MACHIAVELLIAN PRINCES IN THE ERA OF THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR

France and Sweden won the 30 Years’ War because they succeeded best at developing more effective methods of royal administration and taxation, and at analyzing foreign policy in purely rational terms.The Austrian Habsburgs based their war effort largely on an appeal to solidarity among all Catholics, but after 1630 they discovered that even the Vatican no longer took such appeals seriously.In 1629 King Charles I of England sought to imitate French methods of government by dissolving Parliament indefinitely; his course provoked a bloody Civil War from which Parliament emerged victorious.

The 30 Years’ War, Phase I (1618-1623):The Bohemian revolt & Catholic conquest of the

Palatinate

The 30 Years’ War, Phase II (1625-29):Denmark intervenes, but Wallenstein marches to the

Baltic

Albert of Wallenstein (1583-

1634), Imperial Generalissimo.

Estates confiscated from Bohemian

rebels supported his army of

125,000 men.In the winter of

1633/34 he opened peace talks on his

own initiative.

Agents of Emperor Ferdinand II burst into the headquarters

of Wallenstein at Eger, February 25, 1634

The Assassination of Generalissimo Wallenstein(see Friedrich Schiller, Wallenstein Trilogy, 1799)

By agreeing to withdraw his Edict of Restitution, Ferdinand II achieved reconciliation with most

German Protestants in the Peace of Prague in 1635. Thereafter France & Sweden fought Austria & Spain

on German soil.

Georg Wilhelm of Brandenburg

John George of Saxony

The Count-Duke of Olivares, chief minister to King

Philip IV of Spain, who

renewed the war with the Dutch and sought to control the

Rhine Valley.By 1640 his taxes drove Portugal and Catalonia into open rebellion.

An early and civilized Spanish victory:The Dutch surrender of Breda, 1625

The Edict of Nantes (1598)

allowed Huguenot

garrisons in 20 cities, e.g., La Rochelle in

Poitou

Rubens, Allegory on the

meeting between Henry IV and Marie de Medici in Lyons,

1600

The assassination of Henry IV in 1610 by the

fanatical Catholic student, Francois

Ravaillac

Masters of raison d’état:Cardinal Richelieu

of France (1585-1642); Axel Oxenstierna (1583-

1654),Chancellor of Sweden

Before France could assist the Protestants in Germany, it was necessary to crush armed

Protestants at home:King Louis XIII (1610-

43)Siege of La Rochelle,

1627/28

The 30 Years’ War, Phase III (1630-48): France agreed in 1631 to subsidize Sweden & intervened

openly in 1635

Louis XIII leads the relief of Corbie in northeastern France, besieged by the Spanish, 1636

THE ORIGINS OF “ROYAL ABSOLUTISM”UNDER RICHELIEU AND LOUIS XIII

The Estates-General convened in 1613/14 but never met thereafter until 1789; the First & Second Estates accepted this because they remained tax exempt.Richelieu transferred key administrative tasks from the provincial “governors” (usually the most powerful lord in the province) to a new network of “royal intendants,” i.e., salaried bureaucrats.Royal courts took over more and more kinds of cases from manorial courts.France raised 13 million thaler per year for war in 1635-39 and 16 million in 1640-45. These taxes did provoke peasant revolts, but nothing like those in Spain in 1640.

The Battle of Jankov (Bohemia), March 1645,where Swedish cannon destroyed the Imperials

“The Great European War Ballet” (1647):176 ambassadors gathered in Münster for peace

talks

THE NEW BALANCE OF POWER IN 1648

Already by 1632, Vatican diplomats were instructed that “the interest of the Roman Church” would better be served through a “balance of power” than through victory for any one party.Sweden originally demanded religious liberty for all Protestants everywhere, but all other parties rejected this in favor of adding Calvinism to the list of two religious confessions that could be embraced by a member state of the HRE.Brandenburg, Bavaria, and Sweden gained some German territory.Spain made peace with the Netherlands but remained at war with France.

The Peace of Westphalia, 1648 (Church lands in purple)

Estimated population

loss in Germany

from 1618 to

1648

King Charles I of England

(reigned 1625-49), who dissolved

Parliament indefinitely in

1629.

Scots riot against imposition of a new Anglican prayer book in 1637: Scottish victories in the

Bishops’ Wars of 1639/40 compelled Charles to convene Parliament.

“King Charles I in the House of Commons,”

January 1642:He appeared with an

armed guard and demanded the arrest of five MPs (who had

already fled).

The spread of Parliamentary

control, 1642-45

Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658),

Puritan leader of the New Model Army. He fought in the

name of Parliament but purged it when it

defied him.

The decapitation of Charles I in Whitehall, London, 1649

Frontispiece to Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651):“Upon earth there is not his like…”

HOBBES’S ARGUMENT FOR UNRESTRICTED SOVEREIGNTY

Human beings are so aggressive and quarrelsome that the State of Nature is a war of each against all, where “the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”The instinct of self-preservation should lead us all to delegate our power to make war to one Sovereign, which could be EITHER one man, or an elected assembly of men.The Sovereign must be granted the final word in formulating all laws, a monopoly over the use of armed force, and the right to control the succession.The Sovereign SHOULD rule equitably, but nobody has a right to rebel if he does not, because bad government can never be as bad as the State of Nature.

Many Continental monarchs became

Hobbesian sovereigns, but England chose after Cromwell’s death to

restore power-sharing between King and

Parliament

Charles II,

reigned 1640-85

The Palace of Westminster, seat of Parliament since the 16th century