Every European country, except England, was marked in the seventeenth century by a continued growth of monarchical power. The kings were busily engaged in strengthening their hold upon their respective states and in reaching out for additional lands and wealth. International wars, therefore, assumed the character of struggles for dynastic aggrandizement. How might this or that royal family obtain wider territories and richer towns? There was certainly sufficient national life in western Europe to make the common people proud of their nationality; hence the kings could normally count upon popular support. But wars were undertaken upon the continent of Europe in the seventeenth century not primarily for national or patriotic motives, but for the exaltation of a particular royal family. Citizens of border provinces were treated like so many cattle or so much soil that might be conveniently bartered among the kings of France, Spain, or Sweden.
[Sidenote: Habsburg Dominions in 1600.]
This idea had been quite evident in the increase of the Habsburg power during the sixteenth century. In an earlier chapter we have noticed how that family had acquired one district after another until their property included: (1) Under the Spanish branch—Spain, the Two Sicilies, Milan, Franche Comte, the Belgian Netherlands, Portugal, and a huge colonial empire; (2) Under the Austrian branch—Austria and its dependencies, Hungary, Bohemia, and the title of Holy Roman Emperor. Despite the herculean labors of Philip II, France remained outside Habsburg influence, a big gap in what would otherwise have been a series of connected territories.
[Sidenote: Ambition of the Bourbons.]
In measure as the French kings—the Bourbons—strengthened their position in their own country, they looked abroad not merely to ward off foreign attacks but to add land at their neighbors' expense. Richelieu understood that his two policies went hand in glove—to make the Bourbons predominant in Europe was but a corollary to making the royal power supreme in France.
[Sidenote: The Thirty Years' War.]
The chief warfare of the seventeenth century centers, therefore, in the long, terrible conflict between the Habsburgs and the Bourbons. Of this struggle, the so-called Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) may be treated as the first stage. Let us endeavor to obtain a clear idea of the interests involved.
When Richelieu became the chief minister of Louis XIII (1624), he found the Habsburgs in serious trouble and he resolved to take advantage of the situation to enhance the prestige of the Bourbons. The Austrian Habsburgs were facing a vast civil and religious war in the Germanies, and the Spanish Habsburgs were dispatching aid to their hard-pressed kinsmen.
The war, which proved momentous both to the Habsburgs and to their enemies, resulted from a variety of reasons—religious, economic, and political.
[Sidenote: The Thirty Years' War: Ecclesiastical Causes]