutherans, was suspicious of the power of the Holy Roman Emperor, and stood to gain economic benefits from control of more of the Baltic coastline.
Sweden’s armies were well-trained and equipped, and adept in new military techniques such as lighter and more mobile artillery. Like Denmark before them, Sweden received generous French subsidies to fight the Habsburgs. The Swedish forces won several critical battles between 1630-1632, including the Battle of Rain in April 1632 which led to Tilly’s death. Due to these setbacks and the loss of his most prominent general, Ferdinand II recalled Wallenstein to service.
Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus met at the Battle of Lützen on 6 November 1632. The Swedish forces proved victorious, but Gustavus Adolphus died while leading a cavalry charge. While Sweden remained in the war after the death of their monarch, their campaign gradually lost political and strategic direction, and the Imperial forces and their Spanish allies regained the initiative. Wallenstein brought himself under suspicion in 1633 when he tried to mediate between the two sides, and he was dismissed, arrested, and then assassinated by one of his men.
With the Swedish forces lacking focus, the Spanish and Imperial forces gradually drove them out of southern Germany. Most notably, at the Battle of Nördlingen on 6 September 1634, an army under the control of the Spanish Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand (later governor of the Spanish Netherlands) routed the Swedish army.
While Sweden did not abandon the war after Nördlingen, its influence was curtailed. German Protestants opened negotiations with the Emperor, which led to the Peace of Prague in 1635. This peace essentially repealed the Edict of Restitution and replaced it with a new understanding that Protestants could keep what they had held in 1627, but with some restrictions on their political power. The Peace also forbade formal alliances between states in the Empire, or with foreign powers. It created a notionally unified command for all armies within the Holy Roman Empire to defend it from invasion. The Peace extended amnesty to rulers who had taken up arms against the Emperor, with the notable exclusion of the descendants of Frederick V, the disgraced and now-dead Winter King.
The Peace of Prague did not, in fact, end the war. Sweden had no part in the negotiations, and Spain was also not bound by it. Most importantly, though, the terms of the peace alarmed France. Under Cardinal Richelieu, France had been indirectly supporting opponents of the Habsburgs, with subsidies at various times going to the Dutch, the Danish and the Swedish. With the Protestant opposition to the Holy Roman Emperor nearly ended, France intervened directly, declaring war on Spain in 1635 and the Holy Roman Empire in 1636.
This began the longest, and in many ways the bloodiest stage of the war, the French intervention (1635-1648). The French fought in the Holy Roman Empire as allies with the Swedish, but also fought separately against the Spanish within and outside the Empire. Sweden regained the military initiative in northern Germany, while France was at first unsuccessful with many of its own territories invaded and ravaged by Spanish and Imperial forces. With the resources available to both sides, though, the war continued for many years, at the cost of much blood and treasure and devastation of much of the fought-over territory.
Denmark and Sweden fought a local war (1643-45) as part of the broader struggle, nicknamed the Torstenson War after the leading Swedish marshal. Sweden had naval victories and extracted territorial and economic concessions from Denmark, marking the beginning of a rivalry which would continue long after the Thirty Years’ War ended.
The cost of the war provoked internal revolt in Spain. Catalonia erupted into revolt in 1640, beginning a bitter struggle of regular and then irregular warfare which would not be fully suppressed for about two decades. Portugal, too, resented Spanish encroachment which it viewed as an effort to turn it into another Spanish province and break the power of the Portuguese nobility. This provoked a Portuguese revolution in 1640 which named John IV Braganza as king of Portugal. This revolution re-established a separate Portuguese crown, although Spain would not recognise it until 1668, after a long period of diplomatic standoffs interrupted by bouts of warfare.
By the mid-1640s, both sides were suffering from the long war, and negotiations opened between several of the powers. The Thirty Years’ War ended not in a single treaty, but a series of treaties between the various powers. Concluded in 1648, these were collectively called the Peace of Westphalia, and marked not just the end of the Thirty Years’ War, but the much longer Eighty Years’ War between Spain and the Netherlands. Westphalia did not, however, resolve all the warfare; France and Spain continued their war until 1659.
The Peace of Westphalia broadly established the principle that princes could choose the established religion of their states, with certain exceptions, and did not allow a prince who changed religion after 1648 to change the established religion of their state. Calvinism was recognised as a religion, and a degree of toleration was established for Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists who lived in a state which had a different established religion. Other faiths, most notably the Anabaptists, were still excluded.
Westphalia involved many territorial changes, including those which established Swedish territory within the Empire, recognised the independence of the Netherlands and Switzerland from the Empire, and which granted Bavaria control of the Upper Palatinate, and a recognised vote as Elector. Charles Louis, the second son of the now-dead Frederick V, was restored to the Lower Palatinate only, and had a new Electorship created for him.
Westphalia also established the concept of sovereignty for each member state over its lands and people. This concept of Westphalian sovereignty would later be seen as the foundation of the modern conception of a sovereign state [5]. In practice, Westphalia broke most of the power of the Holy Roman Empire as a supranational entity. While the Empire was not abolished, after Westphalia, many of the states within the Empire established
de facto independence.
* * *
In allohistory as it is about to become known, the course of the four-staged struggle would be wrenched into a new course.
The first stage of the war, the Bohemian revolt, passed largely unchanged. The first blow in that war was struck before Frederik de Houtman made the first landing in the Atjuntja lands in south-western Aururia. The key battles in that stage were fought when the gold, drugs and spices of Aururia were but distant and mostly unheeded rumours of a new spice island. The extra gold flowing into Dutch coffers buoyed their war effort with Spain after their truce expired in 1621, meaning that they needed fewer French subsidies. The Netherlands even provided some subsidies of their own to Denmark after Christian IV declared war, as he had done historically.
The early course of the Danish intervention, too, passed much as history knew it. Outmatched in the field by the Imperial forces commanded by Wallenstein and Tilly, the Danish forces were pushed out of the Empire. Jutland itself was invaded, though the Danish isles were protected by their fleet.
Lacking a fleet on the Baltic, Wallenstein made preparations to capture the port of Stralsund, which had the facilities to build a suitable fleet to invade insular Denmark. However, Wallenstein’s plans for a siege of Stralsund were overwhelmed by a much larger event: the outbreak of a strange new epidemic which swept through Europe.
