When did the 30 Years' War break out?

abreusoleidy

@abreusoleidy · 12 Jul 2021

When did the 30 Years' War break out?

#history
This afternoon after reading one of my favorite books the 1001 Why? In one of his stories I was able to delight myself reading about history, since it is one of my passions to read articles that talk about history and the one that impacted me today, the war of thirty years and a special reason why I decided to share with you a small part of this historical process that Central Europe experienced.

The 30 Years' War was a political-religious war that took place in Central Europe and in which the main European powers of the first half of the 17th century participated. It started in 1618 and ended in 1648.

It began as a religious clash between Protestants and Catholics in the territory of the Holy Roman Empire, but as it spread, it dragged the main European powers of the first half of the 17th century into the battlefield.

In this war, two big sides faced:

• Catholics: made up of the Holy Roman Empire Germanic, Spain and the German Catholic League. The leaders of this bloc were Emperor Ferdinand II of Habsburg and Count Duke of Olivares, valid for the king of Spain, Philip IV.

• Protestants: composed of Bohemia, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, the Evangelical Union and Transylvania. In addition, they were supported by France, which was still a Catholic country, engaged in the war to fight the Habsburg dynasty, which ruled the Holy Empire. The leaders of this bloc were King Frederick I of Bohemia, King Christian IV of Denmark, Swedish King Gustavo Adolfo II and Cardinal Richelieu, Prime Minister of the King of France, Louis XIII.

The episode that triggered the war was the “defenestration of Prague”, an event that took place on 23 May 1618 in Bohemia. The war ended in 1648, with the signing of the Peace of Westphalia.

The main consequences of the 30 Years' war were as follows:

• France, victorious, became the main European power. Spain, for its part, was weakened by the loss of Portugal (1640) and that of the United Provinces of the Netherlands (1648), which became independent. The war between France and Spain lasted until 1659 and ended with Peace in the Pyrenees, which consecrated French supremacy and Spanish decadence.

• The Swiss Confederation (present-day Switzerland) separated from the Holy Empire and was recognized as an independent State.

• The Holy Empire maintained its federal political organization and elective monarchy, as it was before the war. In this way, the Habsburg project to unify the Empire and centralize its power failed.

• Confirmed the validity of the principle known as “who is the region, is religion”. This enshrined the freedom of German princes to choose the religion of their territories according to their conscience, but it meant the obligation of their subjects to profess that religion or emigrate.

• The deaths of 4,000,000 people between civilians and military. The most affected State was the Holy Empire, which lost 30% of its inhabitants and 50% of its male population. Brandenburg suffered the biggest demographic catastrophe, which lost 50% of its population.