Seventeenth-Century Europe

State, Conflict and Social Order in Europe 1598-1700

Thomas Munck

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781350307186
• Edition: 2
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

This thematically organised text provides a compelling introduction and guide to the key problems and issues of this highly controversial century. Offering a genuinely comparative history, Thomas Munck adeptly balances Eastern and Southern Europe, Scandinavia, and the Ottoman Empire against the better-known history of France, the British Isles and Spain. Seventeenth-Century Europe
- gives full prominence to the political context of the period, arguing that the Thirty Years War is vital to understanding the social and political developments of the early modern period
- provides detailed coverage of the debates surrounding the 'general crisis', absolutism and the growth of the state, and the implications these had for townspeople, the peasantry and the poor
- examines changes in economic orientation within Europe, as well as continuity and change in mental and cultural traditions at different social levels. Now fully revised, this second edition of a well-established and approachable synthesis features important new material on the Ottomans, Christian-Moslem contacts and on the role of women. The text has also been thoroughly updated to take account of recent research.
This is a fully-revised edition of a well-established synthesis of the period from the Thirty Years War to the consolidation of absolute monarchy and the landowning society of the ancien régime. Thematically organised, the book covers all of Europe, from Britain and Scandinavia to Spain and Eastern Europe. Important new material has been added on the Ottomans, on Christian-Moslem contacts and on the role of women, and the text has been thoroughly updated to take account of recent research.

1 The Thirty Years War in the German lands

The early seventeenth century was a period of such complex and widespread warfare that few parts of Europe remained unscathed. Ever since, the motives of the major protagonists have been disputed, the overall significance of religious, economic and diplomatic factors debated, the severity of the material destructiveness reviewed, and the long-term significance of the concluding peace settlements reassessed – even the very existence of a definable ‘Thirty Years War’ between 1618 and 1648 has been challenged.¹ Without denying the usefulness of this revisionism, historians have more recently concentrated on detailed studies of individual regions and localities within the Holy Roman Empire, in order to provide more finely drawn analyses appropriate to the territorial particularism which became so prominent a feature of the Empire during the course of the war and thereafter. Interestingly, however, many of these studies have revealed the continuing strengths and positive aspects of the imperial machinery, especially after 1648. What older generations of historians, taking their cue from an out-of-context phrase from Pufendorf’s De statu imperii Germanici of 1667, regarded as a monstrous medieval constitutional anachronism in fact remained a loose but in many respects beneficial confederative framework capable of protecting the independence and security of the smaller states, at least in the western and south-western parts of the Empire. It has also become apparent that it is meaningless to generalise about the causes and effects of the war in terms of the Empire as a whole: experiences varied enormously from one part to another, and contemporary observers, like some historians later on, tended to portray the conflict in extreme terms.

The Thirty Years War, therefore, can be examined in a number of different ways. Earlier generations of twentieth-century historians naturally saw the conflict through their own experiences, as a major European conflict and perhaps the first ‘general war’ – as a conflict which had its roots in issues going back to the Reformation, a conflict where 1648 brought only partial resolution, but which nonetheless brought profound shifts in the balance of power and in the nature of ‘authority’ all over Europe. In that sense it included not only the conflicts between the Habsburg emperors and their rebellious subjects between 1618 and 1635, but also a decisive stage in the long-term conflict between the ruling dynasties of France and both branches of the Habsburg family. Closely related to these was the French search for ‘secure’ frontiers (a longer-lasting quest, thanks to Louis XIV), Spanish efforts to protect their north Italian possessions, and the second phase of the Dutch struggle for independence from Habsburg Spain between 1621 and 1648. Equally, the war encompassed attempts by various princes (and their spiritual or lay advisors) to promote or arrest the Catholic Counter-Reformation, consolidate or stamp out Calvinism in the German lands and elsewhere, or protect Lutheranism from both. Within the Empire, this in some instances led to a growth in aggressive princely territorialism which permanently altered the balance of political power in central Europe. To these scenarios must be added the chronic rivalry between Denmark and Sweden; the struggle between Sweden, Poland and Muscovy; and, of great importance when we turn to the economic history of the period too, the clash of strategic and commercial interests in the Baltic, involving the Dutch, the English and others; not to mention the wider context of overseas rivalry, centring especially on the increasingly insecure defensive position of the Spanish Empire. Given all these genuinely interrelated conflicts, it is almost a surprise to find that the Hungarian–Ottoman frontier was, for a while after 1606, relatively quiet, even though Transylvanian independence movements led by Bethlen Gabor (sometimes in association with the northern belligerents) created recurrent worries for the Habsburgs. It is indisputable that, for conflicting political and religious reasons, the Thirty Years War was a highly disjointed conflict which at some stage significantly affected nearly every part of Europe. In some areas (such as Magdeburg) wartime destruction was so severe that much historical evidence has itself disappeared. The conflict also left deep scars which, given the lack of effective leadership in many areas after 1648, were slower in healing than in some early modern war zones.

