MACHIAVELLIAN PRINCES IN
THE ERA OF THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR
France and Sweden won the 30 Years’ War because
they succeeded best at developing more effective
methods of royal administration and taxation, and at
analyzing foreign policy in purely rational terms.
The Austrian Habsburgs based their war effort largely
on an appeal to solidarity among all Catholics, but after
1630 they discovered that even the Vatican no longer
took such appeals seriously.
In 1629 King Charles I of England sought to imitate
French methods of government by dissolving
Parliament indefinitely; his course provoked a bloody
Civil War from which Parliament emerged victorious.
The 30 Years’ War, Phase I (1618-1623):
The Bohemian revolt & Catholic conquest of the Palatinate
The 30 Years’ War, Phase II (1625-29):
Denmark intervenes, but Wallenstein marches to the Baltic
Albert of Wallenstein
(1583-1634), Imperial
Generalissimo.
Estates confiscated
from Bohemian rebels
supported his army of
125,000 men.
In the winter of
1633/34 he opened
peace talks on his
own initiative.
Agents of Emperor Ferdinand II burst into the headquarters
of Wallenstein at Eger, February 25, 1634
The Assassination of Generalissimo Wallenstein
(see Friedrich Schiller, Wallenstein Trilogy, 1799)
By agreeing to withdraw his Edict of Restitution,
Ferdinand II achieved reconciliation with most German
Protestants in the Peace of Prague in 1635. Thereafter
France & Sweden fought Austria & Spain on German soil.
Georg Wilhelm of Brandenburg
John George of Saxony
The Count-Duke of
Olivares, chief
minister to King
Philip IV of Spain,
who renewed the
war with the Dutch
and sought to
control the
Rhine Valley.
By 1640 his taxes
drove Portugal and
Catalonia into open
rebellion.
An early and civilized Spanish victory:
The Dutch surrender of Breda, 1625
The Edict of
Nantes (1598)
allowed
Huguenot
garrisons in 20
cities, e.g.,
La Rochelle in
Poitou
Rubens,
Allegory on the
meeting between
Henry IV and
Marie de Medici in
Lyons, 1600
The assassination of
Henry IV in 1610 by
the fanatical
Catholic student,
Francois Ravaillac
Masters of raison d’état:
Cardinal Richelieu
of France (1585-1642);
Axel Oxenstierna (1583-1654),
Chancellor of Sweden
Before France could assist the Protestants in Germany, it
was necessary to crush armed Protestants at home:
King Louis XIII (1610-43)
Siege of La Rochelle, 1627/28
The 30 Years’ War, Phase III (1630-48): France agreed in
1631 to subsidize Sweden & intervened openly in 1635
Louis XIII leads the relief of Corbie in
northeastern France, besieged by the Spanish, 1636
THE ORIGINS OF “ROYAL ABSOLUTISM”
UNDER RICHELIEU AND LOUIS XIII
The Estates-General convened in 1613/14 but never
met thereafter until 1789; the First & Second Estates
accepted this because they remained tax exempt.
Richelieu transferred key administrative tasks from the
provincial “governors” (usually the most powerful lord
in the province) to a new network of “royal
intendants,” i.e., salaried bureaucrats.
Royal courts took over more and more kinds of cases
from manorial courts.
France raised 13 million thaler per year for war in
1635-39 and 16 million in 1640-45. These taxes did
provoke peasant revolts, but nothing like those in
Spain in 1640.
The Battle of Jankov (Bohemia), March 1645,
where Swedish cannon destroyed the Imperials
“The Great European War Ballet” (1647):
176 ambassadors gathered in Münster for peace talks
THE NEW BALANCE OF POWER IN 1648
Already by 1632, Vatican diplomats were instructed
that “the interest of the Roman Church” would better
be served through a “balance of power” than through
victory for any one party.
Sweden originally demanded religious liberty for all
Protestants everywhere, but all other parties rejected
this in favor of adding Calvinism to the list of two
religious confessions that could be embraced by a
member state of the HRE.
Brandenburg, Bavaria, and Sweden gained some
German territory.
Spain made peace with the Netherlands but remained
at war with France.
The Peace of Westphalia, 1648 (Church lands in purple)
Estimated
population loss
in Germany
from
1618 to 1648
King Charles I
of England
(reigned 1625-49),
who dissolved
Parliament
indefinitely in
1629.
Scots riot against imposition of a new Anglican prayer
book in 1637: Scottish victories in the Bishops’ Wars of
1639/40 compelled Charles to convene Parliament.
“King Charles I in the
House of Commons,”
January 1642:
He appeared with an
armed guard and
demanded the arrest of
five MPs (who had
already fled).
The spread of
Parliamentary
control,
1642-45
Oliver Cromwell
(1599-1658),
Puritan leader of the
New Model Army. He
fought in the name of
Parliament but purged
it when it defied him.
The decapitation of Charles I in Whitehall, London, 1649
Frontispiece to Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651):
“Upon earth there is not his like…”
HOBBES’S ARGUMENT FOR
UNRESTRICTED SOVEREIGNTY
Human beings are so aggressive and quarrelsome that
the State of Nature is a war of each against all, where
“the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and
short.”
The instinct of self-preservation should lead us all to
delegate our power to make war to one Sovereign, which
could be EITHER one man, or an elected assembly of
men.
The Sovereign must be granted the final word in
formulating all laws, a monopoly over the use of armed
force, and the right to control the succession.
The Sovereign SHOULD rule equitably, but nobody has a
right to rebel if he does not, because bad government can
never be as bad as the State of Nature.
Many Continental monarchs
became Hobbesian
sovereigns, but England
chose after Cromwell’s death
to restore power-sharing
between King and Parliament
Charles II,
reigned
1640-85
The Palace of Westminster, seat of
Parliament since the 16th century