The Thirty Years War: Ferdinand II Of Bohemia

757 Words2 Pages

Early Modern Essay
The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) first began with when the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II of Bohemia tried to reduce the religious activities of his subjects, provoked rebellion among Protestants. The war involved the strongest powers in europe for example, Sweden, France, Spain and Austria all of them prosecuting campaigns mainly on german land. Mostly known for the cruel wrong doings by mercenary soldiers, ending the war with a couple series of agreements that made up the Peace of Westphalia. The consequense of this adjusted and changed the political and religious map of central Europe, creating the oppertunity for the old centralized Roman Catholic empire to submit to a community of sovereign states. the Holy Roman Empire …show more content…

Directly requesting for aid to the Protestants in the empire and to the bigger foreign Protestant states. For example, the Dutch Republic and denmark. Ferdinand responds with asking bavaria who is leading the German Catholics and spain. In the following effort, Ferdinand that got elected as Roman Emperor in 1619 and his allies won a important victory at White Mountain (1620) which allowed the annihilation of Protestantism in most parts of the Hapsburg lands. Confident by this success, Ferdinand turned in 1621 against Bohemia’s Protestant supporters in Germany. even though having the help from Britain, Denmark, and the Dutch Republic they lost aswell and by 1629 imperial armies commanded by Albrecht von Wallenstein killed most of Protestant Germany and a big part of Denmark. Ferdinand then distrubited the Edict of Restitution, taking back lands in the empire that belongs to the Catholic Church that had been captured and separated from religion by Protestant …show more content…

Trouble arose when men had problems locating resources. After time, came France’s victory over the Spaniards at Rocroi (1643) thus Sweden’s defeat of the Imperialists at Jankau (1645) forcing the Hapsburgs to make compromises that in 1648 led to the Peace of Westphalia, which fixed most of the larger issues.
The Treaty is one of the most important documents in the history of Europe with details of returning the taken territories, information about wrong doing events during the war and the armies would be disbanded and all of the prisoners from war set free. A very important political result of the war and the treaty was that France became a dominant state in continental Europe. The Treaty laid the legal foundations for the modern system of IR.
Things that were new in this war was that it can be called the first modern war. New fighting forces were made like mercenary troops and armed marauders. War became an industry which people could personally gain on and profiteers plundred resources at every given chance. The amountof people kiled was estimated to be around 4-12 milion lives, way more brutal and vicious than any other previous

Open Document