The German lands before 1618

Although the Empire did not conform to seventeenth-century European ideals of strong and centralising monarchy, its institutions do not appear inherently moribund when seen in their own perspective of stable conservatism. But much of the imperial machinery had, by the beginning of the period, become blocked with jurisdictional and judicial disputes arising from political exploitation of confessional differences. The Peace of Augsburg of 1555 had recognised a division of Germany between Catholicism and Lutheranism according to the decision of each prince, and had acknowledged the secularisation of that church property which had become part of the Lutheran areas by 1552. An additional imperial edict, the Ecclesiastical Reservation, had insisted that if a ruler of an independent ecclesiastical territory (for example a prince-bishop) converted to another denomination, he should lose his benefice and privileges, so that they might remain Catholic through the election of a new incumbent. The Protestants did not agree to this edict, although it was attached to the Peace, but they acquiesced in a kind of truce, owing to a secret imperial declaration guaranteeing toleration for those ecclesiastical dominions already practising Protestantism. In the long run, however, as soon as there was further prospect of the secularisation of church property on an important scale after 1582, the Ecclesiastical Reservation became a central bone of contention in confessional disputes. Even where it was accepted that a Protestant could act as ‘administrator’ of a see or benefice, the question of his precise rights and entitlements (not least his voting right in the Reichstag or imperial assembly) was disputed. The validity of the ius reformandi (right of reform) for imperial cities which had been Catholic in 1555 was also soon questioned. Moreover, the growing strength of Calvinism radically changes the dynamics of confrontation in the Empire.

It was only in the last decades of the sixteenth century that attitudes hardened on all sides. Emperor Rudolf II (1576–1612), whilst hardly ‘orthodox’ or even normal by the standards of his age, was less ambivalent in religious matters than his father Maximilian II had been. Although always constrained by the Habsburg family traditions, Maximilian, accused of crypto-Lutheranism, had tolerated the growth of Protestantism, even in the Austrian and Bohemian lands which were outside the terms of the Peace of Augsburg. As a result, Calvinism and Anabaptism had spread freely in the eastern reaches of the Habsburg lands. By the 1580s Moravia and Lusatia were almost entirely Lutheran, Habsburg Hungary was almost totally Protestant of some kind, and even in Upper and Lower Austria Catholicism appeared moribund, requiring major remedial action. There was growing pressure on Rudolf from the Wittelsbach dynasty in Bavaria, who were supporters of Tridentine Counter-Reforming Catholicism from 1569 and remained so through the long reign of the fiercely autocratic Duke Maximilian I (1591–1651). The effective (if rival) work of the Jesuits and the Capuchins in the southern parts of the empire added momentum, and in the years from 1578 Rudolf ordered the expulsion of Protestant preachers from Vienna and the imposition of restrictions on worship elsewhere. An Austrian peasant revolt of 1595 failed to reverse this trend, but continuing anti-Protestant measures from the government led to mounting resistance in most of the territorial Estates in the first decade of the seventeenth century, and even open revolt in Hungary. Rudolf’s growing mental derangement, however, caused family rifts and led to the open rivalry for power by his younger brother, Archduke Matthias. A compromise between them in 1608 did not prevent the territorial Estates within the Habsburg dominions from extracting political and religious concessions, the most significant of which, ultimately, was Rudolf’s Letter of Majesty granting religious autonomy to the Estates of Bohemia in 1609 (subsequently confirmed by Matthias).

On the Protestant side, the most serious challenge no longer came from the Lutherans but from Calvinism. Luther’s followers had split into two basically incompatible groups, with the fundamentalist or Gnesio-Lutheran tendency gaining ground in many parts of Germany over the more liberal but less determined Philipists (followers of Philip Melancthon). The Formula of Concord reached in 1578–80 had attempted to reunify Lutheranism, but did so by directing it towards a narrow and uninspiring fundamentalist orthodoxy torn by theological factionalism. Basic to Lutheranism was the acceptance of the secular supremacy of the state or the prince, and this gave religious justification for the kind of conservative or defensive militancy adopted notably by the Electors of Saxony around and after the turn of the century. By contrast, Calvinism (as already demonstrated in France and the Netherlands) was far less subservient politically, and because it had not been recognised in the Peace of Augsburg, became the greatest challenge to the existing confessional balance. A presbyterian form of church organisation was probably too decentralised to appeal to the Erastian mood in much of Germany, but Reformed or Calvinist theology had gained some important footholds. It had become established in the Palatinate since 1556, and had spread to the ruling families of a number of smaller territories by the beginning of the seventeenth century, including Nassau, Anhalt, Hessen-Kassel (where Landgrave Moritz established the University of Marburg as a Calvinist centre in 1604), Württemberg and, finally, Brandenburg itself in 1613. These princes became increasingly concerned to arrest what they saw as the defeatism of the Lutheran princes at the imperial assembly, notably over issues such as the grant of taxation for an army to fight the Turks. Such a force, they feared, could equally well be used by the Emperor against Protestantism. There appeared to be clear warnings of that in the successful use of military means to restore Catholicism in Cologne between 1582 and 1588 in favour of another member of the Wittelsbach family, whilst in some other cities, like Strassburg in 1604, the Protestants had to give in peacefully in the face of superior power.

