Catholic League, the (German)

The Peace of Westphalia largely settles German affairs for the next century and a half.

It ends religious conflicts between the states and includes official recognition of Calvinism.

Its signatories alter the boundaries of the empire by recognizing that Switzerland and the Netherlands have become sovereign states outside the empire.

Portions of Alsace and Lorraine go to France.

Sweden receives some territory in northern Germany, which in the long run it cannot retain.

Brandenburg becomes stronger, as do Saxony and Bavaria.

In addition, states within the empire acquire greater independence with the right to have their own foreign policies and form alliances, even with states outside the empire.

As a result of these changes, the Holy Roman Empire loses much of what remains of its power and will never again be a significant actor on the international stage.

The Habsburgs will continue to be crowned emperors, but their strength will derive from their own holdings, not from leadership of the empire.

Germany is less united in 1648 than in 1618, and German particularism has been strengthened once again.

The anti-Habsburg rebellions reflect the rising tensions between Catholics and Protestants in the early 1600s.

Proponents of the Counter-Reformation, often operating under Habsburg protection, are reaping the fruits of a generation of work: monastic life is reviving, Catholic intellectual life is regaining confidence, and prominent figures are returning to the Catholic Church.

As a result, Protestants are increasingly on the defensive. The German princes split into two military camps based on religious affiliation: the Evangelical Union and the Catholic League.

A Bohemian diet in August 1619 elects as king the Protestant elector-prince of the Palatinate, Frederick V, and the conclave of elector-princes elect Ferdinand II (r. 1619-37) Holy Roman Emperor.

On November 8, 1620, a force combining troops from the Catholic League and the imperial army decisively defeats Frederick V's largely mercenary force at the Battle of White Mountain.

Throughout the 1620s, the combined imperial and Catholic forces maintain the offensive in Germany, enabling Ferdinand to establish his authority in the Hereditary Lands, Bohemia, and Hungary.

Ferdinand, equating Protestantism with disloyalty, imposes religious restrictions throughout the Hereditary Lands.

In 1627 he implements a long-planned decree to make Bohemia a one-confession state: Protestants are given six months to convert or leave the country.

In the face of a strong Hungarian nationalist movement headed by the Calvinist prince of Transylvania, however, Ferdinand can maintain his hold on Royal Hungary only by confirming guarantees of religious freedom.

The Thirty Years' War is finally ended in 1648 by the Peace of Westphalia.

The treaty guarantees the religious and political constitution of the Holy Roman Empire, giving the German princes the sovereign right to settle the religious question in their respective territories.

France also achieves its main war aim because the costly war and the concessions to the princes effectively stop the Habsburgs from transforming the Holy Roman Empire into an absolutist state under their direction.

Nonetheless, in their own lands, the Habsburgs enjoy greater political and religious control than before the war: they have gained loyal new followers from among the nobles by redistributing estates confiscated from rebels, and they are free to enforce religious conformity, which they d0 based on the model applied earlier in Bohemia.

Foreign intervention by Denmark, Sweden, and France keep Ferdinand from bringing the war to a conclusion through military power and also frustrate his efforts in the mid-1630s to reach a compromise with the Protestant German princes.

The subsequent military campaigns of the Thirty Years' War, however, will only marginally affect those portions of the Habsburg territories that are part of modern Austria.

The Thirty Years' War results from a local rebellion, but the admixture of religion transforms it into a European conflict that lasts for more than a generation and devastates Germany.

In 1618 Bohemian nobles oppose the decision of Emperor Matthias (r. 1608-19) to designate his Catholic cousin Ferdinand king of Bohemia.

Instead, the nobles elect Frederick of the Palatinate, a German Calvinist, to be their king.

In 1620, in an attempt to wrest control from the nobles, imperial armies and the Catholic League under General Johann von Tilly defeat the Protestant Bohemians at the Battle of White Mountain near Prague.

The Protestant princes, alarmed by the strength of the Catholic League and the possibility of Roman Catholic supremacy in Europe, decide to renew their struggle against Emperor Matthias.

They are aided by France, which, although Roman Catholic, is opposed to the increasing power of the Habsburgs, the dynastic family to which Matthias and Ferdinand belong.

Despite French aid, by the late 1620s imperial armies of Emperor Ferdinand II (r. 1619-37) and the Catholic League, under the supreme command of General Albrecht von Wallenstein, have defeated the Protestants and secured a foothold in northern Germany.

The Thirty Years' War has had a devastating effect on the German people.

Historians have usually estimated that between one-fourth and one-third of the population perished from direct military causes or from illness and starvation related to the war.

Some regions were affected much more than others.

For example, an estimated three-quarters of Wurttemberg's population died between 1634 and 1639.

Overall losses were serious enough that historians believe that it took a century after the Thirty Years' War for Germany's population to reach the level of 1618.

Germany's economy was also severely disrupted by the ravages of the Thirty Years' War.

The war exacerbated the economic decline that had begun in the second half of the sixteenth century as the European economy shifted westward to the Atlantic states—Spain, France, England, and the Low Countries.

The shift in trade means that Germany is no longer located at the center of European commerce but on its fringes.

The thriving economies of many German towns in the late Middle Ages and first half of the sixteenth century gradually dry up, and Germany as a whole enters a long period of economic stagnation that will end only in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Ferdinand, in his time of triumph, overreaches himself by publishing in 1629 the Edict of Restitution, which requires that all properties of the Roman Catholic Church taken since 1552 be returned to their original owners.

The edict renews Protestant resistance.

Catholic powers also begin to oppose Ferdinand because they fear he is becoming too powerful.

Invading armies from Sweden, secretly supported by Catholic France, march deep into Germany, winning numerous victories.

The Catholic general Tilly and Sweden's Protestant king, Gustavus Adolphus, are killed in separate battles.

Wallenstein is assassinated on Emperor Ferdinand's orders because he fears his general is becoming too powerful.

After the triumph of the Spanish army over Swedish forces at the Battle of Nordlingen in 1634, a truce is arranged between the emperor and some of the German princes under the Treaty of Prague.

France now invades Germany, not for religious reasons but because the House of Bourbon, the dynastic family of several French and Spanish monarchs, wishes to ensure that the House of Habsburg does not become too powerful.

This invasion is illustrative of the French axiom that Germany must always remain divided into small, easily manipulated states. (Indeed, preventing a united Germany will remain an objective of French foreign policy even late in the twentieth century.)

Because of French participation, the war continues until the Peace of Westphalia is signed in 1648.

Religious controversy has become so obstructive by the first decades of the seventeenth century that at times the Reichstag cannot conduct business.

In 1608, for example, Calvinists walk out of the body, preventing the levying of a tax to fight a war against the Turks.

In the same year, the Evangelical Union is established by a few states and cities of the empire to defend the Protestant cause.

A number of Roman Catholic states counter in 1609 by forming the Catholic League.

Although both bodies are less concerned with a sectarian war than with the specific aims of their member states, their formation is an indication of how easily disputes can acquire a religious aspect.