Transcript for:
Thirty Years' War Summary

all right hello there ap euro bears in this recorded slideshow lecture we are going to learn about the 30 years war this was a catastrophic event which did in fact last exactly 30 years it drew in nearly every powerful country in europe with the exception of england although there were plenty of people from the british isles who went to serve as mercenaries during the 30 years war and the 30 years war because it was such a catastrophe in central europe it will have an incredible ripple effect throughout history i will dedicate some time at the end of this lecture talking about some of the long-term consequences of this war but there were a great many consequences to the 30 years war and as i go through the entirety of ap european history or as i go through the entirety of european history for our ap era class i may be referring back to the 30 years war since there was so much that came out of it all right if you look in any european history textbook or any ap euro review book and yeah flip to the section on the 30 years war likely you will see something like this the 30 years war divided up into four phases and indeed these four phases are sort of a nice way to break up the 30 years war and as you can see each of the four phases is identified by a country so one way to think about the 30 years war was it was an international war it was a european war almost all of the 30 years war is going to be fought within the holy roman empire and so it starts off as a war within the holy roman empire so a war of states against states in the holy roman empire but then it draws in these larger more powerful countries like france like sweden like denmark and poor central europe the german-speaking states mostly they become this playground of war for 30 years and it is devastating to the people of the holy roman empire it might be a nice easy fact to remember that during the 30 years war 30 of the german peasants die within the course of these 30 years and so when you look at the four phases what you're looking at are the states that become the chief protagonists during particular times so and i will go over each of these in much greater detail throughout the course of the lecture but to give us an overview right here it starts off in the state of bohemia which is its own kingdom within the holy roman empire and there is a religious dispute that happens there they start to do their own thing in defiance of the holy roman emperor and this conflict lasts two years and so it starts off just this two-year conflict not a 30-year conflict but just a two-year conflict but then the king of denmark tried to get involved and then the holy roman empire fights denmark this particular fight which lasts for four years will have the ultimate result of the holy roman empire once again becoming entirely catholic and so then sweden gets involved because the swedes want to save the protestants of the holy roman empire so the swedish army will come down for the third phase of the 30 years war and then not long after the swedes show up the french get involved in this war first by financing the swedes and then getting involved with their armies directly and when the french army shows up then we have the fourth phrase the french the french phase and that last phase the french phase it's the one that lasts the longest over 10 years now as i go over these four phases it probably does nothing but confuse you because i'm not really giving you that much context behind each of these but i felt the need to start off the 30 years war by describing the four phases since that's what you get with every textbook every review book and it might be helpful after you hear me tell the entire story of the 30 years war to go back and to look at these four phases and you might nod your head and say oh yeah okay that makes sense and it's helpful to understand how the war evolved but starting off right now it probably just seems confusing so let's learn the story so we can understand the breakout of the 30 years war in this year 1618 as being the result of the principal weakness of the peace of augsburg so let's take a moment and go back and revisit the piece of augsburg in the beginning of the 1500s we had the reformation it began in saxony with martin luther some of the important princes and electors of the holy roman empire like philip of hessa and frederick the wise they said we wanted we want to be lutheran now their emperor charles v said no you must all be catholic and the princes that wanted to be lutheran they unified themselves and created an alliance called the schmuckhaultic league charles v gets his imperial army and they fight battles mostly in the 1540s and 1550s that lead to finally what could be considered a lutheran final victory when 55 year old charles v says i'm done fighting and he issues the piece of augsburg to stop the fighting the piece of augsburg one of the most important documents you need to know about in ap european history issued in the year 1555 when of course charles v was 55 years old and it is very important to know the contents of the piece of augsburg which state this within the holy roman empire it is the prince that gets to choose the religion of his people in other words as they said back then whose land whose religion or whose realm whose religion so if the prince or king of your region said we are catholic then you are catholic if the prince or the king said we are lutheran then you are lutheran and those were the only two options catholicism and lutheranism at the time 1555 calvinism was around but it was a newborn religion but remember calvinism becomes the fastest spreading protestant religion of all time so when we get to the 17th century we're gonna start dealing a lot with calvinism okay but back to 1555 let's remember what the principal weakness was of the piece of augsburg and that weakness is this what would happen if you had a prince or a king of a region who according to the piece of augsburg gets to determine the religion of his people but the majority of the people disagree with that religion this is in short what is going to cause the 30 years war and if you remember that first phase is in bohemia that's uh czechia or the czech republic today and it will happen in the year 1618 that there will be a king of bohemia who is himself not a bohemian but he's the king of bohemia and he's going to tell his people you're catholic and the people of bohemia are going to respond no we're not and you're going to have a war and that's what's going to cause the 30 years war but there's a whole story that leads up to 1618 and the breakout of war and and i'm going to give you that background now but the piece of augsburg to reiterate the weakness of the piece of augsburg hopefully it makes sense to you and it is a very important cause of the 30 years war all right so allow me to draw your attention to the western portion of the holy roman empire to a region called the palatinate now today in germany this region is called the rhineland faults area it's a state in germany the rhineland fault state in germany back then it was called the palatinate and today it is right on the border of france and back then it was still culturally close to the french because it absorbed calvinism so much so that in the late 16th century that's the late 1500s the king of the palatinate who is also an elector and the holy roman empire himself becomes a calvinist this was a major move it's a major decision first of all it's in clear violation of the peace of augsburg because the piece of augsburg said no no no you're either a lutheran or you're a catholic that's it you cannot be a calvinist calvinism remember is the radical religion people thought about calvinists back then or at least lutherans and catholics they thought about calvinist calvinism back then as people think of like anarchists today calvinists seem to want to overthrow the entire social system and now you have a king who says my region of the palatinate is going to become