Lessons from the War that Haunted the Founding Fathers
The Thirty Years War was a devastating religious conflict that was fought in Germany but engulfed Europe. It was also one reason separating government and religion became so important.
The Thirty Years War is long forgotten by many Americans, but it’s one of the conflicts the Founding Fathers had on their minds when they drafted the Constitution.
It was a fierce religious conflict that began in Bohemia, the modern-day western Czech Republic. A Catholic emperor tried to impose Catholicism on Bohemia by force, leading to a chain reaction of Protestant resistance and interest from other great powers in Europe. The battleground was modern-day Germany, which was ravaged by thirty years of warfare that spiraled out of control.
C. V. Wedgwood’s book The Thirty Years War isn’t just a recounting of the war’s shifting alliances. Ordinary peasants suffered the most from raiding soldiers, famine, plague, displacement, and death. Wedgwood brings their horrifying experiences to life in gruesome detail, and her disappointment with the most influential generals and leaders is palpable throughout her recounting of the conflict.
But nothing is more striking than her clarity about certain aspects of the Thirty Years War, like the reason Bohemia’s government fell so spectacularly:
“Few men are so disinterested as to prefer to live in discomfort under a government which they hold to be right rather than in comfort under one which they hold to be wrong. Representative government in Bohemia failed because it was signally worse managed than the despotism it replaced, and the Stewarts fell not because Divine Right was unsound but because their government was incompetent.”
That 400-year lesson in the consequences of poor administration is one that American Democrats are trying to apply as they seek paths back to power. Wedgwood has many more lessons in store for the modern political junkie.
What Happens After Victory?
In 1618, the Catholic Emperor Ferdinand sold land that was supposed to be set aside for Protestant churches. Not only did he violate the rights of Protestants to practice in Bohemia, which they had been granted at the time, but this was also a conflict of “the subject against the sovereign.” This meant the princes who fought for political autonomy. The peasants had no rights and would suffer greatly for their absence.
A rebellion broke out during which a Protestant mob threw the extremist Catholic leaders from a castle tower. Incredibly, the Catholic leaders lived, though the rebellion had been completed and a Protestant government created to resume civil administration. However, Wedgwood explained why the new coalition splintered:
“The pressure which had forced the various parties to combine could not last and, as the immediate crisis lessened, the united front resolved into its component parts. Was it a revolt purely for religious liberty, or for national freedom, or for the rights of the subject against the sovereign? The truth was that nobody knew, and each party was prepared to sacrifice the interests of the other to further its own.”
These were not small ideological differences. If the Emperor had granted the Protestants their churches, those motivated by the issue of land alienation would have been up in arms, even if those fighting for the right to practice their religion were satisfied. The issue of whether Bohemia should even remain part of the Holy Roman Empire was another point of tension entirely.
The soldier who led the rebellion failed to achieve political unity, the agreements with the region’s Catholics fell apart, and there was no unified front to stop the Emperor’s army from crushing the rebellion.
Meanwhile, Europe’s Protestant powers looked on in horror at what happened to their co-religionists. European kings also thought out how conflicts in Germany would affect their own military advantages outside of it. Control of rivers like the Rhine and Elbe became contentious strategic issues in the later stages of the war, issues that had traveled far from the original source of conflict.
Less a Turning Point than a Warning
By the war’s end, the religious character of the war had become secondary to ordinary political concerns. The Catholic Emperor and the Pope turned on each other about halfway through, and Pope Urban VIII turned to Protestant allies in his fights against Emperor Ferdinand.
All the while, massive armies stripped farmlands of wheat, starving peasants who hadn’t been slaughtered by cold or hungry soldiers on the losing sides. Disease spread unchecked by both armies and livestock. By Wedgwood’s account, none of this devastation accomplished anything, except “a rearrangement of the European map ready for the next war.”
Wedgwood’s summary view of the Thirty Years War’s legacy is blistering and worth ending on:
“The Peace [of Westphalia] has been described as marking an epoch in European history and it is commonly taken to do so. It is supposed to divide the period of religious wars from that of national wars, the ideological wars from the wars of mere aggression. But the demarcation is as artificial as such arbitrary divisions commonly are. Aggression, dynastic ambition, and fanaticism are all alike present in the hazy background behind the actual reality of the war, and the last of the wars of religion merged insensibly into the pseudo-national wars of the future.”