The Thirty Years’ War (Encore)

Gary Arndt (0:00)

The following is an Encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily.

17th century Europe was witnessed one of the longest and most brutal wars in human history. The conflict lasted for over a generation, and was responsible for the deaths of up to half the population in some countries. When it finally ended, it resulted in a new geopolitical order, which for the most part still exists today. Learn more about the Thirty Years War, one of the bloodiest wars in world history, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Given how significant the Thirty Years War is to world history, and how bloody it was, it's surprising how little attention it receives, and how little people know about it today.

The Thirty Years War began in the shadow of the Protestant Reformation. After the Protestant Reformation began, Protestant communities began springing up all over the Holy Roman Empire. If you remember back to my previous episodes, the Holy Roman Empire was really a collection of smaller states led by various princes and dukes. Many of these regional rulers converted to Protestantism, which caused an enormous amount of strife within the Empire. To end this instability, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, King of Spain, Duke of Austria, and Lord of the Netherlands signed the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 The Peace of Augsburg said that each constituent state within the Holy Roman Empire could choose between Catholicism and Lutheranism as their state religion, but only those two options.

Likewise, people living in those states would have the freedom to migrate to a state which shared the religion if they so wished. It created a patchwork of states with different religions, not to mention the various non-Lutheran Protestant sects such as Calvinists and Anabaptists.

The Peace of Augsburg didn't institute true freedom of religion, nor did it end all religious conflict, but it did put an end to large-scale religious conflict that could potentially destroy the empire. Even then, it didn't totally stop violence from erupting. In 1583, for example, a war broke out in Cologne, Germany, between Catholic and Protestant factions. Likewise, riots would occasionally erupt in places where both Catholics and Protestants lived. For about 50 years, the Peace tenuously held. The Peace of Augsburg ended up being a stopgap measure. Protestantism continued to spread, in particular Calvinism, which wasn't looked upon finally by either Catholics or Lutherans. It all fell apart in 1618, when the future Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand II, attempted to force his subjects in the lands he ruled directly to adopt Catholicism. The place where Ferdinand decided to enforce this edict was the kingdom of Bohemia, where he was king, and Austria, where he was the Archduke. Bohemia is what is today the Western Czech Republic. Habsburg rulers had ruled Bohemia since the start of the Protestant Reformation, and they had all been rather lenient towards religion in Bohemia. In particular, Emperor Rudolf II, just nine years earlier, had issued what was known as the Letter of Majesty, which established religious freedom in Bohemia. Things came to a head on May 23, 1618, when Catholic officials were sent by the emperor to Prague to meet with Protestant nobles in Prague Castle. What ended up happening is that two of the Catholic officials and their secretary were thrown out of a window in an event known as the Defenestration of Prague. Defenestration is just a fancy term for throwing someone out a window.