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| 2. The Thirty Years' War |
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| The Thirty Years' War is generally divided into four periods, which were properly as many different wars. The first two, the Bohemian and the Danish, had a predominantly religious character; they developed from a revolt in Bohemia into a general conflict of Catholic Europe with Protestant Europe. The third and fourth conflicts, the Swedish and the French-Swedish, were primarily political struggles, wars directed against the power of the Habsburg house and wars of conquest by Sweden and France, fought on German soil. | 1 |
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| a. The Bohemian Period, 1618–25 |
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| Origin of the war: Closing of a (Protestant) Utraquist church in the territory of the abbot of Braunau and destruction of another in a city of the archbishop of Prague. The irritation of the Bohemian Protestants was increased by the transference of the administration to ten governors, seven of whom were Catholics. Meeting of the defensors and revolt in Prague, headed by Count Matthias von Thurn. | 2 |
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| 1618, May 23 |
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| Defenestration of Prague. The governors, Martinitz and Slawata, were thrown from a window in the palace of Prague. They fell 50 feet into a ditch but escaped with their lives. The rebels then appointed 30 directors. The Protestant Union sent Count Peter Ernst Mansfeld to their aid, and from Silesia and Lusatia came troops under Margrave John George of Jägerndorf. The imperial forces were defeated by Mansfeld and Thurn. | 3 |
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| 1619–37 |
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| FERDINAND II. Thurn marched upon Vienna. The Austrian Estates, for the most part Protestant, threatened to join the Bohemians and made rough demands upon Ferdinand, who, by his courage and the arrival of a few troops, was rescued from a dangerous situation. Thurn, who arrived before Vienna shortly afterward, was soon obliged to retire. Ferdinand went to Frankfurt, where he was elected emperor by the other six electors. | 4 |
| Meanwhile, in 1618, the Bohemian Estates deposed Ferdinand from the throne of Bohemia and gave the crown to Frederick V, son-in-law of James I of England and elector palatine. He became head of the Protestant Union and of the German Calvinists, but because he survived as king of Bohemia only through the winter of 1619–20, he is often known as the Winter King. | 5 |
| Thurn, for the second time before Vienna, allied with Bethlen Gabor (i.e., Gabriel Bethlen), prince of Transylvania (Nov. 1619). Cold, want, and the inroad of an imperial partisan in Hungary caused a retreat. | 6 |
| Ferdinand leagued himself with (1) Maximilian, duke of Bavaria, head of the Catholic League, who helped him subdue the Austrian estates; (2) Spain (Spinola invaded the County Palatine; Treaty of Ulm, July 3, 1620; neutrality of the Protestant Union secured); and (3) the Lutheran elector of Saxony, who resubjugated Lusatia and Silesia. Maximilian of Bavaria, with the army of the league commanded by Tilly (Jan Tserkales, baron von Tilly, in Brabant, 1559–1632), marched to Bohemia and joined the imperial general Buquoy. They were victorious in the BATTLE OF THE WHITE MOUNTAIN (Nov. 8, 1620), over the troops of Frederick V, under the command of Christian of Anhalt. Frederick was put under the ban and his lands confiscated; he himself fled to Holland. Subjugation of the Bohemians, destruction of the royal charter, execution of the leading rebels, extirpation of Protestantism in Bohemia. Afterward, violent counter-reformation in Austria, and, with less violence, in Silesia. | 7 |
| Dissolution of the Protestant Union and transfer of the seat of war to the Palatinate, which was conquered in execution of the imperial ban by Maximilian's general, Tilly, aided by Spanish troops under Spinola. | 8 |
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