At the time, the inhabitants of the Holy Roman Empire knew it only as the Dutch curse, a horrible malady which saw its victims coughing up fluid, and often blood, and which later afflicted some of the initial survivors with a fevered delirium that spelled nigh-inevitable death to any who exhibited those symptoms. This disease appeared in Amsterdam in August 1627, causing a heavy death toll there, and spread across the Netherlands and into the Holy Roman Empire later that year. In 1628, particularly in the spring and early summer, the Dutch curse swept across Germany, bringing death on a scale not seen since the Black Death.
The new disease was no respecter of rank. Ferdinand II, the Holy Roman Emperor himself, was severely afflicted by the pink cough. It did not claim his life, but took his health: he had severe breathing difficulties from that time on. His last surviving brother, Leopold, died from the Dutch curse in April 1628. Count Tilly was even less fortunate; while he survived the pink cough in November 1627, he was one of the first to be claimed by delirium two months later, and after a futile struggle he breathed his last on 9 February 1628. Wallenstein was luckier, catching only a mild dose of the pink cough in March 1628. Still, the deaths amongst his troops and in broader Germany were severe enough that, for now, he suspended his plans to besiege Stralsund.
Protestant rulers were not spared from the epidemic either. John George I, the Protestant Elector of Saxony who had supported the Emperor during the Bohemian revolt, died of vomiting and ‘blood in the urine’ associated with the pink cough. Christian IV survived the Dutch curse with no major ill effects, but his children were less fortunate. His son Frederick [who would later have become King Frederick III], succumbed to delirium. The designated heir, Prince Christian, survived with severe scarring of his lungs that caused him breathing problems and vulnerability to infection, and which ultimately would shorten his life. Georg Wilhelm, Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia, was permanently invalided by breathing problems, and for governance he largely relied on his Catholic chancellor, Adam, Count of Schwarzenberg.
The disease casualties were heavy for both sides’ armies, but for the moment this worked in Denmark’s favour. With Tilly’s death and the related chaos, the armies of the Catholic League were temporarily withdrawn. Danish forces liberated parts of Jutland, with Wallenstein forced to respond there and abandon his thoughts of Straslund. The result was a year of inconclusive manoeuvring in Jutland, with the two sides fighting several engagements but without a decisive victory. War exhaustion still told heavily on both sides, and by mid-1629 they sought peace terms.
The outcome, in April 1630, was an allohistorical Treaty of Lübeck. Denmark had its occupied possessions of Jutland and royal Holstein restored, and had their allies the Dukes of Mecklenburg likewise returned to their rule. This concession was significant because Wallenstein had confiscated estates in Mecklenburg; he was compensated by estates around Stettin in central Pomerania, which gave him the bonus of collecting tolls from river trade along the Oder. (There are benefits to being the chief negotiator.)
Denmark obtained a number of smaller concessions as part of the negotiations. The Duchy of Holstein was granted joint overlordship of Hamburg. Prince Ulric, Christian IV’s younger son, collected the titles of Prince-Bishop of Verden and Bishop of Schwerin, and was named as the heir of the Lutheran Prince-Bishop of Bremen, when the incumbent died.
In exchange for these concessions, Christian IV agreed to withdraw all Danish forces from elsewhere in the Holy Roman Empire, and not to provide any further support to Protestants in Germany [7].
Ferdinand II had only been generous with Denmark because the Imperial forces needed an end to external intervention to subdue the Protestant forces in southern Germany. To some degree he was successful, since during the
de facto ceasefire in mid-1629 the Imperial forces acted against Protestant rulers in the south, even while the negotiations continued. In May 1629, Ferdinand II issued an Edict of Restitution which was similar to its historical counterpart in seeking to restore Catholic control over former ecclesiastical lands that had been taken over by Protestants since the Peace of Augsburg. The reaction to this Edict was similarly polarising.
The Treaty of Lübeck itself, though, gave the Emperor only momentary respite. For while the negotiations in Lübeck were drawing to a conclusion, a secondary wave of the Dutch curse swept through Sweden and Danish-ruled Norway. Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, caught the pink cough in May 1630, less than a month after the treaty was signed. He survived that cough with no major ill-effects, but by now the symptoms of the disease were notorious; Gustavus Adolphus knew that he faced a three-year wait to see whether he would be consumed by a fatal delirium.
Gustavus was of no mind to wait around for death. He had already been considering intervention in the Holy Roman Empire, in the name of the Protestant faith, and saw the Danish failure as a betrayal of the Protestant cause. Now, with Germany in chaos, glory beckoned, and he sought to secure his legacy. Swedish forces landed near Stettin in June 1630, with Gustavus Adolphus at their head and with conquest on his mind. He occupied Pomerania from a military standpoint, but did not yet lay formal claim to it, while using it as a base to push further into Germany.
As with Denmark before them, the Swedish cause was generously funded by French subsidies; the death of Richelieu did not mean the death of Realpolitik. Gustavus sought to bring Denmark back into the war, too, and offered the Baltic island of Rügen as an incentive. Christian IV declined the offer, though, on the grounds that he was too busy rebuilding his country. (Or, less charitably, too busy seeing which way the winds were blowing and looking for a legitimate
causus belli.)
Despite their monarch’s grand intentions, the Swedes spent the remainder of 1630 consolidating alliances and control in northern Germany, most notably securing the alliance of the duchies of Mecklenburg. Diplomacy played a part here, too; France had also subsidised Bavaria to maintain neutrality, and wanted Sweden to honour this pact. The most notable battle of the year was fought near Brunow, in Mecklenburg, in September 1630, where the Swedish forces defeated Wallenstein’s personal army. Wallenstein remained politically suspect, but with the death of Tilly, the Emperor had no real alternative but to rely on Wallenstein to fight the Swedish.
In February 1631, in a deliberately timed announcement while winter still held, Brandenburg-Prussia confirmed its neutrality in “the matter of Sweden”. Brandenburg’s territories offered a useful route for Sweden to march further south, but neither the unwell Georg Wilhelm nor his Catholic chancellor trusted the Swedish monarch’s intentions.
Brandenburg’s neutrality blocked what was reportedly Gustavus Adolphus’s earliest intention: to march south and persuade or pressure the young John George II, the new Elector of Saxony, to take up the Protestant cause rather than follow his father’s previous support for the Empire.
Gustavus Adolphus chose, for the moment, to push into the Empire via a more westerly route, via Mecklenburg and Brunswick-Lüneburg, and thence toward Saxony. He knew that this would bring him into further conflict with Wallenstein and with the forces of the Catholic League, and hoped that another victory there would sway Brandenburg, Saxony and the lesser Protestant princes of northern Germany to his side.
