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I just got finished reading about the opening stages of the Thirty Years War, and what struck me was how...lucky the Hapsburgs were in 1618-1621, or rather, how inept their enemies were. The majority of their nobility were protestant, and the estates of most of their realms-Bohemia, Austria, Hungary-all rebelled, and at one point, Bohemian and rebel Austrian armies advanced all the way to the gates of Vienna. The two things that saved the Hapsburgs was Bavarian and Spanish help, and the unwillingness of the other protestant states to fully back Frederick and the Palatinate (the way the book I was reading tells it, Saxony more or less allied with the Hapsburgs against the Protestant side).

So, lets say the Protestant states are able to maintain a more coherent opposition to the Hapsburgs (it seems like having a more militantly Protestant Elector of Saxony would be a start), and that after that, the Protestants have the same sort of luck the Austrians did-say, the rebellion in Transylvania is able to make a significant contribution to the Protestant armies in Austria, and the Protestants have a general on the level of, say, Tilly instead of mediocre people like Mansfield. So by 1621, instead of Frederick being kicked out of the Palatinate, Ferdinand is kicked out of Vienna.

So, what now? Ferdinand is still legally HRE, and still legally ruler of all the Austrian Duchies and Hungary. Bavaria is still Catholic, as are some of the Prince-Bishoprics. An intervention by one of the Catholic powers (Spain, Poland, maybe even France) is probably inevitable at some point. And the Protestants are going to have to keep their alliance together to deal with these challenges, when IOTL, they couldn't even do that for the war.

Any more thoughts? How likely is this scenario, and where might it lead?
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