AHC: with a PoD after Peace of Augsburg, prevent 30 years war

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
the challenge is, after the establishment of Protestantism, and after the Council of Trent, have the 30 years war in the HRE be avoided. The 1600s HRE can have some wars, those can hardly be avoided, but let’s keep the costs, impact and intensity of those wars down to the level of 1700s “cabinet wars”.
 
Perhaps more than butterflying away Frederick is needed. In retrospect, TTYW- like WWI- seems inevitable(too many forces were on a collision course). Yet- to para-
phrase Eisenhower- Frederick’s acceptance of the crown proceeded to topple one dom-
ino after another. No Frederick as King of
Bohemia, it’s someone else’s regime that
Ferdinand’s troops would have destroyed
@ White Mountain in 1621. Someone other
than Frederick probably would then have come crawling to Ferdinand, asking for par-
don, or accepted plans for compromise that
were floated about. Frederick, being Fred-
erick, refused- a distinguished historian of
the conflict says that if Frederick had instead
acquiesced “there would have been no Thirty
Years War”*- called in Denmark, then other
foreign powers came in on both sides, etc.,
etc.

There most likely would have been some sort
of war in Germany in the early-to-mid 17th
Century, but without Frederick taking the crown it would have been a different conflict,
with different players. It might not have been as long- & destructive- as TTYW turned
out to be.

*- C.V. Wedgwood, THE THIRTY YEARS WAR,
p. 144 of the 1961, Anchor Paperbacks edition. Although originally published in 1938, I think this book still remains the best
single-volume history of the war in print.
 
I'm currently re-reading Peter Wilson's The Thirty Years War as I wanted to find a POD that could give a different outcome; with the intention of writing up a timeline. There are lots of possible PODs! So far every POD seems to result in scenarios that gradually drift towards a war in the early 1600's.

Best I can see is to either get equal numbers of Catholic and Protestant votes in the Reichstag as part of the Religious Peace of Ausburg (1555) or to stop the Electors Palatine becoming such extreme Calvinists, it's not clear to me why Louis VI was a Lutheran but Frederick IV was a Calvinist.

 
Is that enough?

Nope. Ferdinand is still around and kicking and is not going to accept the Bohemian activities. Having Elector of Saxony as King of Bohemia hardly would make things better in the terms of avoiding the war: unlike Frederick he had money to pay an army and him not being an idiot would be beneficial for the Bohemian "cause" and general spreading the war.


What else could keep imperial ambitions in check?

IMO, it was not as much about the imperial ambitions as about the Hapsburg ambitions closely intervened with the Catholicism in Germany. If anything, the inperial ambitions (as in increasing imperial power within the HRE at the expense of the individual states) had been pretty much abandoned after sacking Wallenstein to secure the electoral votes which could be more or less guaranteed by applying a brute force.

So how about alt-Ferdinand with more brains than religious zeal? Flexible religious and state policy would eliminate the problem with Bohemia and the whole circus that followed. Expansion of the existing arrangements to the Calvinist rulers would kill most of other problems.
 
the challenge is, after the establishment of Protestantism, and after the Council of Trent, have the 30 years war in the HRE be avoided. The 1600s HRE can have some wars, those can hardly be avoided, but let’s keep the costs, impact and intensity of those wars down to the level of 1700s “cabinet wars”.

Stop the Swedes getting involved, and possibly the Danes as well. The resultant war would end in 1625 (if you stop the Danes getting involved) or 1629 (if the Danes get involved by the Swedes don't). It would be a bit larger than a cabinet war, but nowhere near as devastating as OTL's Thirty Years' War.
 
Stop the Swedes getting involved, and possibly the Danes as well. The resultant war would end in 1625 (if you stop the Danes getting involved) or 1629 (if the Danes get involved by the Swedes don't). It would be a bit larger than a cabinet war, but nowhere near as devastating as OTL's Thirty Years' War.

The Danes as a land power were a relatively minor problem and the war with them was even giving certain advantages from the imperial perspective: territory of Meklenburg Duchies went under Wallenstein's administration (which was seemingly the 1st time when they were administered properly ;)) and Pomerania capitulated. The problem was that due to the absence of a naval power Wallenstein failed to take Stralsund (to which Swedes and Danes sent reinforcement). Part of the reason was an absence of the imperial navy which Wallenstein was trying to build and which attempt, IIRC, had been resisted both by Hansa and Danzig. So if we assume that they are cooperating and providing their naval forces (IIRC, Danzig alone was capable of defeating the Swedish navy more than once), situation is different: Stralsund is agreeing to take the imperial garrison, the Swedes are denied a base for their future landing and, time permitting, Empire has a navy that can make invasion problematic.
 
Maybe a more assertive and married with kids Rudolf? The crisis with the electorate of Cologne and the Free city of Donauworth. Both would offer opportunities to assert/balance religious conflicts within the confines of imperial law as agreed by the princes in the Peace of Ausgburg. For the ban on Donauworth, have the wurttemberg duke "assist" the emperor to enforce it rather than the duke of Bavaria but Rudolf would have to send some forces there as well to ensure the duke of Wurttembrg doesn't suppport the protestant partisans. Second on the Cologne war, clear violation of the peace of Augsburg as I understand it, play up that and actually get involved as opposed to delegating. He basically need to avoid getting super obsessed with fighting the Ottomans and assert himself in the Empire.

This could possibly trigger an earlier conflict but at that point in time it has the potential to be a lot more limited. Say for example, the Cologne war becomes the flash-point, Sweden's King at the time was trying to balance Lutheran's and Catholic's, Denmark was in recovery from the Northern Seven Yr's war. Now France and England were meddling in hopes of distracting the Spanish, play up that the Empire does not want a spread of the war in the Low countries into to (which was a real concern for the time), make a show of keeping the Spanish out (granted this depends on how the conflict goes) and if possible play up if (which will happen) and attempts by the dutch to insert themselves and well spreading war and conflict.
 
Stop the Swedes getting involved, and possibly the Danes as well. The resultant war would end in 1625 (if you stop the Danes getting involved) or 1629 (if the Danes get involved by the Swedes don't). It would be a bit larger than a cabinet war, but nowhere near as devastating as OTL's Thirty Years' War.

The "easiest" way to stop Swedes is to make them less successful against the PLC so that the Polish-Swedish Wars keep going on. For this the PLC must have a different attitude toward financing the war (allowing to modernize its military force, to pay mercenaries, etc.). If as a result PLC forces are capable to start taking back the Livonian towns (esp. Riga) then GA is too busy to start war in Germany.
 

samcster94

Banned
The "easiest" way to stop Swedes is to make them less successful against the PLC so that the Polish-Swedish Wars keep going on. For this the PLC must have a different attitude toward financing the war (allowing to modernize its military force, to pay mercenaries, etc.). If as a result PLC forces are capable to start taking back the Livonian towns (esp. Riga) then GA is too busy to start war in Germany.
What if they had a different king?
 
What if they had a different king?

Swedish - Polish wars started before GA became a king so this probably would not be critical. But ability to defend and take fortified places would be a game-changer for the PLC: in OTL they had been regularly beating GA and his generals in the field but were incapable to prevent them from capturing the important cities through which Lithuania was exporting its grain. As a result, even while the war was going on the Swedes had been getting the custom dues from the Lithuanians and could keep fighting. OTOH, Lithuanian (and them Polish) side simply could not pay the troops which pretty much negated all successes in the field.
 
Top