cat is going to be is going to be calvinist so yeah he he broke the law but he's also the king who is going to stop him so he gets away with it and the palatinate region in the holy roman empire becomes calvinist now let me take a moment here to clarify something that is contradictory if the calvinist if if they believe in complete equality essentially there's no king but king jesus and every human being on earth is equal then why would a king embrace this faith so here's where it gets weird and contradictory so just sort of use your imagination and work with me here calvinism was so popular with the peasants so in some particular cases like in the palatinate and then also down in navarre in southern france you had situations where kings or princes decided it would be in their best interest to allow their people to embrace this new faith and in all of these cases or at least in paletone and and in navarre in the south of france the royal family themselves saw the more christian elements of calvinism and they embraced their faith the faith themselves but the royal family and the aristocrats of the land they did not overthrow the social system uh you don't have a king saying hey i'm going to renounce my throne and we're going to have a republic here we're going to create like a geneva that never happened so you have kings and aristocrats you have you have royal families and you have aristocratic families that are calvinist that seems to be contradictory and it is but it was something that the majority of the people who lived in those regions at the time were willing to accept so that they could freely practice their faith and they weren't persecuted by catholics or lutherans or whoever else okay so i hope that made sense i may revisit that concept in future lectures okay in the palatinate region there is a beautiful city and it's still a beautiful city today and so that king was king frederick the third of the paleton8 and he helped to establish this city as a great university city in europe and that is the city of heidelberg allow me to take a moment to celebrate our home state there is a heidelberg college here in ohio that of course has very close associations with heidelberg university over in germany and heidelberg the heidelberg university was established as a great catholic i'm sorry not a great catholic that's wrong as a great calvinist university it had a fantastically large library filled with books that would have been illegal in most other places in europe because they were these radical revolutionary texts radical revolutionary calvinist texts so the palatinate is calvinist and the palatinate is getting radical now just to the south of the palatinate there is another very large and powerful but not as powerful german state within the holy roman empire called bavaria bavaria is very catholic it was back then and it still is for the most part today predominantly catholic and catholics obviously don't like lutherans and they really don't like calvinists because they see these calvinists as these radical revolutionaries and bavaria doesn't like the fact that these radicals are right on their border now the bavarians have a king his name is maximilian the first of the wittelsbach dynasty and maximilian the first is a little bit jealous of king frederick iii of the palatinate because the king of the palatinate is an elector of the holy roman empire maximilian the first is not an elector and he would like to become one because that is a very powerful position so let's start here as a place where we can start to have the beginning rumblings of a potential war because if maxwell in the first of bavaria can find an opportunity to go to war with the palatinate take over the palatinate absorb the palatinate or at least at least part of it into bavaria then maximilian the first can become an elector in the holy roman empire and bavaria can become a much stronger state and maybe even maximilian might get a shot at becoming the emperor of the holy roman empire so to review just a little bit here palatinate they're calvinist they're radical just south of them we've got the bavarians they're catholic they see the calvinists at the border as a threat and the king of bavaria could exploit this situation take over the palatinate force them all to be catholic he gets a lot more land becomes an elector can possibly be seen as this incredible catholic hero and maybe even become the next emperor of the holy roman empire all right bavaria is a beautiful state in germany if you ever get a chance to visit it today there's a lot to see there there's a lot of great history there it's right there in the alps in central europe i really do encourage you to visit the city of munich if you ever ever have a chance there is a central cathedral in downtown munich which is exemplary of the baroque art movement in terms of baroque architecture and is clearly a product of the counter-reformation the bavarians showing off that they were not protestant so their cathedral is huge beautiful gaudy filled with intricate elaborate artwork so that when you walk into it you are awed before the power of god which is exactly how a cathedral is supposed to make you feel so now when war finally comes it's this man who will be leading the bavarian forces for the holy roman empire against the protestants and all i want to do right now is just introduce you to him his name is count tilly and he is the commander of the bavarian forces okay so i hope this all makes sense i hope you have a good sort of groundwork for what's going on in the holy roman empire as we go into the early 17th century and as we go into a new century the 1600s we now need to visit this city prague prague is of course the capital city of the kingdom of bohemia which is a state within the holy roman empire now bohemia is a kingdom which means they have their own king but the poor bohemians they haven't had a bohemian king in quite some time really not since the middle ages because they had other kings who were hungarian and throughout the entirety of the 1500s their kings were also the habsburg emperors of the holy roman empire so the king of bohemia is the same individual as the emperor of the holy roman empire now you remember all the emperors of the holy roman empire that we need to know about are habsburgs and the habsburg's hometown is vienna austria they are ethnically germanic and being ethnically germanic being austrian they consider themselves to be ethnically very different from the slavic people of bohemia so typically the habsburg emperors don't really care that much about their kingdom of bohemia they don't spend a lot of time in prague they simply just don't like it even though technically they are the king of bohemia now on the bohemian side of things the poor bohemian people they tried to do their own thing in the early 15th century during the days of jan huss they tried to reform their own own their own church jan huss of course burnt at the stake at the council of constance that led to a series of hussite wars and the holy roman empire crushed the bohemian rebels and now the holy roman emperor is also the king of bohemia even though he typically doesn't like the bohemians suffice it to say that the bohemian people feel like an oppressed people and they naturally become very protective of their culture and part of their culture is a little bit of political radicalism they remember yonhus and just to let you guys know throughout the duration of this course it seems like uh the people of prague in particular are always just a little bit more radical than the rest of europe this actually becomes a topic in some of my last lectures on the collapse of communism in eastern europe there are some incredibly interesting and radical people that come out of prague during that story but now i'm getting way ahead of myself okay so let me take it back to the beginning of the 1600s hopefully you understand the what's going on culturally with bohemia and hopefully you understand the political setup okay holy