TREATY OF WESTPHALIA

Between 1550-1650, Europe was torn apart by religious wars. Protestants and Catholics attacked each other within countries and countries attacked each other over the issue of religion.

King Philip II of Spain attacked Protestant states like the Netherlands. England sent troops to help the Dutch. In France, Catholics and Huguenots massacred each other. The German states also fought between each other over religion. The most powerful king of the area was the Hapsburg Emperor Ferdinand II – he along with several Catholic Princes launched a thirty-year war against the Protestant Princes. A few years later King Gustavus (Sweden) jointed the Protestant princes. The protestants also received encouragement from France though the French were predominantly Catholic. Thus, this conflict continued until 1648.

By that time the conflict was more about political power and Europe was tired of war. Thus, in 1648, Sweden, the Netherlands, France, Austria and the German Princes Signed the Treaty of Westphalia.

Conclusion: The Treaty of Westphalia, which was concluded at the end of Thirty Years War, was a landmark in international relations as it brought religious strife to an end. Religious persecution stopped and people were free to profess whatever religion they wished. Catholicism, Lutheranism and Calvinism were all given equal legal recognition. Religious fanaticism which had dominated the international stage for over a century gave place to secular ambitions. International alliances in future were to be based on the principle of Balance of Power. According to it, no state was to be allowed to become so powerful so as to constitute a threat to her neighbors.

 

Additional Information:

Seventeen provinces of Holland and Belgium were known collectively as the Netherlands.

Westphalia is a former Prussian province of Western Germany. Westphalia in German means Western Plains. It lies just East of Netherlands.

Slowly the wars that began as religious wars became political in nature. This led to one ruler (king) becoming more powerful than the other. The imbalance of power caused by this war led to Balance of Power Theory whereby each country would not allow another to supersede it.

Treaty of Westphalia confirmed and extended the religious pluralism of the Empire. It made Sweden a power on the southern coast of the Baltic and gave her votes in the Imperial Diet. It marked the end of Spanish military supremacy and of the dream of reconstituting the Empire of Charles V. it closed an era of Hapsburg History. It was the end of the era of religious wars in Europe. It was the last time that European statesman had as one other main concern in a general settlement the religious future of their people.

The Thirty Years War marked the passing of Spanish hegemony in Western Europe and its replacement by the French. It eventually involved re-opened war between the Dutch and Spanish, the eruption into the affairs of the Norther Europe of a new power, the Swedish monarchy and turned finally into a Bourbon Hapsburg conflict. Its immediate origins lay in the attempt of the Hapsburg Emperor Ferdinand II to rebuild imperial authority in Germany by linking it with the Counter Reformation. This called in question the Peace of Augsburg and the survival of religious pluralism in Germany. The implications for the Protestant Princes were huge. The actual explosion occurred before the imperial election, when in 1618, his Protestant Bohemian Subjects rebelled against Ferdinand.

Thereafter, circumstance and cross currents quickly confused the pattern of ideological conflict. There was much that was almost accidental which brought Hapsburg and Bourbon to dispute Germany in the seventeenth century as Hapsburg and Valois had disputed Italy in the sixteenth century.

While the unhappy inhabitants of much of central Europe endured the whims and rapacity’s of quasi-independent warlords, Catholic France, the ‘eldest daughter of the Church’, under the leadership of a Cardinal, joined Dutch Calvinists and Swedish Lutherans in asserting the rights of German Princes against the catholic Hapsburgs. Cardinal Richelieu has a better claim than any other man to be a creator of a foreign policy of stirring up trouble beyond the Rhine which was to serve France well for over a century. With him the age of ‘Real Politick and raison d’état’, of simple unprincipled assertion of the interest of the sovereign state, has visibly arrived. Religion was all but lost to sight as the miseries of the Thirty Years War were prolonged until the peace of Westphalia ended the fighting in 1648.