Political situation in Europe in the first half of the XVII century

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Content

		Page
	Introduction	3
1.	Peace of Westphalia
	Locations. Delegations	6
	The Peace of Westphalia — A Turning Point in Europe	13
2.	Political situation in Europe in the first half of the XVII century.
	2.1. The Seventeenth Century; Early modern	17
	2.2. Principles of the state system	22
	Conclusion
	Bibliography
	Appendixes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introduction

The two treaties of Münster and Osnabrück, commonly known as the Peace of Westphalia, was the culminating element for the Holy Roman Empire in the Thirty Years' War. It established a final religious settlement and provided for new political boundaries for the German states of central Europe. The impact of the Peace of Westphalia was broad and long-standing, as it dictated the future of Germany and ex-territories of the Holy Roman Empire for some time to come.

The Peace of Westphalia put down the Counter Reformation in Germany and instituted the final religious arrangement the German states had been crying for. It renewed the terms of the Peace of Augsburg, namely that each state of the Empire received the liberty to be either Lutheran or Catholic as it chose; no individual freedom of religion was permitted. If a ruler or a free city decided for Lutheranism, then all persons had to be Lutheran. Similarly in Catholic states all had to be Catholic. In addition to re-instituting the Peace of Augsburg in its traditional form, the Peace of Westphalia included Calvinism to Lutheranism and Catholicism as an acceptable faith. On the controversial issue of church territories secularized after 1552 the Protestants won a complete victory. With the advent of the Peace of Westphalia, the squabbling between Protestants and Catholics was finally put an end to.

The Holy Roman Empire was officially dissolved with the Peace of Westphalia. This had been advanced with the drawing of internal religious frontiers in the days of Luther, although now it was confirmed. Borderlands of the Empire fell away. The Dutch and Swiss established themselves as independent, as did the United Provinces. The western frontier of the Empire was carved up among France, Sweden and the Dutch. France took control over three Lorraine bishoprics which they had occupied for a century. The Swedes received the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden and the western half of Pomerania, including the city of Stettin. Sweden enlarged its trans-Baltic possessions, and in addition claimed the mouths of the Oder, Elbe, and Weser rivers in Germany. The Dutch obtained only the mouths of the Rhine and the Scheldt. On the interior front of the Empire, both Brandenburg and Bavaria increased their statures. Brandenburg lay claim to eastern Pomerania, the large archbishopric of Magdeburg, and two smaller bishoprics. Bavaria received control of the Palatinate and a seat in the electoral college, increasing the Empire's electors to eight. However, these mere territorial changes were not the true victory for France, the Dutch and Sweden, but rather the new constitution written for the remnants of the Holy Roman Empire. The impact of this constitution was heavy and widespread, as it would effectively render Germany politically helpless for several years to come. The constitution liberated the over three hundred German states; each became virtually sovereign. Every individual state received the right to conduct diplomacy and make treaties with foreign powers. However, the constitution further stated that no laws could be made by the Empire, no taxes levied, no soldiers recruited, no war declared or peace terms ratified except with the consent of each of the three hundred some-odd princes, ecclesiastics, and free cities that comprised the imperial states. Since any agreement on such matters on a scale as large and diverse as the imperial states would be impossible, the principle of self-government, the principle that so many princes of the Reichstag asked for, was effectively used by France, Sweden and the Dutch to destroy the Empire as an effective political player. In effect, the requests of the Empire led to its undoing. The impact of the new constitution, more so than the dissolution and territorial changes made in the Empire, would be felt by Germany for years into the future. As most European countries were consolidating under royal absolutism, Germany sank back into chaos not unlike that found during feudal times.

The Peace of Westphalia had a huge impact on the remnants of the Holy Roman Empire, and not an entirely positive one. Although the religious difficulties between Catholics and Protestants were eased with the official recognition of both, the Empire was politically crippled when the principle of self-government came to be its undoing. Parts of the Empire were also eaten up by neighboring countries, although this was less important than was the new constitution. The impact of the Peace of Westphalia was immense, as it decreed the future of the German imperial states for some time to come.

Europe. The Seventeenth Century.