roman empire emperors habsburgs they don't like the people of bohemia and yet they're the kings of bohemia and then this guy comes along here is one of the most interesting people that i can talk about in ap euro and boy there are a lot of interesting people who talk about an apiero but this guy ranks high in terms of his eccentricity in terms of his weirdness and he was the emperor of the holy roman empire his name was rudolph the second rudolf ii never married but he had a mistress and several illegitimate children rudolph the second if he was around today most likely would be diagnosed with depression or bipolar disorder rudolph the second a genuine lover of animals so if you remember prague castle broadcastle is by square footage square footage the biggest castle in the entire world i think i mentioned it before that if you if you visited prague castle today and you wanted to visit every single room in that castle it would take you approximately five days he had prague castle stocked with exotic animals giraffes monkeys bears it was a menagerie now i'm starting to hone in on what makes rudolph the second exceptional as a habsburg emperor he fell in love with the city of prague and he moved his court from vienna austria to prague he loved the city he loved the people this made rudolph the second extraordinarily unique in terms of a habsburg maybe he's just one of these guys that just wants to do things differently than from from everybody else in his family i mean you might feel this way hey just because you know mom and dad and grandparents they have their values and their way of living i'm gonna do the exact opposite and maybe that's one of the reasons why he liked prague but another reason why he loved prague was because he felt that the people there were more eccentric and exciting rudolph the second and this is another very important part or aspect of rudolph the second rudolph the second was obsessed with the occult now when i say the occult what i'm talking about are the forbidden sciences of the early 1600s people who sometimes get identified as witches and warlocks who do things like practice alchemy alchemists were people who tried to create gold they wanted to see if you could put particular metals together heat them up melt them down combine them and create gold now if you know your basic science you know that this is absolutely impossible to do that that gold is itself a fundamental element in the universe you can't put things together to make gold but they didn't know that back then and they're experimenting and witches trying to create secret potions potions to make people fall in love potions to make people get ill potions to heal the sick medicinal potions and there are other occultists people called astrologers who believe that the movement of the the earth and the moon and the stars and the planet planets somehow influence the processes of things on earth rudolph the second was interested in all of this and while he held court in prague he openly supported these things which is warlocks alchemists astrologers come one come all prague is a safe city for you you might be persecuted by every other religion in europe catholics will kill you calvinists will kill you lutherans will kill you but in prague you're safe because the emperor himself is interested in what you are doing so when rudolph ii invites all these different types to come to prague to practice whatever it is they want to practice you can imagine the culture that was that was established in prague during the late 16th and early 17th centuries and the impact of this culture can't be underestimated because understand who these people were i mean if you have alchemists coming to prague trying to figure out how to make gold well they may not actually make gold but you know what they're doing they're laying the foundations for chemistry in the future these so-called witches with their herbal remedies well they're laying the foundations for future medicine pharmacology astrologers are to a certain extent also astronomers we've got some great mathematics and science that are also happening in prague at this time so all of these weird occult things that are happening in prague are actually laying the foundations for the future of the scientific revolution individuals that we look that will learn about the future like tycho brahe and johannes kepler spent time in prague during the reign of rudolf ii okay so hopefully you can understand why rudolph ii is really a very exciting figure to study in european history and within recent years i've personally come across several uh podcasts about rudolph ii in particular so if you're interested interested in learning more about this man there's a lot out there feel free to look them up and here is a portrait of rudolph this second it is probably one of the most unique portraits in all of world history if you have a moment to look at your look at your screen hey check this out this is the work of the italian baroque artist giuseppe archambaldo the title of it is verdumness verdumness was the roman god of seasons and change and it is also a portrait of rudolph the second i have no words to describe this particular portrait any attempt i make to describe this portrait will be futile and stupid but the artistry and talent of arkham baldo should reveal itself very clearly this portrait is for me quite amazing and you could probably get lost in looking at it for quite some time and if you would like to pause this lecture and do that why i encourage that i do think that the unique aspect of this portrait reflects the very unique creative eccentric culture that rudolph the second established in prague in the late 1500s and early 1600s okay but there is one last thing i need to talk about with rudolph the second at the end of his reign in the early 17th century rudolph the second was having trouble with his family the other habsburgs didn't like him that much he was too eccentric he was too strange meant he might have been mentally unstable they didn't like that he had moved his court to prague they didn't like what was going on in prague and so his own brother was actually rallying forces against him so rudolf ii found himself having to raise an army in bohemia to defend bohemia from his own family it was rudolf ii's younger brother who had actually taken control of the imperial army and was trying to invade bohemia and overthrow rudolph so when you get to the year 1609 rudolph the second was in a very perilous position politically he was very weak his own family was trying to remove him and replace him with his more conservative more traditional younger brother and it was at this moment of political weakness for rudolph the second when protestants in prague came to speak to the second now rudolph the second needs the support of his people more than ever at this point of time he needs the support of the bohemians more than ever at this point in time and the bohemians themselves the bohemians themselves they have had a tradition of radicalism going all the way back to janus they specifically have wanted freedom of religion in some form going all the way back to yahus so in 1609 protestants approached rudolf ii pledging to rudolph the second the support of the bohemian people if he would legitimize freedom of religion in law now it seems to me that this had been going on in practice this freedom of religion had been going on in practice for quite some time since rudolf ii had been the king of bohemia as well as the holy roman emperor emperor but now we're going to have an actual law and this law is part of a deal that the people of bohemia especially the protestants in bohemia would support rudolf ii and return for him providing them with freedom of religion and so the deal is struck and rudolph the second issues what we call the letter of majesty issued in 1609 the letter of majesty is one of the most radical documents in european history the letter of majesty of 1609 provided to the people of bohemia complete freedom of religion