An Introduction to the History of Western Europe

by James Harvey Robinson

Richelieu's intervention prolongs the war.

Richelieu declared war against Spain in May, 1635. He had already concluded an alliance with the chief enemies of the house of Austria. Sweden agreed not to negotiate for peace until France was ready for it. The United Provinces joined France, as did some of the German princes. So the war was renewed, and French, Swedish, Spanish, and German soldiers ravaged an already exhausted country for a decade longer. The dearth of provisions was so great that the armies had to move quickly from place to place in order to avoid starvation. After a serious defeat by the Swedes, the emperor (Ferdinand III, 1637–1657) sent a Dominican monk to expostulate with Cardinal Richelieu for his crime in aiding the German and Swedish heretics against the unimpeachably orthodox Austria.

France succeeds Spain in the military supremacy of western Europe.

The cardinal had, however, just died (December, 1642), well content with the results of his diplomacy. The French were in possession of Roussillon and of Artois, Lorraine, and Alsace. The military exploits of the French generals, especially Turenne and Condé, during the opening years of the reign of Louis XIV (1643–1715) showed that a new period had begun in which the military and political supremacy of Spain was to give way to that of France.

Close of the Thirty Years' War, 1648.

182. The participants in the war were now so numerous and their objects so various and conflicting, that it is not strange that it required some years to arrange the conditions of peace even when every one was ready for it. It was agreed (1644) that France and the empire should negotiate at Münster, and the emperor and the Swedes at Osnabrück,—both of which towns lie in Westphalia. For four years the representatives of the several powers worked upon the difficult problem of satisfying every one, but at last the treaties of Westphalia were signed late in 1648. Their provisions continued to be the basis of the international law of Europe down to the French Revolution.

Provisions of the treaties of Westphalia.

The religious troubles in Germany were settled by extending the toleration of the Peace of Augsburg so as to include the Calvinists as well as the Lutherans. The Protestant princes were, regardless of the Edict of Restitution, to retain the lands which they had in their possession in the year 1624, and each ruler was still to have the right to determine the religion of his state. The dissolution of the German empire was practically acknowledged by permitting the individual states to make treaties among themselves and with foreign powers; this was equivalent to recognizing the practical independence which they had, as a matter of fact, already long enjoyed. A part of Pomerania and the districts at the mouth of the Oder, the Elbe, and the Weser were ceded to Sweden. This territory did not, however, cease to form a part of the empire, for Sweden was thereafter to have three votes in the German diet.

As for France, it was definitely given the three bishoprics of Metz, Verdun, and Toul, which Henry II had bargained for when he allied himself with the Protestants a century earlier.[333] The emperor also ceded to France all his rights in Alsace, although the city of Strasburg was to remain with the empire. Lastly, the independence both of the United Netherlands and of Switzerland was acknowledged.[334]