Its first half of the 17th century is marked by the wars of religion between Protestants and Catholics, especially the Thirty Years War, which raged within Germany or, as it was then called, The Holy Roman Empire from 1618 to 1648. More than a religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics, it was also a power struggle within and between kingdoms. France under its new, Bourbon dynasty became the most powerful state in Europe replacing the Habsburgs in both Spain and the Holy Roman Empire (Germany). The Treaty of Westphalia, which ended this long war, marks the beginning of the Modern State System.

The ideal of the Middle Ages had envisioned a universal empire and a universal church.  This ideal dated back to memories of the Carolingian Empire and further back to Rome.  This ideal was never a reality.  The reality of the Middle Ages was based on feudalism and manorialism.  Europe was divided politically into many locally governed principalities, free cities, duchies, and feudal kingdoms;  but it was united religiously.  Western Christendom was a unity under the Holy Roman Catholic Church and the Pope.  Under Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, that dream of one Empire and one Church had  still been a possibility  After the Thirty Years War and the end of the 17th century, that dream had been given up.  Religious unity had been shattered by Martin Luther and the other reformers.  Political unity had become impossible with the creation of the modern state system based on sovereignty.

By 1648, Europe had divided into a system of sovereign, independent states governed largely by absolute monarchs.

Germany, the Holy Roman Empire, was fractured during the Thirty Years War into more than 300 separate states. The Catholic, Austrian Habsburgs were the big losers during the Thirty Years War. Any hope of centralizing Germany under their rule was lost. Germany was divided on the basis of religion into Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists. The religion of the ruler determined the religion of the people. Catholic Austria and Lutheran Prussia emerged as the two most important states within the loose Confederation called the Holy Roman Empire.

England experienced the rise and fall of militant Calvinistic Puritanism. Despite internal conflict, it kept building up its naval power and started on the road toward overseas empire. It gradually replaced Spain and the Netherlands as the greatest sea power. The Glorious Revolution of 1689 set England on the path of limited, constitutional, and, ultimately, democratic government. It became the most liberal country in Europe and the model for Enlightenment thinkers on the Continent to imitate in the eighteenth century.

The second half of the century was dominated by Louis XIV of France. The Sun King’s effort to dominate Europe failed but he succeeded in crushing the Protestant Huguenots and consolidated absolutism in France.

But, perhaps most importantly, the seventeenth century marked the beginning of an intellectual revolution. It marked the birth of modern ideas about nature, man, and government. What went by the name of the Scientific Revolution was really a paradigm shift in all areas of knowledge, including religion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peace of Westphalia

The Peace of Westphalia was a series of peace treaties signed between May and October 1648 in Osnabrück and Münster. These treaties ended the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) in the Holy Roman Empire, and the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) between Spain and the Dutch Republic, with Spain formally recognizing the independence of the Dutch Republic.

The Peace of Westphalia treaties involved the Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand III, of the House of Habsburg, the Kingdom of Spain, the Kingdom of France, the Swedish Empire, the Dutch Republic, the Princes of the Holy Roman Empire, and sovereigns of the free imperial cities and can be denoted by two major events.

The signing of the Peace of Münster between the Dutch Republic and the Kingdom of Spain on 30 January 1648, officially ratified in Münster on 15 May 1648.

The signing of two complementary treaties on 24 October 1648, namely:

The Treaty of Münster (Instrumentum Pacis Monasteriensis, IPM), concerning the Holy Roman Emperor and France and their respective allies.

The Treaty of Osnabrück (Instrumentum Pacis Osnabrugensis, IPO), concerning the Holy Roman Emperor, the Empire and Sweden and their respective allies.

The treaties resulted from the big diplomatic congress, thereby initiating a new system of political order in central Europe, later called Westphalian sovereignty, based upon the concept of a sovereign state governed by a sovereign and establishing a prejudice in international affairs against interference in another nation's domestic business. The treaty not only signaled the end of the perennial, destructive wars that had ravaged Europe, it also represented the triumph of sovereignty over empire, of national rule over the personal writ of the Habsburgs[clarification needed]. The treaties’ regulations became integral to the constitutional law of the Holy Roman Empire, and stood as a precursor to later large international treaties and thereby the development of international law in general.