every individual was allowed to worship however he or she chose to worship complete freedom of religion this is just like the united states of america today it's complete freedom of religion this is much more radical than in france the edict of nant which provided freedom of religion for communities it's much more radical than the piece of augsburg which said the prince gets to determine the religion of the of of his realm this puts it in the hands of individuals you worship however it is you want to worship it is one of the most radical documents in the history of religious tolerance and it is issued once again in the year 1609 not but three years later rudolph the second is dead and so now when rudolph ii dies what's to happen to bohemia what's to happen to prague is this culture going to continue is the letter of majesty going to be honored well for a brief period of time rudolph the second's younger brother matthias he became the king of bohemia and he ruled over them and he actually did honor the letter of majesty for a period of time and he probably did that not because he believed in it but he just sort of wanted to keep the peace with the people but he didn't last that long in 1617 we've got a new king of bohemia and future holy roman emperor he is the habsburg ruler ferdinand ii and ferdinand ii will make a crucial decision that will cause the 30 years war ferdinand ii educated by jesuits a devout catholic he feels the need to set bohemia straight make them all catholic again so ferdinand ii sent four catholic officials into prague their goal was to work with and really force the political leadership of prague to overturn the letter of majesty and to force everybody in bohemia to be catholic when these four men arrived in prague they met with city officials in prague castle some heated words were exchanged and then two of these catholic officials were grabbed and they were thrown out of a window along with a secretary who was working for one of those catholic officials and he was chucked out of the window too this is that event captured here three men getting tossed out of a relatively high window they're about four to five stories off the ground this event which is the start of the thirty years war this event is called the defenestration of prague now there's a fun word to learn defenestrate defender straight is a fun word to learn here in apiero every ap euro student learns it to defenestrate means to throw out of a window defenestrate hey if you speak it's a little german the german word for window is fenster if you speak a little french the french word for window is fenetra so hopefully you might be able to see those words in this word defenestrate okay so in 2014 i got to visit visit prague and i get to go to prague castle and um we were standing in a room and our tour guide said so this is where the defenestration happened and she pointed out the windows and i was standing right next to the window so it was it was actually a cramped little room it's a lot smaller than most the pictures portray it but i got out my phone and i started taking pictures and is the picture i got of the two windows that three men were chucked out of and it seems like you'd have to really push them through to get them out it's not like they're big open windows but then i boldly took my phone and held it out the window and holding my phone out the window i took a picture and here is that picture so you get a sense of uh the fall that these guys took and take a look and you can see the little the people there on the ground so you get a sense of how high up you are um the two guys that fell one of them really hurt his head and you can see that ledge where uh a guy would have you know smacked his head on his way down uh all of the men survived the fall and they weren't even injured and there's two stories for how the men survived the fall one is the catholic story which is that angels swoop down to cradle them and make sure that they didn't get hurt on the fall down the other probably more realistic story is that there was a bunch of horse manure shoveled up against the side of prague castle remember this is a day and age before cars there were a lot of horses on the streets horses poo the manure shoveled against the side of buildings so there was a pile of horse manure which had been quite common and that the men hit the pile of manure and that's what enabled them to survive and then what happened to them after that i have no idea who cares but what i do care about is what happens to bohemia after this bohemia has just essentially had a revolution they've thrown catholic officials sent by the emperor ferdinand ii out of a window they're taking over but then they decide okay we're going to rule the sh we're going to rule here but what we need for a leg to be legitimate is to have a king we need a new king of bohemia so the city officials in prague reached out to the palatinate that radical area that i talked about in the earlier part of the of the lecture that had become calvinist they reached out to the descendant of king frederick iii king frederick v and they invited him to be the king of bohemia along with the king of the paletonate for the bohemians this was a safe bet because this guy is extraordinarily powerful he is an elector he is as high up as you can get in terms of political power and the holy roman emperor aside from being an emperor himself so on the bohemian side they're like this guy's a radical he's a calvinist he'll respect the letter of majesty and we invite him to be king of course for frederick v this is a pretty sweet deal because he essentially gets to double the size of his lands and so he accepts and he leaves the palatinate to go to prague to establish court and when he does this it essentially starts a civil war in the holy roman empire the habsburgs want to read they want to take control of bohemia the habsburgs specifically ferdinand ii he wants to be king of bohemia the habsburgs want frederick the fifth out of bohemia and back to the palatinate so as ferdinand ii is preparing an army to go invade bohemia and to drive out frederick v and take control of bohemia and the city of prague he gets a very willing accomplice maximilian the first the king of bavaria staunch catholic they're just south of the palatinate they don't like the palatinate maximilian the first is not an elector he would love to be an elector and he can become an elector if he takes over the palatinate so maximilian the first of bavaria says to ferdinand ii whoa how about if i help out with this let's raise a bavarian army to go into bohemia i've got my man count tilly he'll drive into bohemia we will capture the city of prague and deliver it to you and then because i've conquered the king of the palatinate who's also the king of bohemia i maximilian the first also get to take over the palatinate thus making me an elector in the holy roman empire so in other words this whole situation maximilian the first sees as an opportunity for himself to defend catholicism and to spread catholicism and also to make himself extraordinarily powerful all right so hopefully this setup makes sense ferdinand ii and maximilian the first agree to go into bohemia together they do notice that bohemia and bavaria are right next to each other so into bohemia comes a bavarian army led by count tilly it is supported by the imperial army of ferdinand ii bohemia is defended by the bohemian forces federer frederick v i do not believe was there when we have our epic battle of white mountain in 1620 in which the bohemians lose they lose bad the bavarian and imperial armies win they take over prague frederick v runs away to the netherlands which is also very calvinist prague in all of bohemia is forced to be catholic again the letter of majesty is overturned obviously and maximilian the first of bavaria takes over the palatinate if you go to heidelberg germany today you are no longer in paleton8 or what they call the rhineland faults area today you are in bavaria the northern part