By the early years of the seventeenth century most of the imperial machinery had been paralysed by this political–confessional confrontation. The imperial assembly (Reichstag) felt it particularly clearly. The first of its three houses, the House of Electors, consisted of the Archbishop of Mainz (who was also its leader), the Archbishops of Trier and Cologne, the Count Palatine, the Duke of Saxony, the Margrave of Brandenburg and the King of Bohemia. The first six of these (that is, omitting the Habsburg King of Bohemia, who was also Holy Roman Emperor) often acted as an electoral council, without whose consent the imperial assembly could not be convened. This council also determined the wording of the electoral capitulation which each Habsburg had to accept on taking up the imperial dignity, and had powers of initiative which the lower houses did not. It was, however, equally divided between Catholics and Protestants, with the latter group split between Lutherans and Calvinists. The second house, that of the princes of the empire (Reichsfürsten) who did not have electoral status, was presided over by a Habsburg agent, and tended to lean in favour of the Catholic side. Because its hundred or so voting delegates represented a large number of divergent interests (with some votes exercised collectively by a group of smaller territories, each of whom were entitled to representation in an observer capacity), this house was particularly prone to procedural difficulties over specific rights and privileges. The third house, consisting of the 51 free imperial cities, had a Protestant majority, but was empowered only to accept or reject resolutions passed on to it by the upper two houses and the Emperor. The overall procedures of the imperial assembly were slow at the best of times, but became virtually paralysed by 1603 because block voting according to confessional lines became the norm, with the corpus catholicorum pitted against the corpus evangelicorum. Political events soon made any compromise out of the question. In 1606, for example, rioting occurred in the imperial city of Donauwörth between the Protestant citizenry and a very small group of Catholic families encouraged by Benedictine monks and the Jesuits. Maximilian of Bavaria, with imperial blessing, used this in 1607 as an invitation to occupy the city with an army of 5000, impose Catholicism, and demand an indemnity so large that the city could not free itself. When the imperial assembly met in 1608, this breach of the 1555 compromise was not put right, and the Palatinate withdrew from the assembly in protest, followed by a substantial number of the other Protestant delegates. A further meeting of the imperial assembly was held in 1613, but it merely confirmed that the institution was no longer workable. Apart from a session in 1640, the full assembly did not function properly again until after the end of the war.

The imperial machinery of justice was also directly affected by the disputes, many of which ended up before the highest court of the Empire, the Reichskammergericht (imperial chamber court). Very long delays amounting to stalemate led the Emperor to refer cases to the Habsburg appellate court, the Reichshofrat (Aulic Council), but the Protestants refused to recognise such a strengthening of Catholic jurisdiction. In effect, there was no longer any means of settling disputes by law at the highest level.

The predictable consequence of this was the formation of armed leagues on each side. In May 1608 the Union of Auhausen was formed by a group of Protestant rulers, primarily those of Calvinist allegiance led by the Elector Palatine’s ambitious advisor, Prince Christian of Anhalt. This Union, however, was weakened by the abstention of certain Lutheran princes, first and foremost Johann Georg of Saxony (influenced by his violently anti-Calvinist court preacher, Matthias Hoe van Hoënegg), and disintegration set in even before 1618. Meanwhile, the Catholic princes had responded by reviving an older League in Munich in 1609 and placing it under the leadership of the determined Maximilian of Bavaria. But it too had inherent weaknesses, revealed in the fact that the Emperor himself did not join, for political reasons. The two alliances were soon put to the test in a drawn-out dispute over the succession to the territories of Jülich, Cleves, Mark, Berg and Ravensberg in north-western Germany in 1609, to which there were several claimants. A complex sequence of far-reaching dynastic chess moves followed. The Union approached Henry IV of France, himself interested in breaking the Habsburg hold on the Rhine and in northern Italy, and war was only narrowly averted by the assassination of Henry IV and the de facto occupation of the territories by a joint anti-Habsburg force. The disputed claims soon flared up again when one of the claimants converted to Catholicism and gained the support of the League, whilst the other, the Elector of Brandenburg, Johann Sigismund, in 1613 turned to Calvinism (without, however, attempting to use his ius reformandi over his staunchly Lutheran subjects). The involvement of the Genoese-born Spanish commander Spinola and his formidable Army of Flanders on one side, and Maurits of Orange-Nassau commanding the Dutch forces on the other, created an immediate risk of international escalation, only averted by means of mediation and partition of the territories (Treaty of Xanten, 1614).

