Conflict in the Holy Roman Empire 1500-1650

“The Adventurer is within us, and he contests for our favour with the social man we are obliged to be. These two sorts of life are incompatibles; one we hanker after, the other we are obliged to. There is no other conflict so deep and bitter as this.”

- William Bolitho, Introduction to Twelve Against the Gods

In order to analyse conflict during this period I found it necessary to focus on two major conflicts both of which, I feel, encompass and define conflict in the Holy Roman Empire. Conflict is not necessarily manifested on the battlefield. It can be seen in scholarly and political debates, through propaganda, through religion and all layers of society. While researching my essay I became evident that the motives behind these two wars were more or less the same as for other conflicts at this time. Initially I sought to analyse constitutional conflict and religious conflict separately, but it soon became clear that there was no need to do this as they can be explained in the context of both the German Peasants war and the Thirty Years war. Through explaining the reasons behind these wars I was able to in turn assess other conflicts and tensions in society.

I found three prevalent themes in writing this essay. Social conflict, which is dealt mostly in the context of the peasant’s war, religious conflict which naturally occurs throughout and becomes worse as our period progresses and of course constitutional conflict. It was through the latter that scholars have sought to answer the question of what the Holy Roman Empire was.

The German Peasants Revolt of 1525

The causes of the German peasants revolt are numerous but it would be fair to say that they are primarily social. In order to fully understand the cause of this war in this light it is necessary to look as far back as the Black Death. The population of Europe in 1350 declined sharply and continued to decline until 1400.  There was also a climate change in the 14^th century called the “little ice age”. Demographic instability combined with less than favourable climatic effects had pervasive economic effects. People abandoned their small rural hamlets, and migrated to larger towns and thence to cities. Arable land contracted; forest waste and meadow expanded.

However in 1450 this trend began change again and population growth had at last gathered momentum. People moved back into the small villages of the countryside. With an increased labour force the agricultural wage fell. As a result the conditions of the well-to-do peasants and landlords improved while the conditions of all those who relied on earning a wage by their labour to buy their daily bread, whether they lived in the city or the countryside, deteriorated.

The period also witnessed a sharpening of class interests and distinctions.[i] Highest in the social hierarchy were the largest and wealthiest landlords, the territorial princes and the church. Next were the lesser, localized nobles, who were tenured to the territorial princes. Beneath these were the peasants. Typically, they did not own land, but held tenure from the landlord. With the increase in population many of the peasants became displaced because they lacked a claim to inheritance. This gave rise to even greater tensions in society. Added to this were factors such as excessive rents and death taxes. These were addressed by the peasants in the 12 Memmingen Articles. Feudalism had seen the peasants consistently burdened with excessive “serf labour, dues, ground rents, land sale taxes, death taxes protection moneys and so on”[ii] according to Frederick Engels in his book on the war. In it, he championed the Peasant War as a significant but unsuccessful social and political revolution. 

Also important was the fact that the lords had begun to take over the commons in an attempt to consolidate their land thus displacing even more peasants. Here the issue of the ‘law’ applied was raised. The old law was essentially the feudal law laid down by the landholder’s generations before, and which could differ from place to place. As Weick points out “it could not serve as a law for an increasingly mobile people”[iii]. The new law which the princes had been implementing was a ‘common imperial and ecclesiastical law’ or the Roman law, as it became known.  The flexible approach of this law tended to favour the princes however, creating even more tensions. By the summer of 1524, the situation had become so bad that many lords attempted to restrict assembly as much as possible- popular festivals, village gatherings and even weddings were suppressed.

The first signs of real rebellion came at Stuhlingen in the Schwartzwald under Count Sigmund of Lupfen. There was also an anti-tithe rebellion at the same time in Nuremburg. Here the response of the town council was the even stricter enforcement of the tithes, naturally worsening the situation. In the autumn that followed there were rebellions at Lake Constance with the Swabian League (peace-keeping political alliance) attempting to muster a response. The primary reason for the war lasting to  this stage was that most of Charles V’s armies were away in Italy. It was not until February that they were able to return home and launch a successful counter-attack.

