The Thirty Years’ War could
have been over after five years. The Catholics defeated the protestants first at
white mountain, then in the Palatinate. But the war did not end. It got caught up in international
affairs and power politics more and more. France, the Spanish Habsburgs, England, the
Dutch Republic and other major European powers were quickly sucked into the conflict and because
many of them were in the process of establishing colonies, they expanded the scope of the war
overseas to Indonesia, Africa and the Americas. This was in part due to the fact that the trade
routes to asia became less reliable and more expensive due to the Ottoman control of most of
the vital ports in the mediterreanean.Because the Thirty Years’ War is usually looked at
with a focus on Germany, the global aspect of the war is often neglegted. But in 1624/25 little
actually happened in Germany while Globalisation, colonization and mercantilism pushed the war
far beyond the German territories. That is why in this video we’re looking at the European and
even global dimension of the thirty years war. The forces that drove the globalization of the
Thirty Years’ War were money, power, and family relations. When the Protestant leader Frederick
V, count Palatine and king of Bohemia, had been defeated, first at the battle of White Mountain
in 1620 and then during the Palatinate Phase of the Thirty Years war 1620-1623, he turned to King
James VI of Scotland and I of England for help. Frederick was married to James‘
daugther Elizabeth Stuart and from his exile in The Hague, he was
now activating this family relation. He was looking for money – and he did receive
some, but he spent it quickly and lavishly, for example, on an entirely useless but expensive
Winter Palace in the Dutch city of Rhenen. Money, however, was a concern to James too.
He was facing the problem of getting approval of the House of Commons to acquire large sums
of money. As a ruler in the age of absolutism, he was not satisfied with this restriction
and intended to expand his power to reduce his dependency on the parliament. One way to do this
was to get money from alternative sources. So, James accepted an offer first made to him in
1614 by Spain. He was to reduce the activity of English privateers in the Spanish-American
waters and marry his son Charles to the Spanish princess Maria Anna of Spain. In exchange
he would get about 500’000 £ (later 600’000 £) – quite an extensive sum. This substantial
deal is referred to as the “Spanish match”. In 1622, the timing for such a match with Spain
was good. England had been at peace with Spain since 1604, and relations were mostly cordial
despite conflicts in the American colonies. Trade was flourishing between the two states. Spain
was also hoping England might offer naval support against the Dutch, who had recently attacked
English ships in Indonesia. There were , however, also problems: Spanish forces were holding
much of the Lower Palatinate, the territory of James’ son-in-law Frederick V. Aware of
that fact, he couldn’t intervene militarily, James sought a rapprochement with Spain through
the Spanish match. There was also the ideological issue of marrying James‘ Protestant son Charles
to the deeply catholic Maria Anna of Spain. When Charles set off to Spain to fetch his bride
in what the historian Peter Wilson calls “the romantic Scottish tradition” and arrived in Spain
unannounced he embarrassed himself and his crown. Maria Anna wouldn’t marry a protestant,
and nobody believed Charles was sincere when he said he would convert to Catholicism.
Humiliated, he went back home. The consequence of this failing match was a change in policy
from cordial relations to planning for war. England directed its resources at the protestants
on the continent. But for lack of better options, James once more flushed money into the pockets
of the already defeated protestant paladins of the Palatinate: Ernst of Mansfeld, Duke Christian
of Brunnswick-Wolfenbüttel and George Frederick of Baden-Durlach. Little came of it. Mansfeld’s
meager troops fell ill because they were forced to drink seawater as the local authorities denied
them to leave their ships in Dover, where they were trying to recruit more men. He again went
to the Netherlands and joined the Dutch army. The Dutch could use Mansfeld’s help since their
war with the Spanish Habsburgs had resumed in 1621. In August 1624 General Spinola
besieged Breda with his army of 70’000 men. Despite Dutch relief efforts, the
spanish entrenchments remained impenetrable, and the town eventually surrendered on 5 June.
Breda was a decisive achievement for the Spanish, so much so that contemporaries compared Spinola’s
victory to Caesar's epic siege of Alesia (52 BC). The Spanish commemorated it in various forms,
including poems, plays, and Velazquez's renowned painting. The Spanish victory at Breda contributed
much to spreading the conflict overseas, mainly because of how Habsburg Spain dealt
with the resumed war in the Netherlands. The Spanish Count Duke Olivares, the most
important advisor to Philip IV of Spain, realized that the cost of sieges such as at Breda
were so high that it was much more sensible to fight the Dutch economically with a trade embargo.