There was clearly no longer any way of disguising the international ramifications of political and confessional conflict between German princes, especially since imperial institutions were manifestly incapable of handling such problems and warding off external manipulation. No progress could be made in terms of reactivating the imperial institutions either. Emperor Matthias (1612–19) was himself not an active leader, and his most influential advisor, Melchior Khlesl, Bishop of Vienna and cardinal, could not realise his ostensible plans for conferences to settle the German disputes as long as Maximilian of Bavaria pressed a more belligerent stance. By 1617 the imperial succession itself was becoming an urgent issue, complicated by the knowledge that the Dutch–Spanish truce of 1609 would expire in 1621. Spain would consequently have a major interest in Germany, especially in the areas affecting the security of the ‘Spanish Road’ from northern Italy to the Netherlands.²

Bohemia and the Rhine (1617–28)

Despite the clear international implications of even lesser political and confessional clashes in central Europe, a Bohemian revolt did not at one level seem the most likely route to major war. Bohemia had accepted the Habsburg dynasty as elected kings for nearly a century, and the constitutional claims of its assemblies of Estates met little sympathy outside the Habsburg lands. Conflicts between princes and their territorial Estates were common everywhere at the beginning of the century, and rarely turned conclusively either way. In Bavaria the dukes had brought their Estates under firm control in the later sixteenth century, but elsewhere, for instance in Württemberg and in Electoral Saxony, the Estates continued to exercise an important influence on the grant and administration of taxation, on religious matters and on the conduct of war during the early seventeenth century and beyond. Habsburg policy towards the Bohemian Estates could thus be regarded as one of many examples of intended government consolidation over an area which, in the later sixteenth century, had enjoyed considerable economic prosperity. Admittedly the Letter of Majesty of 1609 had made substantial concessions to the large Hussite, Lutheran, Calvinist and other religious groups under the Bohemian Crown, increasing their feeling of security against Counter-Reformation (and especially Jesuit) pressures, whilst creating a very complex constitutional situation. But religious interests apart, the differences were not clear-cut: Rudolf II himself had preferred Prague as his capital and residential city, and even when he became an eccentric recluse much of the Bohemian nobility was still bound to the Habsburgs by strong ties of loyalty or, as in the case of the Chancellor of Bohemia, Zdenek Lobkovic, by self-interest.

That Bohemian aspirations were more threatening, however, became apparent in the last years of Matthias’s reign. Archduke Ferdinand, educated by the Jesuits and inclined towards the Spanish party at court, had already shown his determination in the Counter-Reformation cause as a ruler of Styria and Carinthia since 1595. He was recognised as King of Bohemia in 1617 and King of Hungary the following year only by means of heavy pressure from Vienna. By then, Habsburg intentions of destroying the religious compromise of 1609 in Bohemia had become clear: censorship, closure of Protestant churches and other forms of harassment eventually brought about an opposition move in the form of the calling of a Protestant assembly in Prague in 1618 in accordance with the terms of the Letter of Majesty. When a petition to the Emperor was rejected, and there were further indications of the annulment of the rights accorded in 1609, a delegation from the assembly went to the governor’s rooms in the Hradschin Palace in Prague. After a kind of token ‘hearing’, the two governors, Martinic and Slavata, and their protesting secretary, were ritually thrown out of a high window; the political challenge was unmistakable.

The Defenestration of Prague³ was followed in due course by the formation of a confederation of all the lands under the Bohemian Crown (including Moravia, Silesia and the two Lusatias), based on the Letter of Majesty and granting religious toleration to Protestants as well as Catholics (but banning Jesuits). A directory was set up, and a military force organised by Count Matthias von Thurn. An Apology was issued to explain the revolt ab...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Chronology of main events, 1598–1700
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Maps
• 1. The Thirty Years War in the German lands
• 2. Government in wartime Europe
• 3. The framework of life
• 4. Enterprise and profit
• 5. The structure of society: nobility, office-holders and the rich
• 6. The structure of society: urban life
• 7. Provincial revolts, civil war and crises in mid-century Europe
• 8. The structure of society: peasant and seigneur
• 9. Beliefs, mentalités, knowledge and the printed text
• 10. The arts, the value of creativity and the cost of appearances
• 11. Absolute monarchy and the return of order after 1660
• 12. Power and state-sponsored violence in the later seventeenth century
• Concluding remarks
• Notes
• Further reading
• Index