The situation deteriorated by wintertime, and it was around this time that a man called Thomas Muntzer began to surface. Thomas Muntzer was perhaps the primary individual behind the religious drive of the rebellion and justification for the rebellion, and he was viciously attacked by Luther when the latter decided to side with the nobles. His was a model of equality based on “Divine Law”, an egalitarian order in which all property was held in common. Essentially it was a religious communism which was strictly in accordance with the scripture. Historians differ about the role that he played in the revolution. Engels claims that Muntzer was “the centre of the entire revolutionary movement of southwest Germany”[iv]. Perez Zagorin however refutes this, calling him a “great simplifier”[v] An activist who fought for what Zagorin claimed was and unspecified cause. Roland H. Bainton, a biographer of Luther, accepts that Muntzer was important but stresses only Luther could have “conceived and carried through a constructive plan for adjusting the peasant to the new political and economic order…” [vi]

In February of 1525, the commoners of Memmingen in South West Germany along with burghers and guilds men all met to draft the 12 Articles. Fundamental to them was the belief that the ultimate source of morality and justice, came from the Holy Scripture.

The main phase of the rebellion began around this time. The peasants were extremely well organised, electing sergeants and commanders but where they failed was that they used a system of rotating shifts for soldiers of a few weeks at a time. This system allowed half the soldiers to be in the village, while the other half could be out fighting. The obvious drawback to this system was that it did not allow the soldiers to build up sufficient military experience. Also a weak point was the fact that they were not often properly armed, with most weapons being merely converted farm equipment. The lack of central target and inability to launch successful counter-attacks were the other failures of their campaign. Indeed much of this can be attributed to bad decisions made due to religious belief.

An example of this would be at Frankenhausen. When the peasant force mustered by Muntzer was met by an Imperial force, the peasants were assured of negotiation if they agreed to hand over Muntzer. While they were deliberating, a rainbow appeared over the sky – taken by the peasants as a sign that God endorsed their banner. The peasant army charged the field and was butchered, losing roughly 5,000 men against the Imperial army, which only lost six. Muntzer was captured and tortured to extract a confession, and then executed. [vii]

From mid-March to mid-May the revolt spread north of the Danube and on to Franconia. From then until mid-May it moved to Wurtemburg. By the summer it had reached Saxony. In fact, in the entire German speaking south, only the forest Cantons of Bavaria and central Switzerland remained entirely untouched by the rebellion. The turning point came with the return of the Landsknecte mercenaries from Italy who were initially reluctant to fight their “brothers” but when the peasants rejected them they sided with the nobles. It is estimated that nearly 100,000 peasants lost their lives in the revolt itself.

The Thirty Years War and it Causes

Among the conflicts in the period 1500 – 1650 the thirty years war was undoubtedly the largest and perhaps the most interesting. Yet despite the size of the war, it probably achieved the least out of all the conflicts, when we view it in retrospect. Ronald Asch analyses the origins of this conflict threefold; Religion, Law and Politics. He shows how many of the difficulties stem form the Peace of Augsburg of 1555. The principle of cuius regio, eius religio only served to heighten divisions, in that they isolated minorities and led to much confusion as some territories changed religion nearly three times in a hundred years. Asch shows how it led to disputes in that it    “could only work if the domestic disputes of the individual territories could be clearly separated form the political problems of the empire. It was difficult for the secular principalities, it was all but impossible for the ecclesiastical ones, where secular authority was exercised by the bishops and prelates.” [viii]Thus, he says how the religious autonomy of the every prince could never be applied consistently because it was in “many ways incompatible with the special character of the ecclesiastical territories.”