The treaties did not restore the peace throughout Europe, however; France and Spain remained at war for the next eleven years. But the peace of Westphalia at least created a basis for national self-determination.

Locations

Peace negotiations between France and the Habsburgs, provided by the Holy Roman Emperor and the Spanish King, were to be started in Cologne in 1636. These negotiations were blocked by France.

Cardinal Richelieu of France desired the inclusion of all its allies, whether sovereign or a state within the Holy Roman Empire. In Hamburg and Lübeck, Sweden and the Holy Roman Empire negotiated the Treaty of Hamburg. This was done with the intervention of Richelieu.

Contemporary medal celebrating the Peace of Westphalia

The Holy Roman Empire and Sweden declared the preparations of Cologne and the Treaty of Hamburg to be preliminaries of an overall peace agreement. This larger agreement was to be negotiated in Westphalia, in the neighbouring cities of Münster and Osnabrück. Both cities were to be maintained as neutral and demilitarized zones for the negotiations. Münster was, since its re-Catholization in 1535, a strictly mono-denominational community. It housed the Chapter of the Prince-Bishopric of Münster. Only Roman Catholic worship was permitted. No places of worship were provided for Calvinists and Lutherans.

Osnabrück was a bidenominational Lutheran and Catholic city, with two Lutheran and two Catholic churches for its mostly Lutheran burghers and exclusively Lutheran city council and the Catholic Chapter of the Prince-Bishopric of Osnabrück with pertaining other clergy and also other Catholic inhabitants. In the years of 1628-1633 Osnabrück had been subjugated by troops of the Catholic League. The Catholic Prince-Bishop Franz Wilhelm, Count of Wartenberg then imposed the Counter-Reformation onto the city with many Lutheran burgher families being exiled. While under Swedish occupation Osnabrücks's Catholics were not expelled, but the city severely suffered from Swedish war contributions. Therefore Osnabrück hoped for a great relief becoming neutralised and demilitarised.

Both cities strove for more autonomy, aspiring to become Free Imperial Cities, so they welcomed the neutrality imposed by the peace negotiations, and the prohibition of all political influence by the warring parties including their overlords, the prince-bishops.

Since Lutheran Sweden preferred Osnabrück as a conference venue, its peace negotiations with the Empire, including the allies of both sides, took place in Osnabrück. The Empire and its opponent France, including the allies of each, as well as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands and its opponent Spain (and their respective allies) negotiated in Münster.

Delegations

The peace negotiations had no exact beginning and ending, because the participating total of 109 delegations never met in a plenary session, but dropped in between 1643 and 1646 and left between 1647 and 1649. Between January 1646 and July 1647 probably the largest number of diplomats were present. Delegations had been sent by 16 European states, sixty-six Imperial States, representing the interests of a total of 140 involved Imperial States, and 27 interest groups, representing the interests of a variety of a total of 38 groups.

• The French delegation was headed by Henri II d'Orléans, duc de Longueville and further comprised the diplomats Claude d'Avaux and Abel Servien.
• The Swedes plenipotentiaries sent Johan Oxenstierna, the son of chancellor Axel Oxenstierna, and Johan Adler Salvius.
• The head of the delegation of the Holy Roman Empire for both cities was Count Maximilian von Trautmansdorff; in Münster, his aides were Johann Ludwig von Nassau-Hadamarand Isaak Volmar (a lawyer); in Osnabrück, his team comprised Johann Maximilian von Lamberg and Reichshofrat Johann Krane, a lawyer.
• The Spanish delegation was headed by Gaspar de Bracamonte y Guzmán, and besides included the diplomats and writers Diego de Saavedra Fajardo, and Bernardino de Rebolledo.
• The papal nuntius in Cologne, Fabio Chigi, and the Venetian envoy Alvise Contarini acted as mediators.
• Various Imperial States of the Holy Roman Empire also sent delegations.
• Brandenburg sent several representatives, including Vollmar.
• The Republic of the Seven United Netherlands sent a delegation of six (including two delegates from the province of Holland (Adriaan Pauw) and Willem Ripperda from one of the other provinces; two provinces were not present).
• Johann Rudolf Wettstein, the mayor of Basel, represented the Old Swiss Confederacy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Internal political boundaries

A simplified map of Europe after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.