of bavaria but still bavaria the radical calvinist living in the paletonate if they wanted to survive they had to flee too either that or they had to quickly convert to catholicism because maximilian the first and the bavarians are taking over the palatinate and this means that maximilian the first can become one of the most powerful men in the holy roman emperor empire he becomes an an elector so now is what i'm going to interject and give you some random history here uh maximum the first was part of the viddelsbach dynasty and for what it's worth the vittel's bach dynasty is still around today one of the main reasons why they're still around today is because they openly opposed the rise of hitler in the 1920s and 1930s in germany and so after world war ii a lot of people like the vittel's block dynasty because of that and so they're still around today so here is the duke of bavaria here's the successor of maximilian the first there he is and for what it's worth he's still a bachelor so if you want to be royalty maybe you can marry him all right so that's it for the vittel's bach dynasty please pardon my random historical facts okay so the 30 years war should not have been a 30 years war it should have been a two years war it should have been you know the war of bohemian insurrection or something like that so what happens how did one battle in a small war lead to one of the most catastrophic events in european history well it had to do with the country north of the holy roman empire denmark this was completely unrelated to anything in prague bohemia or palutenait or bavaria has nothing to do with any of that stuff but the king of denmark did do something to upset the holy roman emperor ferdinand ii so let's take it up to denmark if you can find denmark on the map here you can see that denmark's little peninsula that sticks up off of central europe denmark is part of the scandinavian world and denmark and sweden were actually one country denmark and sweden had recently split off and there are all these islands in the baltic sea in between denmark and sweden and sweden claimed most of them for itself so denmark felt like they had been ripped off by sweden and denmark wants a little bit more land and so the king of denmark at the time a man who we'll talk about in a couple of different contexts uh both during the 30 years war will also talk about about him again briefly when we talk about the scientific revolution the king of denmark at the time was a man named christian iv christian iv and all of the danes they are lutheran just like most of the states in the northern part of the holy roman empire as well as sweden they're all lutheran all right but this is really about land denmark feels like it's been ripped off in terms of its possessions now if you look at the map just south of denmark there is an area that is part of the holy roman empire and it's called holstein and there were a few ports along the coast of holstein where the king of denmark felt that the danes had enough influence that those cities though those coastal cities could be rightfully claimed for denmark and so denmark seized areas in holstein in other words to just simplify this very much denmark is taking over some cities in the northern part of the holy roman empire they're taking land from the holy roman empire okay so word of this travels down south to vienna and ferdinand ii finds out about it and ferdinand ii gets all angry and he wants to send an army up there to reclaim those lands put christian iv and the danes back in their place now all this started happening in the year 1625. so this is five years after the battle of white mountain it's seven years after the defenestration of prague all right so this was a pretty bold move on the on on the part of christian iv i mean stealing land from another country it tends not to go over too well he was probably thinking that and and i i'll admit i'm sort of guessing here he was probably thinking that there's enough danish culture here there's there are enough danish people here we can claim these as our lands and what does ferdinand ii care like does he really is he really going to send an army all the way up here to take back these coastal cities well ferdinand ii was really angry and he thought we're going to get these lands back now maximilian the first and count tilly and the bavarians they're they're ready to go we're let please let us go up there and invade we'll whip the danes we'll take back those coastal cities and give them right back to you ferdinand the second but ferdinand ii is a little concerned about maximilian the first he's already become an elector he's already sort of the hero of the day after the battle of white mountain ferdinand ii starts to feel jealous he starts to feel that the vittel's bach dynasty maximilian the first family they if they keep winning battles they might become more powerful than him and they the vitelsbach dynasty they might start becoming the emperors and it will be the end of the habsburgs what we will find is that ferdinand ii does get jealous he's always very concerned that somebody else is going to become emperor and he's going to lose power so because of that ferdinand ii says no the bavarian military under count tilly is not going to be the primary force going up to fight the danes and ferdinand ii looks for a new military commander to lead an imperial army from the south all the way up to the north to recapture these coastal cities and the man that ferdinand ii chooses for the job was another extraordinarily eccentric figure he also can be considered one of the cruelest people in all of european history and that is of course saying something there are a lot of cruel people that we talk about this man's name was albrecht von valenstein he's an interesting guy he was actually a bohemian but he became a staunch catholic well or at least let me say it like this he became a catholic to appease ferdinand the second by no account was albrecht von valenstein a good practicing christian of any sort but he was a catholic technically a catholic so that ferdinand ii would support him and albrecht von valenstein volunteered to lead an army of some what would grow to be some 80 000 men and that he would lead them from bohemia all the way up to denmark and he would recapture those towns now just to put this on the map here is the invasion of denmark that's going to commence in the year 1625. you've got count tilly who's going to be coming up from bavaria and then you're going to have the imperial army led by albrecht von bolenstein now ferdinand ii likes valenstein because he's not bavarian he's not working for the vittel's bach dynasty he's not working for maximilian the first and fallen stein tells ferdinand a second i'm going to make this as cost efficient for you as possible for and then a second says all right fallenstein talk to me fallen stein says to ferdinand ii what i need is military equipment you you have to provide us with military equipment so i need the guns i need the swords i need the shields i need the horses i need the cannon i need the military equipment but that's all you need to provide for me when it comes to soldiers pay and food i'll take care of that ferdinand a second says all right this is beautiful that saves me a lot of money but now what you as a student need to think about is how is valenstein ii going to take care of his military force how would you take care of a military force of some 80 thousand men as they march several hundred miles to engage in battle so here's where i need for you to look at the map find bohemia and where vallenstein is leading his men from and toward and you can tell when you leave bohemia which on this map is green for catholic because that's what happened to bohemia after the year 1620 and then it goes through all these lands which are part of the holy roman empire but they're yellow which means they're lutheran fallen stein is going to lead these 80 000 men from town to town to town through the northern part of the holy