Causes of the Thirty Years War

 Thirty years’ war

        The Thirty years’ war was a 17th  century religious conflict fought Primarily in Central Europe. Consisting of 4 phases in which the 1st two phases, Bohemian and Danish, were basically local and religious phases of the war but in the 2nd two, Swedish and French phases, the war became truly continental and political. It remains one of the longest and most brutal war in history, with 8 million estimated causalities resulting from military battles as well as from the famine and disease caused by the conflict. The war lasted from 1618 to 1648.

Causes of Thirty years’ war

        There may have been several causes which fired up this war but Religious and Political causes were more conducive  in this act of brutality.

Religious:

        Martin Luther and other Protestant practitioners had been spreading ideas of Protestantism and individual interpretation of Bible. As a result European states were divided without the Catholic Church holding them together, during Reformation Movement, which resulted in rise in tensions between the Catholics and other several Protestant sects because, many of the rulers of European countries then accepted different Protestant sects as their state religion,  which was certainly not acceptable for many of the Holy Roman Emperors.

        In 16th  and 17th  centuries, Europe endured a series of wars, caused partly by religious differences, sparked by the Reformation.

1: Civil Wars in Germany between Catholic and Lutheran rulers.

2: Dutch War against Spain. Protestant Dutch revolted against their Catholic ruler, Philip II of Spain.

3: Spanish naval War against England to depose Elizabeth I, the Protestant Queen of England under the guise of the excuse of safeguarding Spanish merchant ships and new world colonies.

4: Civil Wars in France by the Protestant claimants to the French throne .

        Although the Peace of Augsburg(1555) and Edict of Nantes(1598) created a temporary end to hostilities, it didn't resolve the underlying religious conflict, which was made yet more complex by the spread of Calvinism throughout Germany in the years followed.

        The conflict then arose when again the religious freedom was taken for granted by Ferdinand II  the king of Bohemia, and also the Future Holy Roman emperor who was the leading champion of the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation and absolutist rule during the Thirty Year's War. In his role as a king of Bohemia, attempted to impose Roman Catholic absolutism on his domains in response to Ferdinand II's decision to take away religious freedom, the primarily Protestant northern Bohemian states of Holy Roman Empire sought to break away, further fragmenting an already loosely structured realm and the Protestant nobles of both Bohemia and Austria rose up in rebellion. These differences in Christianity, then were again a cause to a 5th   series of war in Continent Europe, hence the so- called Bohemian Revolt (a partly religious revolt), began in 1618 and marked the beginning of  a truly continental conflict.

Political: 

         Although all evidences and research proves Thirty Years' War to be a religious struggle among the Protestants and Catholics, but C. V. Wedgwood argued its main driver was the long-running contest for European dominance between Habsburgs in Austria and Spain, and the French House of Bourbon. Her view is now generally accepted, with certain reservations. This argument is far too good to be placed because of the undeniable political struggle for the power, for example  France, a Catholic country who had no desire to see Protestantism grow however, since they disliked the Hapsburg Dynasty even more than they disliked Protestants, they supported the Protestants in order to curb Hapsburg power. In other words, their motivation was political, not religious. Financially supported a protestant country Denmark against the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II. These proves that the Political desires of the different countries and dynasties were the utmost true causes to Thirty years’ war. Similarly the Holy Roman Emperor got an excuse in shape of crushing Protestants’ growing influence and power in form of growing population and broadening boundaries e.g. UK, Germany, Netherlands, Hungary,  Switzerland, and so on. 

        Coming back to the root Political cause it was undoubtedly the political clash for  being more influential in Europe and the struggle for being in power between Habsburgs, the French House of Bourbon, and especially  the Catholic Habsburgs, who tried to create a new Holy Roman Empire by gaining political and religious control in the north, over the Germans and the Dutch, but resulted in war in search of Balance of Power in the continent. 

Economical: 

        It is obvious that more wealth comes with acquiring more political power they both are basically interrelated and it is also certain that, politics is done for the sake of wealth, specially in the time when you think except you every one is a threat to your power and possession. These were the situations before 17th  century, in 17th century and afterwards, which will continue until the death of  human’s greed or itself death of human. The that time kings and emperors were also by nature human who also had the desire to acquire more land to collect more wealth of it. No doubt the Holy Roman Emperors were angry over the protestant laws of confiscating the Church properties and the denial of paying taxes to the papacy (assuming them as foreign actors), indirect means not paying to the Holy Roman Empire, which was a great source of revenue of the Empire. Such losses needed to be addressed, which resulted then in political engineering by help of religious excuses to justify the cause of fighting a brutal war.

Social:

         Since it was the era after the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation, which on a large scale altered the way of thinking of the Europeans and also their way of living their lives on the handmade laws of the Catholic Church due to which the Church lost the dominancy over many of the people in Europe. That teachings of the previous movements of seeking direct relationship between the individual and God, and also the injustices made by Church’s several abuses, the economic torture by which encouraged them to resist. Its output is certainly seen before civil wars and after civil wars and also seen in the so called 1st phase of Thirty years’ war, Bohemian phase, when in 1618 the three Catholic officials were thrown from a top-floor window of Prague Castle by an angry mob of Bohemian Protestant activists, called as Defenestration  of Prague and it was also a flash point when The war started and lasted for thirty years.

Conclusion:

        At the end we can not say that the War was caused by only one of these causes because, every one of the causes justifies its significance itself by historical arguments and proofs that let us conclude that all the causes had their own role in their phases whether it was the Political Balance of Power or the religious conflict of Catholicism and Protestantism or Economical benefits or a Social aggression. However, the war ended that brought robbery, rape, murder, starvation, and disease to Europe. Which finally ended with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Austria was defeated, and its hopes for control over a Catholic Europe came to nothing. The Peace of Westphalia set the religious and political boundaries for Europe for the next two centuries. In terms of religion, Europe was now made up of a Protestant north and a Catholic south, an orientation that still exists today. The right of German kingdoms to determine their religion was re-established, but this did not extend to individuals.

                                                                                                                            Author:  Abdul Wakeel.