Historical map

Holy Roman Empire in 1648.

The power taken by Ferdinand III in contravention of the Holy Roman Empire's constitution was stripped and returned to the rulers of the Imperial States. This rectification allowed the rulers of the Imperial States to independently decide their religious worship. Protestants and Catholics were redefined as equal before the law, and Calvinism was given legal recognition.

The Holy See was very displeased at the settlement, with Pope Innocent X in Zelo Domus Dei reportedly calling it "null, void, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane, empty of meaning and effect for all time".

The main tenets of the Peace of Westphalia were:

• All parties would recognize the Peace of Augsburg of 1555, in which each prince would have the right to determine the religion of his own state, the options being Catholicism, Lutheranism, and now Calvinism (the principle of cuius regio, eius religio).
• Christians living in principalities where their denomination was not the established church were guaranteed the right to practice their faith in public during allotted hours and in private at their will
• General recognition of the exclusive sovereignty of each party over its lands, people, and agents abroad, and each and several responsibility for the warlike acts of any of its citizens or agents. Issuance of unrestricted letters of marque and reprisal to privateers was forbidden.

There were also territorial adjustments:

• The independence of the Switzerland from the Empire was formally recognized; these territories had enjoyed de factoindependence for decades.
• The majority of the Peace's terms can be attributed to the work of Cardinal Mazarin, the de facto leader of France at the time (the king, Louis XIV, being a child). Not surprisingly, France came out of the war in a far better position than any of the other participants. France won control of the Bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun near Lorraine, and the cities of the Décapole in Alsace (but not Strasbourg, the Bishopric of Strasbourg, or Mülhausen).
• Sweden received an indemnity of five million talers, used primarily to pay her troops. Sweden further receivedWestern Pomerania (henceforth Swedish Pomerania), Wismar, and the Prince-Bishoprics of Bremen and Verden as hereditary fiefs, thus gaining a seat and vote in the Imperial Diet of the imperial as well as in the respective circle diets (Kreistag) of the Upper Saxon, Lower Saxon and Westphalian circles. However, the wording of the treaties was ambiguous:
• Whether or not the city of Bremen was included in Swedish Bremen-Verden remained disputed. Facing the Swedish take-over, Bremen had claimed Imperial immediacy, which was granted by the emperor and thus separated the city from the surrounding bishopric with the same name. Sweden understood that Bremen was nevertheless to be ceded to her, and started the Swedish-Bremen wars in 1653/54.
• The treaty also delegated the determination of the Swedish-Brandenburgian border in the Duchy of Pomerania to the parties. At Osnabrück, both Sweden and Brandenburg had claimed the whole duchy, which had been under Swedish control since 1630 despite legal claims of Brandenburgian succession. While the parties settled for a border in 1653, the underlying conflict continued.
• The treaty ruled that the Dukes of Mecklenburg, owing their re-investiture to the Swedes, cede Wismar and the Mecklenburgian port tolls. While Sweden understood this to include the tolls of all Mecklenburgian ports, the Mecklenburgian dukes as well as the emperor understood this to refer to Wismar only.
• Wildeshausen, a petty exclave of Bremen-Verden and fragile basis for Sweden's seat in the Westphalian circle diet, was also claimed by the Bishopric of Münster.
• Bavaria retained the Palatinate's vote in the Imperial Council of Electors (which elected the Holy Roman Emperor), which it had been granted by the ban on the Elector Palatine Frederick V in 1623. The Prince Palatine, Frederick's son, was given a new, eighth electoral vote.
• The Palatinate was divided between the re-established Elector Palatine Charles Louis (son and heir of Frederick V) and Elector-Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, and thus between the Protestants and Catholics. Charles Louis obtained the Lower Palatinate, along the Rhine, while Maximilian kept the Upper Palatinate, to the north of Bavaria.
• Brandenburg-Prussia (later Prussia) received Farther Pomerania, and the Bishoprics of Magdeburg, Halberstadt, Kammin, and Minden.
• The succession to the United Duchies of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, who had died out in 1609, was clarified. Jülich, Berg, and Ravenstein were given to the Count Palatine of Neuburg, while Cleves, Mark, and Ravensberg went to Brandenburg.
• It was agreed that the Prince-Bishopric of Osnabrück would alternate between Protestant and Catholic holders, with the Protestant bishops chosen from cadets of the House ofBrunswick-Lüneburg.
• The independence of the city of Bremen was clarified.
• Barriers to trade and commerce erected during the war were abolished, and "a degree" of free navigation was guaranteed on the Rhine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Peace of Westphalia—  A Turning Point in Europe

“FOR so many European heads of State to be gathered together as are gathered here today is certainly a rare event.” Roman Herzog, former president of the Federal Republic of Germany, made that statement in October 1998. When he made that comment, his audience included four kings, four queens, two princes, a grand duke, and several presidents. The event, sponsored by the Council of Europe, was a highly important one in the 50-year history of the modern state of Germany. What was the occasion?

October 1998 was the 350th anniversary of the Peace Treaty of Westphalia. Peace agreements are often crossroads where history turns a corner, and in this respect the Treaty of Westphalia was something special. The signing of this agreement in 1648 brought to an end the Thirty Years’ War and marked the birth of modern Europe as a continent of sovereign states.

An Old Order Is Shaken

During the Middle Ages, the most powerful institutions in Europe were the Roman Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire. The empire was made up of hundreds of estates of various sizes and covered an area now occupied by Austria, the Czech Republic, eastern France, Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries, and parts of Italy. Since the German estates comprised its major part, the empire came to be known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Each estate was ruled semiautonomously by a prince. The emperor himself was a Roman Catholic of the Austrian Habsburg family. Therefore, with the papacy and the empire in power, Europe was firmly in Roman Catholic hands.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, however, the established order was shaken. Throughout Europe there was widespread dissatisfaction with the excesses of the Roman Catholic Church. Such religious reformers as Martin Luther and John Calvin spoke of a return to Biblical values. Luther and Calvin found widespread support, and out of this movement grew the Reformation and Protestant religions. The Reformation split the empire into three faiths—Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist.

Catholics viewed Protestants with distrust, and Protestants held their Catholic rivals in disdain. This climate led to the formation of the Protestant Union and the Catholic League in the early 17th century. Some princes of the empire joined the Union, others the League. Europe—and the empire in particular—was a powder keg of suspicion that needed just one spark to send everything up in smoke. When that spark finally came, it started a conflict that lasted for the next 30 years.

A Deadly Spark Sets Europe Aflame

Protestant rulers tried to influence the Catholic Habsburgs to allow more freedom of worship. But concessions came grudgingly, and in 1617-18, two Lutheran churches in Bohemia (the Czech Republic) were forcibly closed. This offended Protestant gentry, who stormed into a palace in Prague, seized three Catholic officials, and threw them out of an upstairs window. This act was the spark that set Europe aflame.

Although they supposedly were followers of the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, members of opposing religions were now at one another’s throats. (Isaiah 9:6) In the Battle of White Mountain, the League inflicted a crushing defeat on the Union, which disintegrated. Protestant noblemen were executed in Prague’s marketplace. All over Bohemia, the property of Protestants who would not recant was confiscated and shared among Catholics. The book 1648—Krieg und Frieden in Europa (1648—War and Peace in Europe) describes this confiscation as “one of the greatest shifts in ownership ever in central Europe.”

What started as a religious conflict in Bohemia escalated into an international power struggle. Over the next 30 years, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden were drawn into the fray. Catholic and Protestant rulers, often driven by greed and the urge for power, jockeyed for political supremacy and commercial gain. The Thirty Years’ War has been divided into stages, each named after the emperor’s major opponents. Several reference works cite four such stages: the Bohemian and Palatine War, the Danish-Lower Saxony War, the Swedish War, and the French-Swedish War. Most of the fighting took place on imperial territory.

Weapons of the time included pistols, muskets, mortars, and cannons, with Sweden as a major supplier of arms. Catholics and Protestants were locked in conflict. Soldiers went into battle crying either “Santa Maria” or “God is with us.” Troops pillaged and plundered their way across German estates, treating opponents and civilians like animals. The war degenerated into barbarity. What a contrast to the Bible prophecy: “They will not lift up sword, nation against nation, neither will they learn war anymore”!—Micah 4:3.