Olivares encircled the Netherlands on land and sea, which severely reduced their fighting
capabilities. Here, the famous Dunkirkers, some of the most notorious privateers, enter the
stage. They were in Spanish service and in charge of fighting the Dutch trade on sea. From 1621
onward, they put a halt to much of the trade going through the English Channel. While between
1614 and 1620, 1,005 Dutch ships traversed the Channel from the Mediterranean and the Baltic or
vice versa, only 52 Dutch ships risked the journey between 1621-7. The Dunkirkers also seized ships
from various nations that were either on their way to the Republic or were simply caught in the
wrong place at the wrong time. The English lost 390 vessels to these privateers between 1624
and 1628, which amounted to a fifth of their mercantile marine. By 1626, 35 out of the 58
Dover-registered ships were out of commission. The Spanish trade embargo hampered not
only the Dutch and the English but the Baltic maritime trade in general. It severely
affected other states such as Denmark-Norway, Sweden and the Hanseatic Cities in the North
of Germany such as Bremen, Hamburg or Lübeck. From the 14th to the 17th century, Baltic trade
had been gaining importance, among other reasons, because the Ottomans were steadily increasing
their control over the Mediterranean. While goods from Asia became more
expensive in western and northern Europe, emerging powers like muscovite Russia, Finland, Poland and Lithuania became ever more important
players in the economic system. Furthermore, the increasing importance of the Baltic trade
intensified the dispute between Denmark and Sweden over the Baltic Sea. For the time being,
Sweden was busy fighting the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth for control of the vital trade cities
in the Baltic, while Denmark-Norway got richer and richer by charging heavy sound tolls for ships
passing the Oresund, in English “The Sound”. One of the most consequential developments
globally, however, was that the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French and English intensified
their search for resource rich colonies. Since both fighting wars and trading was
done on water, more ships were required. In the Baltic and Mediterranean seas, most navies
relied on Galleys that could be propelled by oars. In the Atlantic Ocean however, large, sturdy
sailing ships were the vessels of choice. Around this time, these did not only grow in
numbers but also in size. For example, the average Dutch ship grew from 80 to 160 tons in 1590 to 300
or 400 tons thirty years later, those of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) even up to 1,000-tons.
The Construction of such ships consumed enormous quantities of timber: an ocean-going warship of
560 tons required 900 oak trees, and a galley required over 200 pines. Spain benefited from the
large oak forests of Galicia, Asturias and the rest of its northern coast, while the Catalonian
pine woods served the galley fleet. In England, the Stuarts had deforested much of the country
by the 1640s and became dependent on imports from Scotland, Ireland and America. In France,
Richelieu’s naval program stripped Brittany of its fine trees and made it necessary to import
timber from the Rhineland. The Dutch Republic was, comparatively speaking, largely treeless and
had always relied on imports, while all powers depended on imports of pine, tar, and hemp from
the Baltic. This again increased the importance of the Baltic trade, which would become one of
the focal points of the war from 1626 onwards. The Dutch were increasingly suffering from the
Spanish embargo. In trying to improve their situation, it was the Dutch who eventually brought
the war overseas to the colonies in the Americas. Yet the Spanish bases in the Caribbean proved too
strong. Nevertheless, while the Dutch were keeping the Spanish busy, the British and French could
gain American footholds. The main Dutch effort, however, was directed at the Spanish-Portuguese
possessions in Indonesia and Brazil. By 1621 the Dutch East India Company had driven the Portuguese
out of most of Indonesia which gave them the commanding position in the lucrative spice trade.
A new Dutch West India Company was formed in June 1621. Its main task was to gain a firm hold on the
Brazilian sugar boom. The Portuguese lacked the capacity to exploit Brazil’s economic potential,
and the Dutch West India Company soon controlled over half of the sugar trade into Europe.
