The Thirty Years' War

The Thirty Years' War
Protestants Revolt
~ Ferdinand II was head of the Hapsburg family.
~ He closed some Protestant churches, the Protestants revolted.
~ He sent an army to crush the revolt.
~ The war was divided into 2 main phases: the phase of Hapsburg triumphs and Hapsburg defeats.
Hapsburg Triumphs
~ The Thirty Years' War lasted from 1618 to 1648.
~ Armies from Austria and Spain crushed the troops hired by the protestant prince.
~ Ferdinand paid his army of 125,000 men by allowing plunder, or rob, German villages.
~This huge army destroyed everything in its path.
Hapsburg Defeats
~ 1630 the Protestant Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden shifted the tide of war.
~ They drove the Hapsburg armies out of northern Germany.
~Gustavus Adolphus was killed in a battle in 1632.
~ Cardinal Richelieu and Cardinal Mazarin of France dominated the remaining years of the war.
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~The cardinals feared the Hapsburgs more than the Protestants.
~They did not want European rulers to have as much power as the French king.
~ 1635, Richelieu sent French troops to join the German and Swedish Protestants in their struggle against the Hapsburg armies.

Peace of Westphalia
~ The war did great damage to Germany. ~Its population dropped from 20 million to about 16 million.
~ Trade and agriculture were disrupted, and Germany’s economy was ruined. ~Germany had a long, difficult recovery from this devastation.
~That is a major reason it did not become a unified state until the 1800s.
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~1648 the war ended.
~ The treaty had important consequences:
*weakened the states of Spain and Austria
* Strengthened France by making it German territory. *made German princes independent of the Holy Roman emperor.
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* Ended religious wars in Europe
* Introduced a new method of peace negotiation whereby all participants meet to settle the problems of a war and decide the terms of peace.