roman empire which are mostly lutheran and when he gets to each town when he gets to each village he just lets the soldiers loose you want food go get it this is what makes valenstein a monster they didn't have the term crimes against humanity at this point of time in history but that is exactly what happened unpaid unfed soldiers were let loose onto villages and these like most soldiers throughout history are young men boys in their teens and young guys in their 20s and they know their only food and pay is going to come from stealing so these 80 000 young men pillage and rape their way throughout the entire northern part of the holy roman empire scenes as depicted here in this particular image were frequent occurrences throughout the thirty years war it is why during the course of the thirty years war one third of the german population will be killed there are these tragic stories of butchery stories of farm homes being attacked by the by valentine's army and the guys would come in and if they were merciful they'd probably just kill you but such a culture had developed among these men that it became routine to torture one of the ways in which they tortured men that they came across was to capture them and to squish them into ovens and then to turn the oven on and cook men alive women were vulnerable in the obvious way if volun-stein's army was coming you would want to run as a young man one of the ways you could potentially save yourself is to join valenstein's army but fallen stein's army just became an army of brutality and i think about this a lot when it comes to warfare and soldiers and warfare because this happens repeatedly it doesn't matter when in time you are ordinarily good men in civilian life turn into monsters and that happens when you have a situation like this where there is no penalty for doing brutal things and in fact you're even rewarded i mean if i was in valencia's army if i was a soldier let's say i'm a 20 year old young man in valencia's army i want to eat well how am i going to eat if we're all going into this village you know who's gonna get the food and then if i am one of the first into a farmhouse and i'm ransacking the place trying to get food if there's no punishment for me to hurt somebody to torture somebody and in fact that type of behavior is encouraged and employ and applauded odds are i'm going to engage in that brutal behavior the history of warfare tells us that this is what will happen even among the best people in society you put them in these awful situations the worst of them will emerge and that is certainly certainly what happened during the thirty years war so we had fallen stein and tilly rampage rampaging their way from the southern part of the holy roman empire to the northern part of the holy roman empire they fight and defeat the danes christian iv and his military they retreat fallenstein until he did not take over copenhagen which is the capital of denmark and christian iv would continue to be able to rule but look at this map look at wood fallenstein and tilly look at look at where they've been look at what they've essentially conquered the entirety of the northern part of the holy roman empire and they've delivered this into the hands of ferdinand ii all of these lands which are actually technically yours but since the 1555 piece of augsburg the habsburgs have allowed for the princes to choose the religion well now things are a little bit different since these since the imperial army has swooped up and taken over all these lands ferdinand ii can now control the whole thing and so he issues in the year 1629 something called the edict of restitution the edict of restitution in 1629 makes the entirety of the holy roman empire catholic in other words the peace of augsburg is revoked everybody must now be catholic and i can only imagine at this period of time ferdinand ii feeling like wow i did it i did it i did what charles v couldn't have couldn't do i restored catholicism to the entirety of the holy roman empire albrecht volenstein's a monster but he does win battles and he effectively conquered the lutheran areas of the holy roman empire so now all of the holy roman empire is catholic technically but the year is 1629 we're over a hundred years past martin luther the people who have survived this rampage in the northern lands of the holy roman empire places like saxony you know they're lutheran they have a hundred years of cultural traditions of being lutheran just because the emperor makes this law that says you are now all catholic and i've got a military force to support that that decree the people in their hearts aren't going to support it and as this slide says there simply weren't enough priests to conduct catholic services throughout the holy roman empire but 1629 and the edict of restitution was a sad time for all protestants in the holy roman empire and now they're looking for a savior somebody to come into the holy roman empire to free them from this catholic tyranny of ferdinand ii and a savior did arrive in the form of the king of sweden king gustavus adolphus known as the lion of the north gustavus adolphus of sweden was a devout lutheran he was the opposite of albrecht von wallenstein he really seemed to care for people in gustavus adolphus as we will see is considered to be one of the greatest military commanders of all time mostly due to his innovative use of heavy artillery so it was the year 1630 which gustavus adolphus felt was very symbolic because it was exactly 100 years after the augsburg confession of 1530 that's when if you remember the electors several of them kneeled down before charles v and pledged their lives to being lutheran and so the centennial of that event gustavus adolphus felt was perfect for the army of sweden to go into those lands that had pledged to be lutheran and save protestantism in those areas so thus begins the third phase of the 30 years war and the and the swedes invade now as i said before gustavus adolphus is considered to be one of the greatest military commanders of all time and he's very similar to napoleon in this way what made gustavus adolphus great was his use of cannon so gustavus adolphus instead of using big heavy cannon that could fire cannonballs a long distance he opted instead for a lighter weight cannon that could be strapped to the back of a horse and several of these cannons could be moved quickly to surround an enemy army to fire upon them and to blast them away this was a very innovative thing to do at the time and in the first major battle between gustavus adolphus and albrecht von wallenstein in 1631 the battle of breitenfeld the swedish army devastated the imperial army gustavus adolphus had about 23 000 men in his army versus volenstein's near 80 000 and 23 000 swedes killed 27 000 imperial soldiers fallenstein is on the run and sweden is now creating an empire on the continent of europe now today we certainly don't think of sweden as an imperial country but in the early 17th century they really really were they had a very powerful presence powerful military presence on the european continent and this will last into the 1700s and it will ultimately be uh czar peter the great of russia who will do a lot to drive the swedens back into sweden but in the early 1600s or about 75 years away from all that and the early 1600s in the 1630s sweden is a very powerful presence on the continent they are creating an empire they are taking over the northern part of the holy roman empire and they're bringing back lutheranism to the people there they are reinstating the uh lutheran aristocratic and royal families that own land there but they're now part of the swedish empire now i said that uh gustavus adolphus is remembered for being the nice guys for the opposite of albrecht von bolenstein he is doing a much better job at providing for his soldiers when they go from town to town to town they are mostly paying for their food how is sweden able to finance that and here's where things get really complicated in terms of religion