Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 6, 2025
Inasmuch as after 1648 there was little relative change of religion in Germany, this religious settlement was practically permanent. One of the most striking results of the peace of Westphalia was the completion of a long process of political disruption in the Germanies. Only the form of the Holy Roman Empire survived.
Therefore, the centre of that which resisted in the West, the geographical nucleus of the island of Christendom, which was besieged all round, was France, and in particular Northern France. Northern Italy, the Germanies, the Pyrenees and the upper valley of the Ebro were essentially the marches of Gaul.
The Roman conquerors very eagerly embraced so flattering a circumstance, and the Gallic frontier of the Rhine, from Basil to Leyden, received the pompous names of the Upper and the Lower Germany. Such, under the reign of the Antonines, were the six provinces of Gaul; the Narbonnese, Aquitaine, the Celtic, or Lyonnese, the Belgic, and the two Germanies.
Thus, not only were the Germanies a source of weakness to the Habsburgs, but the Habsburgs were a source of weakness to the Germanies. Despite these drawbacks, the Habsburg family was still powerful.
The tragic removal of both Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus, the economic exhaustion of the whole empire, and the national desire on the part of many Protestant princes, as well as on the part of the Catholic emperor, to rid the Germanies of foreign soldiers and foreign influence all these developments seemed to point to the possibility of concluding the third, or Swedish, period of the war, not perhaps as advantageously for the imperialist cause as had ended the Bohemian revolt or the Danish intervention, but at any rate in a spirit of reasonable compromise.
The Germans had become so many pawns that might be moved back and forth upon the international chessboard by Habsburg and Bourbon gamesters. It seemed as though slight foundation remained on which a substantial political structure could be reared, for the social conditions in the Germanies were deplorable.
Not only were they determined to prevent further secularization of church property, but, emboldened by the progress of the Catholic Reformation in the Germanies during the second half of the sixteenth century, they were now anxious to revise the earlier religious settlement in their own interest and to regain, if possible, the lands that had been lost by the Church to the Protestants.
On the history of the Germanies from the religious peace of Augsburg to the peace of Westphalia there is the painstaking Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Gegenreformation und des dreissigjaehrigen Krieges, 1555-1648, by Moritz Ritter, 3 vols. For the history of Austria during the period, see Franz Kroncs, Handbuch der Geschichte Oesterreichs von der aeltesten Zeit, Vol.
For such a tremendous destiny Sweden was quite unfitted. Her wide territory was very sparsely populated, and her peasantry were very poor. Only the French alliance gave her solid backing in the Germanies, and, with the decline of the fortunes of Louis XIV and the rise of Prussia and Russia, she was bound to lose her leadership in the North.
We have sat with red-robed cardinals in council to exalt the monarch of France; we have witnessed the worldwide wars by which Great Britain won and lost vast imperial domains; we have followed the thundering march of Frederick's armies through the Germanies, wasted with war; but we have been blind indeed if the glare of bright helmets and the glamour of courtly diplomacy have hidden from our eyes a phenomenon more momentous than even the growth of Russia or the conquest of New France.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking