The papal nuncio and the Venetian envoy were mediators as well as members of the congress. France and Sweden were opposed to each other in religion, but in accord on political matters. The treaty was drawn up with such fullness and precision of language as is rarely found in documents of this nature, due to a large body of trained lawyers among the members. As indicating a desire for fairness in little things as well as in larger questions, the treaty contained these words: "No one of any party shall look askance at anyone on account of his creed." As an example of wise provisions, the following may be noted: The Protestants demanded the year 1618 as annus normalis for the restitution of ecclesiastical estates, the Catholics insisted on the year 1630, which was much more favorable to them. The congress split the difference and made it 1624. The medius terminus is often the wisest course in acute controversies. As to temporal affairs, all hostilities of whatever kind were to be forgotten, neither party being allowed to molest or injure the other for any purpose. In regard to spiritual affairs, complete equality was to exist (aequalitas exacta mutuaque), and every kind of violence was forever forbidden between the parties.
The peace of Westphalia was the first effort to reconstruct the European states' system, and it became the common law of Europe. Few treaties have had such influence, and Europe is said for the first time to have formed a kind of commonwealth watching with anxiety over the preservation of the general peace.
THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR.
To have called to mind some of the principal points in the peace of Westphalia is not sufficient for understanding the real significance of the treaty without some consideration of the war which it closed. As already suggested, this war, looked at from a scientific point of view, is an unconscious experiment of nations, an attempt to solve a problem in abnormal international psychology. In order to comprehend this experiment and its resultant treaty, just how it brought about permanent religious peace, some of the main events of the war must be recalled as a basis upon which to work.
The Protestant Reformation had great influence upon almost everything political in Europe, until the peace of Westphalia. The religious peace of Augsburg (1555) furnished no settlement to questions stirred up by the Reformation. It was inevitable that such fundamental disagreements should lead to a general war. The Thirty Years' War marked the end of the Reformation, which changed the idea of Christian unity and altered the theory of a holy Roman empire, replacing it by the idea of autonomy for individual states.
On May 23, 1618, a body of Protestants entered the royal palace at Prague and threw two detested representatives of the Crown from the window. This act started a struggle that for 30 years involved Europe in a war which spread gradually from Bohemia over southern Germany, then slowly to northern Germany and Denmark, until country after country began to take part and the fighting became general. The war might have ended in 1623, making it a five years' war, had it not been for the outrageous treatment of the Protestant states of northern Germany, resulting in a political disintegration in which Germany lost half of her population and two-thirds of her wealth. Her religion and morality sank low, and the intellectual damage required generations to restore.
The Roman Catholic Church, having guided Christianity for centuries without a rival, naturally felt greatly wronged by Protestant secession. This explains the uncompromising enmities of the Thirty Years' War. Various parties claimed the control of the religious doctrines to be taught the people, as well as control of worship; they were fighting each other for this power, ready to sacrifice their lives for it. The Lutherans were as intolerant toward the Calvinists as they were toward the Catholics. The Catholic Church, convinced of the absolute truth of its doctrines based upon 13 centuries of growth, naturally could not tolerate some young reformers to arise and challenge its divine right, especially not since these reformers seized old monastic and ecclesiastic foundations with domains and edifices and administered them in their own interest. The resistance of the Catholic hierarchy, to the last drop of blood, was a normal reaction. As so often happens, the conditions were abnormal, not the human beings.
Had the war stopped in 1623 the Catholics would have been left with decided advantages. Their own ambitions, however, prevented it. Gustavus Adolphus appeared, and by his efforts Protestantism is said to have been saved from extinction. During 13 of the 30 years the lands of the Protestants had been devastated; during the next 17 years an equalization of the exhaustion of the parties developed before a lasting religious peace was made. It became clear in the end that neither Catholics nor Protestants could crush their opponents without perishing likewise.
TERRIBLE RESULTS OF THE WAR.
The terrible results of the Thirty Years' War may be summed up by saying that Germany was the carcass, and the hosts which invaded the German soil were the vultures. The Protestant invaders were Swedes, Finns, Hollanders, Frenchmen, Englishmen, and Scotchmen; on the Catholic side there came in Spaniards, Italians, Walloons, Poles, Cossacks, Croats, and representatives of nearly all other Slavonic tribes. There was an army never larger than 40,000 men, but the camp followers were 140,000, consisting of gangs of Gypsies, Jewish camp traders, marauders, and plunderers. The soldiers robbed and tortured all alike, both friend and foe. The inhabitants would flee to the woods, taking with them or hiding everything they could. But the invaders were experts in discovering secret treasures; they would pour water on the ground, and where it sank quickly there they knew something had been recently buried.