In May 1631, the Swedish forces under Gustavus Adolphus again met Wallenstein’s forces near Brunlem, northeast of Hidesheim. Wallenstein’s forces had been bolstered by allies from the Catholic League, but this proved insufficient, and again the Swedes claimed the victory. The diplomatic consequences of this victory were immense; with Swedish military prowess confirmed, more of the Protestant princes in northern Germany began to pledge support, although Brandenburg and Electoral Saxony still reserved judgement. In turn, the victory alarmed Maximilian I of Bavaria, who had previously maintained neutrality due to French subsidies, but who now expressed support for the Catholic League.
These diplomatic manoeuvrings were soon overtaken by another devastating epidemic. In June 1631, the first word came of a strange, devastating form of influenza ravaging Ottoman lands. As the summer rolled on, this disease swept through Hungary and into the Holy Roman Empire, with the Habsburg lands of Austria and Bohemia the first victims.
This malady was recognisably a form of influenza, but with distinctive symptoms: a particularly intense fatigue immediately after onset, and the faces and lips of its victims turned blue. Europeans knew the disease as Turkish flu, and the Habsburgs in particular would have reason to fear it. For while Turkish flu was overall less deadly than the Dutch curse which preceded it, the new disease took a particularly heavy toll on young adults, including the men of military age. Armies were severely weakened on both sides as the Turkish flu swept through the Empire in 1631 and 1632.
The most prominent victims of Turkish flu were found among the Austrian Habsburgs themselves; the disease devastated their family. Contrary to what most people believed then and later, Ferdinand II, the Holy Roman Emperor, was not among those victims. On 6 September 1631, the Emperor died of pneumonia brought on by lung damage from the previous epidemic, the Dutch curse. His children, though, were of the most vulnerable age to the new epidemic, and the effects were devastating.
Ferdinand III had only succeeded his father for six weeks – and even then, not officially elected as Emperor – before he succumbed to the Turkish flu on 18 October 1631. His only brother, Archduke Leopold, did not even live that long, dying on 5 October. The only surviving children of Ferdinand II were two daughters, Cecilia Renata and Maria Anna, and Cecilia herself survived only a few more weeks, dying on 9 November.
The only surviving close male relative of the Austrian Habsburgs was a three-year old boy, Ferdinand Charles, Archduke of Further Austria, posthumous son of the elder Leopold who had died from the Dutch curse. This unfortunate child had never known his father, but on his young shoulders rested the legacy of the Austrian Habsburgs. As the poet Johannes Schmidt would later write in a much-quoted line: “
Only one heir, young and slender, but a host of pretenders.”
Chaos was the initial result on all sides, with all previous plans forgotten by the new circumstances of no clear Emperor, and what seemed liked a divine blow to dispossess the Austrian Habsburgs.
The fastest monarch to move was Maximilian I of Bavaria. His first wife had already been ill, and died of the Turkish flu in October. While Maximilian mourned his wife, this did not stop him seeking the most politically promising replacement: Maria Anna, Archduchess of Austria. Maximilian hastened to Vienna, where he paid his respects to both dead Ferdinands, but took the opportunity to more or less force Maria Anna into marriage [8]. Based on this marriage and existing Bavarian claims, Maximilian began to make overtures about the possibility of acquiring Inner Austria, Bohemia, and the entirety of the Palatinate.
In Bohemia, the restive Protestant population began fresh calls for a Protestant monarch. In Denmark, Christian IV started to consider whether to abolish his peace deal with the Empire. In Brandenburg and Saxony, the respective Electors pondered what was usually a simple decision: who should be elected Emperor.
And, in his exile in The Hague, Frederick V, Elector Palatine, saw what seemed divine opportunity. He had already been more fortunate than he had been hisotrically; the disruptions of the Dutch curse meant he never suffered the boating accident in 1629 that invalided him, and his heir Henry Frederick also survived. Acting on this apparent miracle, Frederick V not only reasserted his claims on his ancestral lands of the Palatinate, but proclaimed a much bolder bid: he sought to be named Holy Roman Emperor.
The election of a new Emperor required the votes of four out of the seven Electors: the three spiritual Electors, the Archbishops of Mainz, Trier, and Cologne, and the four lay Electors, the King of Bohemia, the Margrave of Brandenburg, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, and the Duke of Saxony.
This election, already contentious, was made even more controversial because of rival claimants to some of the electoral titles. Maximilian I asserted his vote as Elector Palatine, which had been awarded to him when Frederick V was outlawed, but this claim was not universally recognised. Frederick V himself still claimed this title, even in his exile.
Likewise, the Austrian Habsburgs claimed the title of King of Bohemia, and while the majority of the Empire had backed that claim, the people of Bohemia were themselves more supportive of Frederick V.
Naming an Emperor would prove problematic since not all of the claimants could even meet the Electors during their deliberations; Frederick V was, after all, still outlawed within the Empire. The election was managed, at first, by the various Electors publicly stating their preferences or, in some cases, by rather more publicly
not stating any preference.
The three spiritual Electors were undecided whether to back Ferdinand Charles or another Catholic prince. The young Ferdinand Charles did not even speak on his own behalf, but his Habsburg relatives had named his Spanish cousin, Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand, as his regent. Insofar as the spiritual Electors took a position, the Archishops of Trier and Mainz broadly favoured the Habsburg claim; it was entirely coincidental, of course, that they were neighbours to the Spanish Habsburgs. The Archbishop of Cologne did not express any position publicly, but privately preferred to support whoever was named by his brother, Maximilian I of Bavaria.
Frederick V continued to assert that he had claims both as King of Bohemia and Elector Palatine, even though the Catholics did not recognise these claims. Of course, he faced another problem: one man could not claim two votes as an Elector. Frederick V devised a novel solution, abdicating as Count Palatine in favour of his son Henry Frederick. As well as the immediate benefit of a claim for two electoral votes, he knew that this meant that even if he lost his claim to Bohemia, his son would have a greater chance of retaining the Palatinate.
Ferdinand Charles – or, more precisely, Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand – claimed the electoral vote of Bohemia, but the Protestants did not recognise this claim. Indeed, John George II, the new Elector of Saxony, was far less cautious than his father, and more inclined to listen to his Protestant relations. He publicly proclaimed his support for Frederick V as Holy Roman Emperor.
Georg Wilhelm of Brandenburg vacillated, as he had done throughout much of his reign. He mistrusted the Swedes and Saxons both, but was caught between them, so voting for any Catholic candidate could have proved problematic. In the end, he reluctantly announced support for Frederick V, hoping that a Calvinist Emperor would in turn have influence to help him with the Seudo-Saxon vice now gripping his country.
In the midst of all the electoral manoeuvring, Maximilian I found himself in an odd position. He had refused to become a candidate for the Imperial throne over a decade before, but now ambition tempted once more. He had at least two Electoral votes, if he chose to make a bid. However, the practice was that electoral votes could not be recast once made, and so he held off his own claims to the Imperial crown while he evaluated the situation.
Eventually, Maximilian decided that he could not secure the Imperial diadem, and opted for a compromise which suited his interests almost as well. At the time, Ferdinand Charles had already been named as heir to Further Austria and Tyrol, but had never been named as ruler of Inner Austria, since that title was held by Ferdinand III until his death.
Through his marriage to Maria Anna, Maximilian asserted his right to inherit Inner Austria [9], and for continued imperial recognition of his right to the Upper Palatinate, including the Electoral vote. In exchange, he yielded his family claim to Bohemia. That left Ferdinand Charles with Further Austria, Bohemia, Silesia, parts of Hungary and Croatia, and the Lower Palatinate. With that deal concluded, Maximilian I exercised his vote as Elector Palatine, and named Ferdinand Charles as Holy Roman Emperor, with Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand (formerly of Spain, now of Austria) as regent [10].
In March 1632, after Maximilian’s proclamation, the spiritual Electors fell into line behind him, announcing their support for Ferdinand Charles as the Holy Roman Emperor.
That now meant there were five votes for Ferdinand Charles: three Archbishop-Electors, Maximilian as Elector Palatine, and Ferdinand Charles himself as King of Bohemia. However, Frederick V also claimed four votes: the Duke of Saxony, the Margrave of Brandenburg, Frederick V himself as King of Bohemia, and his son Henry Frederick as Elector Palatine.
Two men thus claimed the title of Holy Roman Emperor. With good reason, the third stage of the war would be known to allohistory as the War of the Habsburg Succession.
Under Gustavus Adolphus’s aegis, most of the Protestant states in Germany formed the Protestant Union, a successor of sorts to the earlier Protestant Union which had been dissolved in 1621 at the order of Ferdinand II. The Union formally backed Frederick V as the Holy Roman Emperor. The notable exceptions were the Danish-aligned areas of north-western Germany, which remained neutral, and Brandenburg, which granted Sweden transit rights into Habsburg lands, but did not join the war.
Still in exile in the Netherlands, Frederick V did not have an army of his own, but soon found support. Under the guidance of chief minister De Chaulnes, France continued to provide aid to anyone who fought against the Habsburgs. The subsidies which had previously been provided to Bavaria were now redirected to Frederick V, and with those funds he raised a fresh army of his own.
The Catholic forces in the War of the Habsburg Succession fought in the name of the Holy Roman Emperor, but in practice there were two powers that mattered: the Spanish, fighting on behalf of their Austrian cousins and seeking to bring them more into their orbit; and the Catholic League, dominated by Bavaria, which fought against the Protestants with religious fervour, but which also quietly opposed having too strong an Emperor.
The military campaigning in 1632-3 had two main theatres. In eastern Germany, the Swedes and Saxons sought to occupy the Habsburgs possessions of Bohemia and Silesia. The conquest of Bohemia was in the name of Frederick V, although Saxony expected to gain some concessions there, while Sweden had designs on Silesia. Gustavus Adolphus also had plans for his legacy: while Frederick V might be named King of Bohemia, so far his heir had been designated as ruler of the Palatinate only. Gustavus wanted to have his daughter Kristina named as heir to Bohemia after Frederick V’s death. In the west, Frederick V fought against the Spanish and sought to reconquer the Palatinate.
The Bohemian campaign saw what became the most notorious action of an already destructive war. The Protestant population of Bohemia were already resentful of Habsburg rule, and viewed the death of Ferdinand II and the subsequent chaos as an invitation to revolt. Unfortunately, their actions were premature. Wallenstein fought against the Protestants in Silesia, and while he could not force a decisive victory, he was capable enough to keep the Swedes and Saxons busy there while the Bohemian revolt was quelled.
The task of subduing Bohemia fell to the Catholic League, which essentially meant Bavaria. Since the death of Tilly, Count Johann von Aldringen had taken command of the League’s armies. He hastened to Bohemia, and sought to subdue the Bohemians with fire and sword. Aldringen routed the Bohemian Protestant militias, and encircled Prague in a siege which lasted eight months, from April to November 1632.
The city finally fell after parts of the walls were mined, and the League’s forces broke into the city. The attacking troops went berserk, massacring most of the inhabitants. Prague caught fire during the final assault, although reports differed as to whether it had been fired by the defenders to deny it to the enemy, or if the fires had been set by the attacking troops. In any event, before Aldringen regained control of his troops, most of the city had been ruined and its inhabitants killed.
No-one knew exactly how many people were killed in the sack of Prague. The city had around sixty thousand inhabitants before the war started, and many of them had died or fled the city during the first Bohemian revolt, but nonetheless, tens of thousands died from fire or the sword. After it was over, Prague had fewer than four thousand inhabitants left alive.
By all reports, Aldringen did not plan or authorise the massacre. Nevertheless, his name became associated with it, and for Protestants in Germany from that time on, the Sack of Prague, on 20 November 1633, became a day which would live in ignominy. From that time on, whenever Catholic forces tried to surrender or sought quarter, the common Protestant response was to offer “Prague justice” and execute them [11].
Silesia fell more or less entirely to the Swedes and Saxons by November 1633, too late to spare the people of Prague. The Suedo-Saxon forces could not move into Bohemia until the following spring. When they did, the war-ravaged population were sympathetic to the Protestants, but could offer little tangible support.
Wallenstein had gradually reformed his armies after the plagues and defeats, and had started to refine his tactics to counter the Swedish advantages. In addition, he was reinforced by Aldringen. Between them, these two generals held their own in two major battles against the Protestants; neither side could inflict a major defeat on the other.
In the circumstances, Wallenstein took it upon himself to try to mediate a peace between Sweden and the Empire. The content of these negotiations has been lost to history, but the rumour was that he disliked the Edict of Restitution, and that he sought to present the new Emperor with a peace treaty as a
fait accompli.
Regardless of the reason, with the rumours that Wallenstein was negotiating with the enemy, he was deemed to be a traitor. The Cardinal Regent gave orders for his assassination, but Wallenstein was warned, and in early May responded by changing sides to the Protestant cause, taking his personal army with him.
The defection of Wallenstein and his forces should have been seen as a great boost to the Swedish cause. But it coincided with a rather more monumental event. Throughout the first week of May, Gustavus Adolphus had been suffering from headaches and a creeping fever. On 10 May, the same day that Wallenstein announced his defection, Gustavus suffered a seizure.
This seizure was not severe in itself, but confirmed a hideous truth. Gustavus Adolphus had held off the delirium for three years, an astonishing length of time, but this seizure meant that he had not been spared from the second stage of the Dutch curse after all. From here, death was inevitable, and sanity itself would slowly slip away.
The Swedish monarch took advantage of what moments of sanity remained. He issued his final orders, and dictated his last testament, which would be nicknamed “
The Legacy of the Lion”. In that testament he laid out his vision for Sweden, including how he foresaw a future where “on every shore of the Baltic flies the yellow cross on blue”, and that the recently-founded outpost of Gustavsburg [Bangor, Maine] would become the capital of “a New Sweden over the waves”. One of his final orders was that his daughter Kristina be named as heir-presumptive to the throne of Bohemia, and that she become engaged to her cousin Karl Gustav [12].
Gustavus Adolphus suffered repeated seizures for two more weeks, and on 27 May slipped into a coma from which he would never awake. He died on 3 June 1633. After his death the Swedish campaign in Bohemia and Bavaria lost focus. Wallenstein, while now fighting for the Protestants, also counselled that informal inquiries be made to see what peace terms the Catholics would consider.
In the western theatre during 1632-1633, the Spanish-led Catholics had more success. Frederick V had raised a new army, but could not establish a strong position within the Empire. He found support from Calvinist rulers such as William V, Landgrave of Hesse-Kessel, but he could not make much headway against the Spanish. Frederick V was only spared major defeat because the Spanish were also busy in their separate war with the Netherlands; the Dutch had invaded the Spanish Netherlands and besieged Antwerp.
The course of the war took another turn in 1634, thanks to another consequence of the plagues. The Duchy of Lorraine had a long history, but just before the plagues swept through, there were only three surviving male members of the House of Lorraine: the former Duke Francis II (who had abdicated in 1624 and would die in 1632), and his two sons, Nicolas and Charles. Nicolas had taken holy orders and was now a cardinal, while Charles had been ruling the duchy as Charles IV since 1624, although he had yet to father a male heir.
Both brothers caught the Dutch curse, but survived; Charles IV escaped the pink cough with no significant symptoms, while Nicolas Francis was reportedly “fatigued” ever since (later physicians would interpret this as mild scarring of the lungs). Four years later, when the Turkish flu swept through Lorraine on its way into France, Charles IV was among his victims, dying suddenly on 9 February 1632. Nicolas Francis caught the disease too, and became even more “fatigued”, but he was now the only heir to the duchy apart from an elderly and ill Francis II.
Much diplomacy ensued, as France in particular had a keen interest in who would rule Lorraine, and Spain did not want a hostile ruler to threaten their Spanish Road. Of course, there was only one possible heir. Nicolas, a man of devout faith, did not want to resign as cardinal, but did not see that he had any choice. He relinquished his religious offices, married his cousin Claude Françoise [as he did historically in 1634] and became Duke Nicholas II of Lorraine.
Sadly, the legacy of two respiratory illness had taken their toll on Nicholas’s health, and left him vulnerable to further diseases. In early 1634, he caught an unexpected chill and died of pneumonia on 30 January. The Duchy of Lorraine was now heirless.
Three claims emerged on the vacant Duchy of Lorraine. Gaston, Duke of Orléans, had married Marguerite of Lorraine (Charles and Nicolas’s sister) in 1631 [13], and through this marriage, he asserted a claim to Lorraine.
Two more distant claimants appeared, although their claims were mired in another unresolved succession dispute within the Empire. Francis II’s sister Antoinette had married John William, Duke of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, although that marriage had produced no children. After John William’s death, the succession of the Duchy was contested through John William’s surviving sisters. Those claims had passed to the Catholic Wolfgang William, Count Palatine of Neuburg, and the Calvinist Georg Wilhelm I, Elector of Brandenburg-Prussia. Both of them asserted their claims on the entirety of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, and through the same descent, they both laid claim to Lorraine.
The Orleanist claim was notionally the strongest, but few within the Empire were willing to let the claim to a potential heir to the French throne. Within France, both King Louis III and De Chaulnes were broadly satisfied with the course of the war (ie the Habsburgs getting curtailed). They were not prepared to invade directly in support of Orleans’ claim, since it risked giving Spain a reason to become even more involved in the war.
Cardinal-Regent Ferdinand was eventually called to arbitrate the disputed succession. After some consideration, he deemed that Georg Wilhelm’s claim was the strongest, and awarded the House of Hohenzollern the Duchy of Lorraine.
Near-simultaneously, and entirely coincidentally, Georg Wilhelm declared that he had considered his position on the matter of the imperial election, and had decided to vote for Ferdinand Charles. That led Ferdinand Charles to proclaim that he was now uncontested Holy Roman Emperor, since he had enough votes to assume the imperial dignity, regardless of how the claims to Bohemia and the Palatinate were viewed.
Protests followed from Sweden, Saxony and even from Christian IV of Denmark, who argued that electoral votes could not be changed once cast. The three spiritual Catholic Electors, though, said (with remarkably straight faces) that the Elector of Brandenburg was simply clarifying what would otherwise be an impossible election. From this point on, Ferdinand Charles was broadly if grudgingly recognised as Emperor, and Frederick V’s position was near-fatally weakened.
All the same, retaliation followed. Christian IV had already been considering re-entering the war. Partly out of frustration at the failure of Frederick V to become Emperor, partly because Sweden re-offered the island of Rügen as an incentive, partly wanting to have a voice in any broader peace negotiations, and mostly to secure the claims which had been granted to Prince Ulric, Christian IV declared war on the Emperor once more. His public justification was that the peace he had concluded had been one made personally with Wallenstein, but now that he had changed sides, the peace was void.
Sweden and Saxony, in turn, declared war on Georg Wilhelm. Their plans for an invasion of Bavaria were abandoned as they adopted defensive positions in Bohemia and turned on the House of Hohenzollern. Brandenburg was invaded and overrun in 1634, although Prussia itself was left alone to avoid any risk of Polish intervention.
With Wallenstein’s defection and Denmark’s re-entry into the war, the burden of defending Catholicism and the Emperor fell largely to Spain. The Spanish found themselves fighting on three fronts: against the Dutch in the Spanish Netherlands and nearby regions, against the combined forces of Denmark and Frederick V who pushed into south-western Germany and threatened Cologne and Munster, and in the east where they fought with the Catholic League against the Swedes and Saxons in Bohemia, and at times in Austria and Bavaria.
The weight of numbers told against the Spanish, though some of their generals were still capable of remarkable victories. Most notably, Gómez Suárez de Figueroa, Duke of Feria, took command of the Imperial forces in Bohemia and Bavaria. He routed the Swedish forces in the Battle of Deggendorf in August 1635; the first decisive defeat of the seemingly-invincible Swedes. The action in that theatre returned to Bohemia, as the already-ravaged province suffered even more predation from the war [14].
Despite a few victories, Spain paid an immense cost to support the war. The population at home had already been severely reduced by the plagues, particularly the disproportionate loss of young adults from the Turkish flu. Military recruitment drew more young men into the army to fill those gaps, leading to less productive farms and towns. That, together with the spiralling war costs, led to repeated increases in taxation, to the point where many of the people found themselves unable to pay.
The result, in March and April 1636, was near-simultaneous revolts in Catalonia and Portugal. The former was an unplanned uprising which led to the formation of an irregular militia to fight against Spanish rule – or at least against Spanish taxation. The latter was a meticulously-planned coup organised by discontented Portuguese nobility who believed that the increases in taxation were planned to bankrupt them and hand their lands over to Spanish aristocrats. The Portuguese nobles, with popular support, named John, Duke of Braganza, as the new monarch.
Faced with these internal troubles and an ever more difficult military situation, Philip IV of Spain sought peace negotiations. For their part, most of the Protestant nations in Germany were exhausted by nearly two decades of war. Denmark had re-entered the war with the aim mainly of securing its earlier gains, plus some minor further concessions, and was willing to negotiate any peace which secured those goals. Without the driving leadership of Gustavus Adolphus, and facing some military reversals, Sweden was also prepared to discuss peace terms. The only parties who preferred to continue the war were the Emperor Ferdinand Charles, who was too young to be taken seriously, and the anti-Emperor Frederick V, who had no capacity to keep fighting if his allies deserted him.
Peace negotiations opened in Nuremberg in September 1636. Separate negotiations between the Dutch and the Spanish began a month later in Hamburg. These negotiations dragged on for nearly two years, and the fighting continued in the interim, as both sides sought to use military gains to their diplomatic advantage. Denmark, in particular, pushed south into Munster and Cologne during 1638, although it found little gain from doing so, since both the Netherlands and the other Protestant German powers were rather unwelcoming of any further Danish gains within Germany.
Peace finally came in August 1638, in two separate treaties. The Peace of Nuremberg was signed between the Holy Roman Emperor, Spain, Bavaria and allies, and Sweden, Denmark, and allies, and ended what would become known as the Twenty Years’ War. The separate Peace of Hamburg between the Dutch and Spanish saw final recognition of the Netherlands as an independent nation outside of the Holy Roman Empire, and ended what would be known as the Seventy Years War.
*
Between them, the two peace treaties signed in 1638 remade the Holy Roman Empire. The accord at Hamburg recognised formally what had been truth for some time; that the Netherlands were not and would never again want to be part of the Empire. The pact at Nuremberg contained a great many provisions both of territorial changes and of other guarantees, but the most important part was not written into the treaty: the greater princes of the Empire had become rulers of
de facto independent states.
The Peace of Hamburg settled the differences between Spain and the Netherlands, both within Europe and across their sprawling colonial empires. In Europe, the Dutch gained what they most craved: formal recognition of their independence from Spain. The Peace also recognised their various territorial acquisitions during the later stages of the war, ie the seizing of Antwerp and its environs, and the separate conquests of Upper Guelders and eastern Limburg. Likewise, the Dutch ceded all claims to the remainder of the Spanish Netherlands [15].
Outside of Europe, the Peace recognised the current colonial borders between Spain and the Netherlands, although it remained distinctly silent about the status of Portugal. Most notably, Spain recognised the Dutch acquisitions in northern Brazil, and “all existing Dutch territory in the East Indies”, a term which in the understanding of the times included the existing Dutch claims in Aururia (mostly the Atjuntja).
The Peace of Nuremberg followed the same broad principles as the historical Peace of Westphalia in terms of recognising the established religion of particular states, tolerance of Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists in each others’ territories (the Anabaptists and other radical faiths were still excluded), and acceptance of the sovereignty of each member state over its lands and people. Likewise, it recognised the independence of Switzerland and the Netherlands from the Empire.
Much else changed, though.
Perhaps the most dramatic transformation was that involving the Hohenzollerns [ie the former royal family of Brandenburg-Prussia]. That family’s former territories of Brandenburg-Prussia were lost entirely, being divided up between other powers. Instead, the Hohenzollerns were recognised in their control of Lorraine. With the Emperor backing their claims, the Hohenzollerns also gained control of the entirety of Cleve-Mark and Jülich-Berg [16].
In one of the many odd bits of diplomacy which characterised the Peace of Nuremberg, the Hohenzollerns were also made the Prince-Bishops of Würzburg. This bishopric bordered Bavarian lands, and had been occupied by the Protestant powers late in the war. During the peace negotiations, the Hohenzollerns repeatedly sought to regain their lands in Brandenburg, but were unable to do so. They were awarded Würzburg as a compromise. This was given a veneer of legitimacy because the House of Hohenzollern, several centuries earlier, had started as Burgraves of neighbouring Nuremberg. As a practical matter, awarding Würzburg to the Hohenzollerns meant that with their relatives ruling neighbouring territories in Bayreuth and Ansbach, there was now a united front to block potential Bavarian expansion in this area.
As a result of the Twenty Years’ War, the Hohenzollerns were thus transformed from a growing power in north-eastern Germany to a regional power in south-western Germany. The Electoral dignity continued with their house [17], and they were henceforth known as Electors of Lorraine rather than Electors of Brandenburg. As soon as the treaty was signed, the invalided Georg Wilhelm abdicated his throne, leaving his eighteen-year-old son Friedrich Wilhelm [who would historically have been called the Great Elector] as the new Elector of Lorraine, with his Catholic Chancellor Schwarzenberg as
de facto regent for the first few years [18].
In all of their territories, the Calvinist faith became the established religion. While Friedrich Wilhelm would in fact turn out to practice religious toleration, in the first couple of years, many Catholics in Lorraine and Jülich-Berg fled Hohenzollern territories for some of their Catholic neighbours.
Bavaria emerged from the Peace of Nuremberg as one of the major powers within the Holy Roman Empire. In the treaty, Bavaria gained formal recognition of the territories it had previously acquired in Inner Austria and the Upper Palatinate. It also gained confirmation of the Electoral dignity which had previously belonged to the Palatinate, although as happened historically, Maximilian would usually be called the Elector of Bavaria rather than Elector Palatine.
The Austrian Habsburgs, while still confirmed as Holy Roman Emperors, found themselves holding more scattered possessions. They maintained their rule of Austria proper, Further Austria, Tyrol, and their Hungarian and Croatian possessions outside the Empire. The Habsburgs also took control of the Lower Palatinate. Bavaria was confirmed as ruler of Inner Austria, and Silesia was ceded to Sweden.
The Habsburgs also held onto most of Bohemia, with a couple of exceptions, through another political compromise. The arrangement reached (at Swedish and Saxon insistence) was that Frederick V would be King of Bohemia until the Peace of Nuremberg was ratified by the Emperor, but that after that he would cede control to the Habsburgs. As part of that arrangement, Frederick V recognised the religion of Bohemia as Lutheran. In keeping with the broader principles of the Nuremberg treaty, the established religions of Imperial states were those which were recognised by monarchs at the time of ratification. Any later conquests or acquisitions by princes of a different faith, or conversion of particular princes, did not change the established religion of that territory. So, under this arrangement, Bohemia had a Catholic monarch ruling a Protestant territory, and who could be required to persecute Catholics in that territory who broke the restrictions on public worship [19].
A few territories in Bohemia were separated entirely from Habsburg rule. Two members of the House of Lichtenstein were kept as rulers of the Duchy of Teschen (under Gundakar) and the Duchy of Troppau & Jägerndorf (under Karl II Eusebius); two small, officially Catholic islands in a Protestant sea. Wallenstein, that most morally supple and politically flexible general, was confirmed in his control of the core of his confiscated Bohemian estates, as the independent Duchy of Friedland.
Denmark did not make many direct territorial gains from the Peace of Nuremberg itself beyond what had previously been recognised at the Treaty of Lübeck. However, these gains became more important because when the Treaty of Lübeck was signed in 1630, Prince Ulric (a younger son of the King of Denmark), was named Prince-Bishop of Verden, Bishop of Schwerin, and the designated heir of the Lutheran Prince-Archbishop of Bremen. Since that time, John Frederick, Prince-Archbishop of Bremen died in September 1634, and Denmark’s Chosen Prince [ie designated heir] Frederick died in February 1637, leaving Ulric as ruler of Verden, Schwerin and Bremen, and heir to the Danish crown. This made his inheritance more contentious, to say the least, but Denmark successfully had Ulric’s claims recognised at Nuremberg.
As part of the peace treaty, Denmark also successfully argued for a “clarification” of the Treaty of Lübeck that the claim on Bremen included the city of Bremen, not just the surrounding Archbishopric. It also obtained recognition of the island of Rügen as its territory [20]. Christian IV established Rügen as a personal possession of the Danish crown, because of his ancestral claim to be King of Vends. As a practical matter, that meant that Rügen was withdrawn from the Empire and placed under personal control of the Danish monarch; neither the Holy Roman Empire (via the
Reichstag), the Emperor, or the
Rigsraadet (the Danish Council of the Realm) had any say on the governance of Rügen.
Of all the powers, Sweden gained the most from the Twenty Years’ War and the Peace of Nuremberg. Sweden took control of all of Pomerania, except for Rügen and for the minor realm of the Bishopric of Cammin, held by Ernst Bogislaw von Croÿ, the grandson of the last independent Duke of Pomerania. With the partition of Brandenburg, Sweden gained eastern Mittelmark and Neumark (with the rest going to Saxony). Most valuable of all, in territorial terms, was Silesia, which Sweden detached from the Bohemian crown and claimed as its own territory. In exchange, Sweden recognised Habsburg rule of Bohemia proper (after Frederick V handed it over to them), and abandoned Christina’s claim as Queen of Bohemia. In turn, Sweden was recognised as the defender of the Protestant faith in Germany. As part of the conquest of these new territories, Sweden more or less broke all of the local noble estates in these acquisition; the Swedish monarchs had absolute power in their new territories [21].
The Electorate of Saxony was another power which gained considerably from the war. As well as western Brandenburg (Altmark and western Mittelmark), Saxony gained Lusatia, Magdeburg, and Mansfeld. These new acquisitions gave Saxony some regions with rich soils and considerable potential agricultural wealth. As with Sweden, Saxony broke the power of the local estates in its new acquisitions, which were largely ruled directly by the monarchy.
As a result of the war, Saxony also gained control of most of the Elbe between Denmark-Holstein and Bohemia. The exception was the Duchy of Saxe-Lauenburg, backed by the restored Dukes of Mecklenburg, who did not want to be the only state standing between Denmark and Sweden.
With Brandenburg proper swallowed by Sweden and Saxony, the Hohenzollern territories of Prussia were given to Courland, since any Swedish claims would have risked Polish intervention.
As for Frederick V himself, former Elector Palatine, one-time contender for the Imperial Crown, while he lived longer allohistorically, he did not end up much happier. The Imperial Ban on him remained even when almost everyone else was pardoned, his title as Count of the (Lower) Palatinate was still lost, and he lived out a longer but still mostly unhappy exile in the Netherlands.
His eldest son, Frederick Henry, was more fortunate. The Protestant princes were rather concerned about the prospect of having a son losing his titles for the actions of his father. No number of remonstrations could persuade the Habsburgs to grant the Lower Palatinate to Frederick Henry, for the Habsburgs themselves were feeling like they had lost too much territory. As a compromise, a new Duchy of Münster was created and granted to Frederick Henry. Unlike what happened historically, though, this did not lead to Frederick Henry being granted a new Electoral dignity. Frederick V was still alive and held in too much contempt to be given such a new honour; the number of Electors remained, for the moment, only seven.
The Habsburg acquisition of the Lower Palatinate also meant that this territory was recognised as Catholic rather than Calvinist. This would lead, in time, to large-scale emigration of Calvinists, particularly to now-Calvinist Lorraine, and also to Münster.
All in all, the Peace of Nuremberg reshaped the map of the Holy Roman Empire, nearly broke the power of the Austrian Habsburgs, and created some new or increased powers whose appetite for expansion had only been whetted by this war, no matter what its length.
* * *
“I did not expect to find the kingdom of Bohemia so lean, wasted and spoiled, for between Prague and Vienna everything has been razed to the ground and hardly a living soul can be seen on the land.”
- Swedish Field Marshal Johan Banér to Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna, 1635
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"The road to absolutism began with the Twenty Years' War."
- Lars Løvschøld, "The Development of Early Modern Europe"
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[1] Defenestration is one of those words which sounds even worse than it is.
[2] ie according to a certain online encyclopaedia.
[3] This consideration involving the Emperor recognising Saxon control of the region of Lusatia.
[4] The Palatinate held strategic significance out of all proportion to its size, because it was the only non-friendly territory on the land route which the Spanish used to attack the Dutch Republic after 1621 (the Spanish Road).
[5] Although as with just about any concept in politics or history, there’s innumerable arguments on this topic, such as whether it was Westphalia which established the principle of sovereignty, or even if there is such a thing as Westphalian sovereignty.
[6] John George’s actual cause of death was kidney failure caused by side-effects of the pink cough, although the medical science at the time had no way of determining that.
[7] The terms of the allohistorical Treaty of Lübeck are more generous to Denmark than their historical counterpart (where Denmark essentially got its occupied lands back in exchange for withdrawing from the HRE). Allohistorically, the Imperial forces are more hard-pressed due to Tilly’s death and reliance on the less than trustworthy Wallenstein as their main general. Ferdinand II was rather more concerned with the cessation of Danish support for other Protestant rulers, so that he could focus his efforts on quelling them. The additional concessions which Denmark obtained were at the expense of other Protestant rulers, so Ferdinand II decided he could tolerate that, although it did leave Denmark with a stronger position in northern Germany.
[8] Or, at the very least, Maria Anna may have seen Maximilian I as the least unpalatable of the alternatives.
[9] ie Styria, Carinthia, Carniola and the Windic March, Gorizia, the city of Trieste and assorted smaller possessions.
[10] Bavaria had not actually been a particularly powerful nation with the Empire before this time, but several factors granted Maximilan I his decisive influence. Firstly, his quick action to marry Maria Anna gave him a useful claim on large chunks of the Habsburg heritage, in an era where existing holdings were often divided. Secondly, his French alliance gave him a useful chunk of cash, which he used both to raise troops and for some notable bribes. Thirdly, while not everyone recognised the Bavarian claims to an electorate, the Habsburgs already had, which made it more important for them to keep Bavaria onside.
[11] A similar term arose after the historical sack of Magdeburg on 20 May 1631. Allohistorically, Magdeburg was spared a similar sack, since the Protestants and Catholics largely fought in other theatres.
[12] Karl Gustav would historically become King Karl X Gustav of Sweden in 1654, after Kristina’s abdication.
[13] Historically, Gaston and Marguerite met in Lorraine when Gaston fled there after taking refuge from Cardinal Richelieu’s wrath, and were married a year later than happened allohistorically (ie in 1632). In allohistory, Gaston became friendly with De Chaulnes, the post-Richelieu chief minister, met Marguerite earlier while visiting Lorraine, and had no problem gaining royal recognition for his marriage.
[14] The consequences of the war and the plagues lead to more extensive depopulation of Bohemia, since more of the fighting is conducted there. After the war, this will lead to more German emigration into the emptier land; in the long run, more of the population will be Germanophone.
[15] With the seizure of Antwerp the Dutch could, in fact, have acquired rather more of the Spanish Netherlands; they had captured the main port which allowed the Spanish access to that region. The Dutch did not push further for a combination of foreign policy and domestic political reasons. The Dutch preferred to have a weakened Spain there as a buffer against gaining a land border with the French. The Dutch were also opposed to too much expansion because of domestic concerns; it would require greater military expenditure, and so risked increasing the power of the Stadtholder.
[16] The Jülich-Berg and Cleve-Mark split was related to the previously mentioned dispute over the Lorraine succession. As had happened historically, the former United Duchies of Jülich-Cleves-Berg were disputed between the Catholic Count Palatine of Neuburg and the Hohenzollerns. This was eventually resolved historically by dividing it into the Catholic territories of Jülich-Berg (to Neuburg) and the Protestant territories of Cleve-Mark (to the Hohenzollerns). Allohistorically, with the Emperor supporting the Hohenzollerns and opposing anyone related to the anti-Emperor Frederick V of the Palatinate, the entirety of this region was given to the Hohenzollerns. The various Protestant powers, of course, hardly cared that territory was being taken from a minor Catholic prince to be handed to a Calvinist one.
[17] The Hohenzollerns kept their Electoral vote because a Protestant Elector was needed for religious balance within the Empire. No-one (apart from the Swedes themselves) wanted to have a Swedish claimant as Elector, so any claims which the Swedes might have made from annexing parts of Brandenburg were disregarded. Saxony, likewise, already had an Electoral vote and could thus not acquire any claims from taking the rest of Brandenburg. Raising another Protestant state to an Electorship was not in keeping with tradition, and in any case the main Protestant contender would have been Holstein (ie the King of Denmark as Duke of Holstein), which was no better than Sweden. So the Hohenzollerns kept the title and the vote, although as happened historically with Bavaria, they were soon usually called the Electors of Lorraine.
[18] From a historical point of view, the Hohenzollerns have done poorly here. From Lorraine, they are not in the same position to unify Germany as they would have done historically. From an immediate point of view, though, they have acquired some respectably wealthy territories and are if anything better off financially than they were before the war (although without gains such as Pomerania which they would have had historically).
[19] While this may sound odd to modern readers, a similar arrangement happened historically in Saxony, which was recognised as Protestant territory, but its monarchs converted to Catholicism. This led to Catholic monarchs persecuting Catholics in Saxony.
[20] Gaining Rügen and the city of Bremen was minor in territorial terms, but actually represented a huge financial windfall for the Danish monarchy, since it allowed them to tax North German trade. Combined with their other taxation opportunities (it’s not piracy if a government does it) from the Treaty of Lübeck, such as Hamburg, the Danish crown will find itself swimming in money over the next few decades.
[21] The new Swedish acquisitions have roughly doubled the country’s population. In the short term this strengthens them against their main rival, Poland. In the longer term, this means that Sweden has entered the big league of powers, and conversely it is also seen as much more threatening by its neighbours.
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Thoughts?