Another attempt to break the Spanish encirclement was an attack on the vital
port of Cadiz. The Dutch attacked together with the English fleet, but the Spanish
were prepared and easily repulsed them. The only thing this achieved was that England
became increasingly more isolated. Meanwhile, the Dutch were becoming desperate as the economic
noose around their economy was slowly tightening. Another effect of the Spanish blockade of
the Netherlands was that it alarmed France. The French feared their southern neighbor
more than the trouble east of the Rhine. This might seem odd, considering France was a
Catholic power, just like the Spanish-Habsburgs. But French politics were dominated by the idea of
the French King being an arbiter, at home between various factions and internationally as a form of
peacekeeper. Much of this goes back to Jean Bodin, a French statesman, and proponent of absolutism.
His theory of alliances states that any group of three or more requires a leader to provide
direction and to ensure no disagreements would threaten the alliance. However, things were
not that straightforward, neither at home, where France was troubled by the infighting of
different noble factions and rebellions of the protestants, called Huguenots, nor abroad
where France was increasingly threatened by Habsburg territories all around its borders.
The figure who was leading France’s affairs at the time was Cardinal Richelieu, who de facto ruled
the kingdom in lieu of the young king Louis XIII. Richelieu came of age during the turbulent French
Wars of Religion, which made him a firm supporter of Bodin's notion that a powerful monarchy was
necessary to prevent both tyranny and anarchy. He saw the growth of Spanish power as a threat to
France’s traditional role as arbiter. In his eyes, this posed a greater threat to Christendom
than the Huguenot heretics at home. According to the historian Peter Wilson, Richelieu’s
goal was ‘a good peace for Christendom’, a concept he deliberately left undefined.
Because of his politics and the power he wielded, Richelieu had many enemies abroad and in
France. Quickly many plots to rid France of his influence emerged, and rumours galore
were afloat. Alleged Spanish involvement in these plots added to Richelieu’s conviction
that all European conflicts were related, not by religion, but by Habsburg malevolence. He
believed Philip IV wanted to make Ferdinand II, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, an
absolute ruler and use German resources to conquer the Dutch republic.
Philip IV , on the other hand, was angry with the French King because
Louis XIII treated Philip’s sister Anne, who had married the French king in 1615, very
badly. Since her arrival, the young king had shut her out both from politics and his affection. This
stood in stark contrast to Spanish expectations: namely Catholic solidarity symbolized through
the bond of marriage. In Spanish eyes, France was in league with the devil, tolerating heretics at
home and subsidizing the Dutch protestants abroad. In this situation Richelieu’s politics
were governed by four strategies: The first was a network of alliances to enable
France to overcome Spanish hegemony and effect the desired general pacification of Europe. Two
examples are the support of German princes who were opposing the authority of the Holy Roman
emperor and active help of Italian states which were challenging Habsburg Milan and Naples in
Italy. This conflict between central Habsbug power with smaller princes in Italy and Germany
is usually referred to as the fight about German or Italian liberties. Secondly, Richelieu often
made bilateral alliances with individual states. This included offering subsidies and, less
often, recruits, to assist an ally without openly supporting it. This characterized his support
for the Dutch, Danes, and Swedes until 1635, whom he hoped would keep both the Austrian
and Spanish Habsburg branches occupied. His third strategy was to offer protection
to weaker territories that might assist France by allowing passage for French troops. For
examples cities like Verdun or Metz but also Susa, Pinerolo, Saluzzo and Casale which controlled
some of the major routes over the Alps. The fourth and least desired strategy was direct
military action. Like the later military theorist Clausewitz, Richelieu saw military force as the
continuation of diplomacy by other means. Force was merely intended to make the other side more
reasonable. Richelieu’s counterpart in Spain, Count-Duke Olivares, saw war much in the same
sense. Of course, this would mean that once war erupted, stopping the cycle of “making the
other party more reasonable” would be difficult. By 1625, Richelieu had done his part in concocting
a scheme to guarantee French interests. In The Hague, an alliance between England, the Dutch and
Denmark – under French supervision – was forged. This set up the Danish King Christian IV with
financial support and stylized him as saviour of German protestants. Anxiously, religious fanatics
called up the biblical myth of the king of the north who would come and save everyone from the
tyranny of the King of the south. They referred to the phrase “Mene mene tekel parsin”, chapter
5 of the Book of Daniel, the origin of the phrase “the writing is on the wall” and by 1625, indeed
it was. The Danish King was ready to interevene in in the war in Germany changing the reasons for
the conflict from religion and authority in the Empire to power and economics in Europe.
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