Thirty Years War Research Paper

During the age of religious wars from 1517 to 1648, Europe struggled regularly between Catholicism and Protestantism. Though conflicts occurred separately and centered upon regions such as France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Bohemia, the wars eventually spread across most of the entire continent. As the forces continued to clash, however, struggles between Catholicism and Protestantism such as the French wars of religion and the Thirty Years’ War died down and new generations of leaders stepped up to the throne. Despite originally taking place as a fiercely passionate religious conflict, the natural continuity of Europe brought that zealous attitude to an end; by 1648, people sought harmony, and the two religions coexisted together. Nevertheless,

The war sparked with the ascension of Ferdinand Habsburg, a devout Catholic, into the then-religiously-tolerant Bohemian throne. Despite agreeing to uphold Protestant religious policies, Ferdinand wasted no time in violating these same policies, prompting the Defenestration of Prague, which in turn acted as the trigger for a Habsburg-wide Protestant revolt. After gaining control of the government, those same Protestants declared Ferdinand deposed and elected Frederick V, a Calvinist, in his place—but it was an action made in vain. When Ferdinand’s Catholic forces annihilated Frederick’s Protestant ones in the Battle of White Mountain, Bohemia’s Protestants were rooted out, permanently assigning it its Catholic state. With this, the rest of Europe realized the danger in the Habsburgs’ aggressive Catholic advance, worsened when Ferdinand announced that because the Peace of Augsburg made no mention of Calvinists, they would no longer be tolerated in his empire. His proclamation turned Protestants against him immediately, uniting them against Catholicism. Protestant unity climaxed when the Habsburgs destroyed the town of Magdeburg with a cruelty unforeseen until then. As the information spread internationally, Protestants found a martyr to bolster