Other difficulties that arose from this settlement included the status of ecclesiastical property. Did the princes have the right to confiscate it? The Imperial Aulic council also gave rise to tensions as it was seen in the eyes of many Protestants as favouring Catholics. This was particularly unjust form their point of view as it was this court that they turned to when they needed to resolve their conflicts. The position of Calvinists was also unclear in that officially the Confessio Augustana  (1530) was the only recognised protestant faith in the empire.  Calvinists claimed that they were as much adherents to the Confessio as the Lutherans and thus entitled to enjoy the protection of the peace of 1555. Tensions grew between the two groups when Lutheran theologians drew up the Formula of Concord (1577-78), a rigidly anti-Calvinist confession of faith, which made compromise between the two groups next to impossible. A factor adding to this was the “growing rigidity of confessional structures and of religious attitudes” [ix]which was part of the wider process of ‘confessionalisation’. This, Asch claims had an effect on all aspects of life from education to culture, politics and law.

Constitutional conflict was particularly prevalent throughout this period. This focused on two issues 1) the position of the emperor and 2) the character of the Empire itself. For the agreement of 1555 to work one had to have a neutral authority supervising its implementation. Yet this was far from the case. Maximillian II as Asch claims, gave some sympathy to Protestantism, while Rudolf II gave his support to the Counter-Reformation.  A debate arose therefore over the powers of the emperor. Catholics were inclined to stress the emperor’s personal authority, stemming from the fact that most Catholic rulers had looked to the emperor in the past for personal protection. While Protestants, especially Lutherans, had not wholly rejected the emperors authority, (often firmly committed to the Empire and its institutions) the princes had been accused of undermining the emperors authority. The “shift in the secular symbolism” to which Wilson refers had not yet taken place. [x]On an international level Wilson makes the interesting point that the “emperor’s position as supreme monarch was eroded by the assumption of an imperial title by other rulers”[xi], pointing to the Sultan and Peter the Great.

The question of whether or not the empire was a monarchy or not attracted a multitude of views. Asch quotes Jean Bodin as saying that the Empire was a mere aristocracy and not a monarchy while pointing out that the empire could hardly claim to be a successor of the old Roman empire if this was the case. Most theorists continued to class the empire as a monarchy at this time. In the final resort they “saw the constitution of the Empire as a mixture between aristocracy and monarchy” The right of resistance which had come up time and time again during the reformation began to surface in a legal context. Thinkers like Theodor Reinking strongly refuted the monarchist claims of the empire. Indeed as Wilson points out the important decisions affecting the lives of all were only held to be binding if they had been taken with the consent of the representatives of the key social estates. [xii]

Wilson identifies three strands of federalism being – princely territorial, aristocratic and proto-democratic, or radical. The very dynamic nature of the empire makes it difficult to identify one common strand throughout the period, with one often presiding over the other but always at conflict with each other. Asch seems to place a lot of emphasis on this point as a possible cause saying, “ when open war broke out it was very much a war about the interpretation of law.” [xiii]

Dynastic rivalries played a large role leading up to the war. Many princes were dissatisfied at with the status quo and the position assigned to them under the existing political framework. According to the official hierarchical order Bavaria remained a second rate power, as it did not belong to the exclusive circle of prince electors. Yet the duke of Bavaria was one of the few who could count on a regular surplus in his duchy’s budget. Along with the numerous lands he held this made him potentially one of the most powerful rulers in the Empire.

There also became a great need at the time for the formation of confessional alliances. This was highlighted in the case of the Elector Palatine who was one of the more powerful German princes in the fifteenth century but had witnessed his power deteriorate, partly for confessional reasons and partly because the institutions of the empire offered the smaller estates of the empire a greater chance to maintain their independence. Socially and economically, Asch concludes that it is difficult to establish a clear correlation between such trends and the political crises that led to the outbreak of the war.

The War

“The opposition between the interests of the house of Hapsburg and of the German Nation, and between the old and new faith, led to a bloody catastrophe… when the war ended, there was little remaining of the great nation… that which here will be depicted… is a sad and joyless time” -Gustav Freytag[xiv]

Although the war itself had many issues and historians dispute the above statement, it may be considered mainly a struggle of German Protestant princes and foreign powers (France, Sweden, Denmark, England, the United Provinces) against the unity and power of the Holy Roman Empire. (Represented by the Hapsburgs) allied with the Catholic princes. Despite disagreements the war can be considered to have four main phases.

1.  The Bohemian Phase (1618-25).  In 1618 in Bohemia there was a Protestant Rebellion against the Habsburg monarchy that ruled there. The Bohemian Slavs had been traditionally against the Holy Roman Empire, as we had previously seen in the Hussite Wars of the 15^th century. The rebellion was quickly put down by Catholic forces (namely the Holy Roman Emperor–Ferdinand II) who wiped out Protestantism in Bohemia through forcible conversions and the activities of militant Jesuit missionaries. However, the War did not end at this stage as outside forces keep it going. Protestants, particularly in Germany, identified with the Bohemian rebellion, and united against the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II.

2. The Danish Phase 1625-9 Denmark and its Protestant king, Christian IV, believed that as Protestantism was wiped out in Bohemia, Ferdinand II would try to do the same thing across the Empire. So, Christian IV sent troops into Germany in support of the Protestant cause and also in the hopes of expanding Danish power. 

“He lived in the midst of his grand designs, in which…. The public interest was mixed up with his private aims, though if we do not misunderstand him, the former predominated” - Leopold Von Ranke on Wallenstein [xv]

Christian XI’ s Protestant armies were decisively beaten by the Catholic imperial army led by Albert of Wallenstein, a mercenary general who had fought for Ferdinand in the Bohemian phase of the war.  It was at this point in the war that the Holy Roman Empire’s Catholic forces were at the peak of their power, and throughout the Holy Roman Empire, religious oppression increased.  Only Lutherans and Catholics were allowed to practice (not Calvinists, Anabaptists, or Hussites), and religious tensions were on the rise.

3) Swedish phase 1630-35: This part of the war began with the entry of Gustavus Adolphus into the war.  Adolphus was the Swedish king and a devout Lutheran who intervened to support the oppressed Protestants within the Holy Roman Empire.

Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister of the king of France (Louis XIII) subsidized Adolphus’s military.  Why would the minister of a Catholic sovereign subsidize a Protestant King?  The answer is perhaps that France did not want to see the Holy Roman Empire or the Habsburgs become too powerful. Adolous Huxley says of Richelieu;

“Richelieu was eaten up by a consuming lust for power… everything he did was planned and calculated for the sole purpose of bringing, not indeed the greatest happiness to the greater number…and the greatest glory to France”-Adlous Huxley[xvi]

During this stage of the war, the sack of Magdeburg occurred on May 20, 1631.  Under the direction of Cardinal Tilly, Catholic Imperial forces seized it, knowing full well that Swedish forces were on the way to save the city.  When Magdeburg fell, it was stormed by infuriated soldiers and the entire city was destroyed. 

4) 1635–1648 the Swedish/French/Spanish phase Sweden’s armies were still being subsidized by France, and the latter along with Spain now took advantage of the chaos in Germany and the Holy Roman Empire, and competed with each other for territory there. This was the worst phases of the war, as the discipline in the armies disintegrated.  Most members of the armies were mercenaries and only interested in looting and sacking.

A novel written by Jacob Christian von Grimmelshausen by the name of Simplicius Simplicissimus tells the story of an innocent child brought into contact with life through his experiences of the Thirty Years’ War. The novel traces the development of a human soul against the depraved background of a Germany riven by war, depopulation, cruelty, and fear.

France and Spain were more or less evenly matched, and so the war
dragged on, as neither side had the resources to win a quick, decisive victory.  Finally the exhausted parties declared peace in 1648 at Westphalia.

The treaty’s contents were as follows. Westphalia recognized Calvinism in the Empire, and said that the treaty of Augsburg of 1555 should stand permanently.  The north of the Empire as before tended to remain Protestant, and the south was Catholic as before the war. So the Thirty Year’s War settled little in here with no great religious gains for either side.

In fact the Treaty of Westphalia recognized the sovereign, independent authority of the German princes.  Each ruler could govern his particular territory and make war and peace as well. With power in the hands of more than 300 princes, with no central government, courts, etc, the disintegration of the Holy Roman Empire was complete, and after 1648, it was really no longer a viable political unit.

The population of the Holy Roman Empire went from 21 million in 1618 to 16 million in 1648 due to the war. Germany was materially, morally, and economically destroyed. As the Holy Roman Empire was destroyed, France increased in prestige, and as a condition of the treaty, they received the province of Alsace. There was a strong decline in Spain’s power, as it wasted much resources in fighting the war

Never again would religion play such a role in war.

Also, the destructiveness of the war made people, particularly in the Holy Roman Empire, desire order and security, which was perhaps one of the reasons absolutist rule would eventually rise in the area of the Holy Roman Empire known as Brandenburg-Prussia in the late 17^th and 18^th centuries.

There have been numerous debates as to the nature of the war and various interpretations of its causes. Theodore Rabb’s collection of essays is particularly interesting in this regard. From an economic point of view there are two schools of thought. The first follows the line that economic decline was caused by the war, while the second maintains that the economy was already decline in the years preceding it. (Rabb outlines this in his own essay.) [xvii]

C.V. Wedgwood describes the war as “economically destructive, socially degrading, confused in its causes devious in its course, futile in its result, it is the outstanding example in European history of meaningless conflict.”[xviii] She come under heavy criticism from S.H. Steinberg in his essay entitled The not so destructive, not so religious, and not primarily German war. He puts the misunderstanding of the consensus gentium down to simply a focus on the wrong type of sources.  Historians he says, have tended to view the war in light of deliberate official propaganda and unwittingly one-sided private records. [xix]One of the reasons behind claiming that the war was not so destructive was that battles occurred so sporadically that villages had time to recover over the years. Carl J. Frederick, a professor at Harvard and Heidelberg, counters Steinberg’s other dismissal of religion stating that “liberal historians have found it difficult to perceive that for the Baroque man religion and politics were cut from the same cloth.”[xx] Thus he reaffirms the role of religion in the war.

Conclusion

The role of religion must not be forgotten in the conflict of the Holy Roman Empire, and indeed Europe at this time. Indeed modern historians have tended view politics at this time from their own secular perspective, and have been quite dismissive of its’ importance. Religion and politics were indeed “cut of the same cloth” and both the Peasants war and the Thirty years war showed this quite clearly.

Social factors have shown to be a constant source of tension during our period. Europe at this time was undergoing a massive change from feudalism to modern capitalist and democratic living. To assess the social changes we must look at it in this light. Tensions were bound to surface but the manner in which they were handled was also important. In the Empire conflict was dealt with in a different manner due to the peculiar nature of the empire. It became more complex as there were so many jurisdictions and territories. Added to this was the way in which these territories interacted. Which leads us onto the primary source of conflict in this course itself; what was the Holy Roman Empire?

Historians have for years tried to answer this question, and have for years failed. In essence what they have been doing is trying to simplify something that cannot be simplified. The Empire was unified in the sense that most in the Empire and outside of it recognised it as such. Yet it was not unified in that realistically the power was held in the hands of the princes and not the emperor. This however has itself show to be liable to change, as the emperors exerted different levels of power depending on who was in power at the time. It is this dynamic nature of the empire, along with religious divisions that had led it to be so volatile. It simply could not maintain this uniqueness in an era of emerging modern nation-states, and this in my opinion led to its’ eventual downfall.

“War must be for the sake of peace, business for the sake of leisure, things necessary and useful for the sake of things noble”

-Aristotle, Politics VII xiii