now remember that gustavus adolphus is doing all this because he wants to be the savior for the lutherans in the northern part of the holy roman empire he could have just stayed in sweden i mean sweden was not under attack in any way shape or form he could have stayed in sweden and the swedes could have minded their own business and they would have been just fine but they didn't they wanted to save the lutherans in the northern part of the holy roman empire the weird part of all this is they're getting their money from one of the most powerful catholic countries in europe france specifically the head of state of france at the time is cardinal richelieu louis xiii is the king of france he's the son of henry iv but louis xiii doesn't really want to rule he just wants to have a good time so cardinal richelieu the highest ranking member of the catholic church in france an adviser to louis xiii he's running the show and he's giving money to the swedes why would richelou do this why would risholu a cardinal in the catholic church why would he be financing gustavus adolphus and the lutheran swedes well the answer here isn't religious it's political the french i hope you remember do not like the habsburgs the french have always felt surrounded by the habsburgs they're over there east in the holy roman empire they're down south in spain they are completely surrounding us there has always been this antagonism between the french and the habsburgs so when cardinal richelieu sees gustavus adolphus driving into the holy roman empire taking a whole bunch of land away from the habsburgs destroying the military of the habsburgs richelieu thinks this is great keep it up sweden we don't care what religion you are because if the swedes keep this up and the imperial army gets so decimated well then now the french can start invading from the west and the french can start taking lands away from the holy roman empire so richelieu says to sweden here's a whole bunch of money do your best and that's exactly what sweden does for two years until the battle of lutzin in november of 1632 when gustavus adolphus being the heroic king that he was led men into battle disappeared into cl to a cloud of smoke and when the smoke finally cleared and gustavus adolphus was found he had been mortally wounded he dies and his body is sent back to stockholm and his six-year-old daughter becomes the next queen of sweden the next ruler of sweden and she actually will play an important role in the scientific revolution that we'll learn about later so this is obviously a major blow for the swedes their king is dead he was a great military commander now will the other military commanders be able to maintain what gustavus adolphus has won especially now since they have to face off against albrecht von bolenstein well it's after gustavus adolphus dies that the swedes begin losing and losing and losing against albrecht von bolenstein and wallenstein is himself conquering the holy roman empire and fallen stein being fallenstein begins thinking you know what i've conquered all this i could be like julius caesar and just proclaim myself emperor and i could rule all of this and ferdinand ii knows this ferdinand ii knows that valenstein might make this might might try to proclaim himself emperor so ferdinand ii hired some good irish catholic mercenaries to join valence stein's army and to assassinate albrecht von wallenstein fallenstein was killed in the year 1634 the holy roman empire is a mess and here comes france the fourth phase and the final phase of the thirty years war begins after the death of albrecht von wallenstein in the french invade and we have nearly 15 years of relentless fighting the imperial army the swedes the french mercenaries from the british isles the dutch end up getting involved because sweden starts or spain tries to start taking over the netherlands again the german-speaking states of central europe became an international playground of war it was brutal and the war really only comes to a conclusion out of sheer exhaustion after so much fighting for so long with nobody really able to see what a victory is going to be in all this we finally have a diplomatic moment in the year 1648 representatives from nearly every state on the continent of europe met in the northern german town of westfalia or westphalia to come up with a peace treaty to end this catastrophe and the result is of course the piece of westphalia of 1648 this is an extraordinarily important document to know it's all also worth noting that the year 1648 is a pivotal turning point year in european history and specifically in our study of ap european history 1648 usually marks the end of the first quarter of this course okay so let's learn about this very important document so the first part of the piece of westphalia is strikingly similar to the piece of augsburg it says that within the holy roman empire princes get to choose their the religion of their realm they get to choose between three religions now not just two catholicism lutheranism or calvinism so this is the exact same thing as the piece of augsburg except that we get to add calvinism into the mix so this makes the whole 30 years war seem rather trivial and awful and even more catastrophic all that death all that destruction a whole generation of fighting and all that comes out of it is one religion gets legitimized seems rather silly and it probably is silly in an awful way okay also out of the piece of westphalia two states are acknowledged as being independent countries within the holy roman empire switzerland is now its own country also the united provinces or the netherlands the netherlands are acknowledged as being an independent country now for the most part the netherlands were operating as an independent country they had been for a while they had fought their wars of independence mostly in the 1660s through the 1690s there was hopefully remember william of orange otherwise known as william the silent who was assassinated in the 1580s the dutch had fought their independence against uh for for their independence against spain they were mostly operating independently but the piece of westphalia formally acknowledges that the dutch are free the netherlands is its own country so those are the big elements of what the piece of westphalia entailed you need to know these things but you also need to know what the piece of west failure represented within the larger context of european history okay so let's first talk about the hapsburg family so the habsburg family they are the holy roman emperors right we've been studying them since charles v and really even before that with his grandpa maximilian but when we think of the habsburgs up until this point of time we think of them as being the holy roman emperors they are also devout catholics and they wish that everybody in the holy roman empire was catholic but they started giving up with on that with uh with the piece of augsburg in 1555. okay you can think of the whole of the 30 years war as the habsburgs once again trying to make all of their empire catholic and they fail they fail right the piece of westphalia is nothing but the piece of augsburg part two this dream of having the entirety of the holy roman empire led by the habsburgs and everybody being catholic that is now gone too much death too much destruction it's gone so the habsburgs then have a change of attitude that will influence the rest of european history the habsburgs they just decide to dust their hands clean of the entirety of the holy roman empire except for their homeland austria i mean their attitude towards the rest of the holy roman empire is ah whatever saxons you want to be protestant knock yourself out bavarians hey you're close by catholics but whatever you do your own thing we're austria we're going to focus on austria and the habsburgs then in focusing on austria begin to see the future of their empire as spreading eastward so austria is still always technically a state in the holy roman empire so long as the