AP European History

Barron’s

The Reformation

The Wars of Religion

The War of the Three Henrys (1587-1589)

This was partially a religious war and partially a dynastic war. The weak king, Henry III of France, was counseled to root out the Protestant, Huguenot nobility by Henry of Guise.

• • The Huguenots in France had gained power among about 10 percent of the nobility.
• • When Henry of Navarre married Margaret of Valois; the king’s sister, a massacre of Huguenot friends of Henry of Navarre by Roman Catholics known as the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre erupted initiating this war.
• • Henry of Navarre won the war but converted back to Catholicism to rule as Henry IV of France.
  1. Issued the Edict of Nantes, allowing Huguenots religious freedom in strongholds.
  2. He is reported to have said, “Paris is well worth a mass,” before converting back to Catholicism.

The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648)

• • The first continent-wide war in modern history, fought mostly in Germany, it involved the major European powers.
• • It was the culmination of the religious wars of the sixteenth century between Catholics and Protestants.
• • Politically, German princes sought autonomy from the Holy Roman Empire; France sought to limit the power of the Habsburgs who sought to extend power in Germany; Sweden and Denmark hoped to strengthen their hold over the Baltic region.

The Four Phases of the War

• The Bohemian Phase (1618-1625)
  1. The Czechs, also called Bohemians, who, together with the Slovaks, formed the modern nation of Czechoslovakia after World War I, were largely Calvinist.
  2. Fearful that their Catholic king, Matthias, would deny their religious preferences, they defenestrated (used the old custom of registering dissent by throwing officials out a window) his representatives and briefly installed, as king, a Calvinist, Frederick V of the Palatinate, or Elector Palatine.
  3. After Matthias’s death, Ferdinand II became Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia.
     1. Supported by troops of the Spanish Habsburgs, he defeated the Bohemians at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620.
     2. Gave away the lands of the Protestant nobles
     3. Enabled the Spanish to consolidate power along the Rhine River
• The Danish Phase (1625-1630)
  1. Christian IV of Denmark (r. 1588-1648), a Lutheran, entered the war to bolster the weakened Protestant position in Germany and to annex German lands for his son.
  2. Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II (r. 1619-1637) countered by commissioning Albert of Wallenstein to raise a mercenary army, which pillaged and plundered Germany and defeated the Danes in 1626.
  3. In 1629, the emperor issued The Edict of Restitution, which restored all the land to the Roman Catholic Church in states in Germany that had left The Church before the Peace of Augsburg in 1555.
  4. When Wallenstein disapproved, Ferdinand dismissed him.
• The Swedish Phase (1625-1630)
  1. Cardinal Richelieu, Roman Catholic regent of France, was concerned with the gains made by the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II in Germany.
  2. France decided to pursue nationalist interests rather than religious ones as a matter of state policy under Cardinal Richelieu.
     1. It was good policy to keep the Germanic states divided as France’s neighbor.
     2. France wanted to weaken the Habsburgs, the ruling house of the Holy Roman Empire.
     3. France gained prestige.
  3. He offered subsidies to encourage the capable Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus (r. 1611-1632) to enter the war.
     1. Adolphus, a Lutheran, was eager to help the Protestant cause.
     2. After decisive victories over the Habsburg forces, Adolphus was killed.
     3. Wallenstein was assassinated for contemplating disloyalty to the emperor.
     4. The Protestant states of Germany made a separate peace with the emperor.
• • The Peace of Prague revoked the Edict of Restitution.
• • The Swedes were defeated, but Richelieu was determined to undermine Habsburg power in Germany.
• The French-International Phase (1635-1648)
  1. France, Holland, and Savoy entered the war in 1635 on the Swedish side.
  2. Spain continued to support the Austrian Habsburgs.
  3. After a series of victories and reversals on both sides, Henri Turenne, a French general, decisively defeated the Spanish at Rocroi.
  4. In 1644 peace talks began in Westphalia, Germany.

The Peace of Westphalia, 1648

1. The Peace of Augsburg was reinstated, but Calvinism was added as acceptable for Germany.
2. The Edict of Restitution was revoked, guaranteeing the possession of former Church states to their Protestant holders.
3. Switzerland and Holland were made independent states, freed from the Habsburg dominions.
4. France, Sweden, and Brandenburg (the future Prussia) received various territories.
5. The German princes were made sovereign rulers, severely limiting the power of the Holy Roman Emperor and the influence of the Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs. With over three hundred separate rulers in Germany, national unification was ignored until well into the nineteenth century.

Effects of the Thirty Years’ War

1. Germanic states were devastated, the population reduced in some parts by well over a third. Once a cultural and political leader in Europe, it stagnated, helping to prevent its establishment as a sovereign, united nation for more than two centuries and complicating its relations with the rest of the world into the twentieth century.
2. The age of religious wars ended; the modern age of sovereign states began in Europe, and Balance of Power politics prevailed in Europe, whereby nation-states and dynasties went to war to prevent anyone power from dominating the continent.
3. The Habsburgs were weakened. The Austrian monarchy lost most of its influence over Germany, ending the possibility of a Europe united under the family. Habsburg Spain was left a second-rate power.
4. The Counter-Reformation was slowed; Protestantism was firmly established in its European strongholds.
5. The Holy Roman Empire ceased to be a viable political structure and the Germanic states would not be unified again until 1871.
6. Calvinism gained acceptance throughout Protestant Europe.
7. Anabaptists were persecuted and disappeared as a religion.