holy roman empire exists but austria will create its own new empire because it will begin spreading eastward so east of austria is the ottoman empire and the ottoman turks are the old foes of the habsburgs and what starts to happen with the ottoman empire once you get to the end of the 17th century is they start going into decline this has to do with mostly financial mismanagement of the empire but it gives austria an opportunity to begin conquering lands east of it so it'll go into lands like hungary or modern-day slovakia romania croatia and austria begins spreading east as the ottoman empire slowly collapses into asia minor and the easternmost area of the balkans so in short habsburgs give up on the holy roman empire but they begin developing the state of austria and creating an austrian empire that spreads eastward and if i can make a big historical clinic historical connection here that eastward spread of the offs of the austrian empire taking over lands that once belonged to the ottoman ottomans will be will eventually lead to the cause of the first world war in the year 1914 nearly 300 years after the piece of westphalia so that was a major consequence of the 30 years war and the peace of westphalia okay another element of the piece of westphalia and the new europe that it created those german-speaking states in central europe they are weak and politically divided but one of them as a result of the 30 years war will begin the process of strengthening itself to eventually become by the 19th century and actually actually i'm sorry the 18th century really one of the most powerful countries in europe and that is the state of brandenburg prussia brandenburg prussia which are actually two states within the holy roman empire that fused they they they combined as a result of the 30 years war this was a state that realized just how vulnerable it was during the 30 years war brandenburg prussia has no natural boundaries they don't have any big mountain ranges or major rivers or other bodies of water that it can use to defend itself you know brandenburg pressure pretty much flat farmland and it doesn't have any good natural barriers to service its boundaries so after the 30 years war brandenburg prussia decides we never ever ever want to have something like the 30 years war happen to us again where you have the swedes invading from the north and the imperial army from the south and all these other armies coming in doing brutal things to the people that live here so go figure brandenburg prussia decides to begin developing a powerful military if brandenburg prussia doesn't have natural barriers to defend its itself it will create its own barrier of a powerful military force so that by the time we get to the 18th century and brandenburg prussia is just simply called prussia it will be said that prussia is not a country that has an army but rather prussia is an army that has a country where nearly every young man who lives in prussia is expected to serve in some capacity in the prussian military so the 30 years war sees the emergence of a powerful austrian state coming out of the holy roman empire and also the emergence of the powerful prussian state coming out of the holy roman empire 1648 will mark the end of the religious wars era on the continent but not in britain because in 1648 britain is in the middle of fighting a brutal civil war which we will learn about later so here's a map of europe in 1648 with the treaty of westphalia the peace of westphalia and hopefully at the end of all this you get a strong sense of what the causes of the 30 years war were and what the consequences are of this horrible conflict there's a lot of little nitty gritty details with the 30 years war a wide variety of players in the 30 years war but that's it i'm very curious to know what questions that you have but this ends my lecture on the 30 years war i do however before i conclude finally i do have one little story that i would like to share about the 30 years war so here's one last final story that i want to tell about the 30 years war it has to do with a personal experience of mine i grew up in upper arlington same community that you're growing up in and like you probably you know you just get familiar with you know the architecture of a place the feel of a place the way people interact with each other but then i graduated from high school and i'd studied german when i was in high school i went to college and i still had to take one year of german to satisfy my foreign language requirement lucky for me though the college that i went to provided me with an opportunity to study german for one month in germany and a lot of you have had or will have the opportunity to study abroad it's a fantastic thing so i was 19 years old i was a college freshman and i left for germany and it was the very first time that i got to leave the country and we left we flew to frankfurt and then from frankfurt i got on a train with me and my class my class had i think six or seven students and a professor in it i mean it was a class but it was just really a small group of american college kids and we went by train from frankfurt germany to a town called rotenberg ob der tauber i couldn't see the town when we got in because we got in late and uh we just checked into the to the more like a bed and breakfast type of place where we stayed um i went to bed crashed out woke up in the morning and i was kind of had one of those moments where like where am i and i opened my eyes i was like oh yeah i'm in germany and i looked out the window and having grown up in upper arlington it didn't prepare me for looking at a town that was seen to be frozen in the middle ages rotenberg obder tauber looks like this this is the town of rotenberg obder talber as it looks today it's like something out of a fairy tale it's a town frozen in time which is probably exactly why a lot of tourists from the united states go there now one of the reasons why rotenberg obertoweber looks like this is because the town went into a period of steep economic decline because of the 30 years war and because of a plague that hit soon thereafter there simply wasn't much commercial activity in rottenburg albert so it just stayed a small town so there's this great legend about rothenberg object halber from the 30 years war and the legend goes something like this count tilly and the bavarian army showed up to the town they are their fallenstein style to take over the town and take whatever they want to eat steal whatever it is they want to steal do to the people whatever it is they want to do to them but as i understand the legend count tilly stood before the councilman of the city and placed in front of them a small keg of beer it was either beer wine i don't remember i'm not sure if it matters but anyway a small keg of alcohol antilles told the councilman if one of you can drink this then we won't sack the town knowing that no individual could drink all that alcohol but one of the city councilmen stepped forward and said i can do it drank the contents of this small keg then fell over dead sacrificing himself to save his beloved town of rottenburg albert halber and this particular event is commemorated annually in a festival in object albert this festival is called der meister trunk where the people of rottenburg dress up just like their ancestors dressed in the early 17th century and they celebrate their town being saved and i think they have quite a bit of a party that was not a party that i was there to witness when i was a 19 year old college kid but i did get to hear the story and that was actually the first time i ever got to learn about the 30 years war that was my introduction to the 30 years war i hadn't studied it before then and i really didn't know what it was all about but i hope you guys know what it's about and i hope you enjoyed learning about it and i certainly look forward to your questions and comments about my presentation of the 30 years war that's it for this lecture thanks euro bears have a wonderful day