Echoes of Christendom’s Thirty Years’ War
IT IS very difficult for some persons to understand how Catholics and Protestants could be fighting each other in this twentieth century. If you are one who finds such a thing hard to comprehend, take a look at a little history for an explanation. For example, the Thirty Years’ War that ravaged Germany in the seventeenth century (1618-1648) is most revealing in this regard.
The Prelude
It was October 31, 1517, or 101 years before the Thirty Years’ War began, when Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses on the door of a Catholic church in Wittenberg, Germany. That Reformation spawned a series of conflicts that dragged on for many years. Finally, the political questions seemed to have been settled by the Treaty of Passau in 1552, and then in 1555 the Treaty of Augsburg dealt with the religious ones. Charles V, Spanish emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and bitter foe of Protestantism, failing in his efforts to stamp out Lutheranism by fraud and force, was compelled to make the concessions these treaties represented.
Among the concessions won by the Lutheran princes in the Augsburg religious peace treaty were certain religious freedoms: each prince could choose the religion for his own land. Anyone who did not agree with the religion of his prince was free to move to a land whose prince had the same religion as his. Also Lutherans became members of the imperial court of justice. Proselyting was forbidden, and it was agreed that when a bishop or abbot changed his religion the Catholic Church retained title to his property.
As a result of this treaty, in one Rhineland area, the people were obliged either to change their religion four times in succession or move to another prince’s territory. Another weakness of this treaty was that no provision was made for Protestants who were not Lutherans, such as the Calvinists; a flaw for which the Lutherans as much as the Catholics were to blame.
Charles V, who had been emperor since 1519, retired to a monastery in 1556, a year after the Augsburg Treaty, and died two years later. After him came several Hapsburg emperors who were not inclined to fight the spread of Protestantism. One of them even seems to have been quite favorable toward it.
But then, as the New Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 14, p. 98, tells it, “the Austrian Hapsburgs, encouraged by Jesuits, Capuchins, and Spanish zeal, fostered a militant policy of religious conquest and conversion. . . . In 1618, when the Bohemian estates accused the imperial government of violating their sovereign rights and [religious] privileges, they forcibly ejected the imperial emissaries by the defenestration of Prague, thereby proclaiming their rebellion against Hapsburg rule.” What happened was this: The Bohemian representatives threw the more contemptuous and imperious of the emperor’s emissaries out of the window—a way of expressing protest known as “defenestration.” Although falling some sixty or seventy feet, they suffered little harm, as it seems they landed on a pile of soft manure. But this particular act sparked the Thirty Years’ War in Germany between Catholics and Protestants.
The Bohemian and Danish Phases
The Bohemians rose up in arms and at first were quite successful, defeating the imperial army. They even chose their own king, Frederick V—an ill-advised move that turned out disastrously. The Catholic king, Ferdinand II, whom they had refused to recognize, was made emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and this enabled him to muster forces that soon put down the Bohemian rebellion. He had the temperament for just such a war, having been educated by the Jesuits. For him the voice of a Jesuit or a monk was the voice of God and he openly stated that he would rather rule over a desert than over a heretical land. As one historian observed, he almost succeeded in making Germany a desert but did not succeed in wiping out ‘heresy.’ He lost no time in instituting a policy of “death sentences, imprisonment, and confiscation of land” by which he “eradicated rebel opposition and weakened Protestant strength.”—New Catholic Encyclopedia.a
The Bohemian phase lasted from 1618 to 1620. Next came Christian IV, king of Denmark, in defense of the Protestants. Fearing at once religious as well as political domination by the Catholic house of Hapsburg, he entered Germany with his armies to oppose this twofold threat. However, even as with the Bohemians, his victories were short-lived. Count Tilly, the able general at the head of the armies of the Catholic League (which had been formed to oppose the Protestant Union), and General Wallenstein, who with his mercenaries was hired by Ferdinand II, were able to administer to King Christian such decisive defeats that he was glad to sue for peace and withdraw to his own country. This Danish phase of the Thirty Years’ War lasted from 1625 to 1629.
These victories over the Protestants emboldened Ferdinand II to issue the Edict of Restitution in 1629. “This comprehensive religious settlement,” the above-cited Catholic authority tells us, “represented the height of Catholic reaction.” It robbed the Protestants of all their hard-won gains over the previous eighty years. It was a turning of the clock of freedom back with a vengeance, and was considered by Ferdinand II an important step in his Jesuit-inspired goal to wipe out the Reformation. However, this was not without a counter-reaction. Some of the Protestant princes, who had been indifferent to the Protestant cause up until now, were awakened to the real danger that was facing them.
Gustavus Adolphus to the Rescue
Next to take up the cause of German Protestantism in this war that was to last thirty years was the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus, a military genius. He entered the conflict after it had been raging for twelve years and would have done so sooner had he not been at war with the Poles. He arrived in June 1630 with a small but well-disciplined army of 15,000 Swedes. In keeping with his religious convictions, he knelt in prayer upon arriving on German soil and required that his army engage in public prayer twice daily.
At first he met with very little cooperation, the German princes viewing him with indifference, envy or fear. But with the fall of the city of Magdeburg (which Gustavus might have prevented had certain German princes not opposed him) he began to get a little more cooperation. Ferdinand II at first had only contempt for Gustavus, sneeringly referring to him as the “Snow King” that would soon melt when he reached warmer climes, but later he was obliged to revise his opinion of this “Snow King.” The Swedish king, by reason of his military skill and thoroughly disciplined army, won one victory after the other. In one of these battles the emperor’s most able general, Count Tilly, was slain.
Ferdinand II had earlier dismissed his general Wallenstein at the instance of his princes who complained about the way Wallenstein’s mercenaries were devastating their lands; those mercenaries plundering the lands of friends and foe alike. But in the face of the successes of Gustavus, Emperor Ferdinand was obliged to recall Wallenstein, who now held out for such high terms that it was said he became the master, and the emperor his servant. However, able as Wallenstein was, he too met defeat at the hands of Gustavus, but in a succeeding battle Gustavus lost his life.
The Crime Against Magdeburg
Magdeburg literally means the burg or city of the maid. It was a city of Protestants who were proud of their record. Repeatedly they had repulsed attacks by Catholic forces; they had even resisted a siege for a whole year during the reign of Catholic Emperor Charles V. Now, nearly a century later, they taunted the demands of the emperor’s generals to surrender. They were confident that Gustavus would soon succor them. But General Tilly and Pappenheim had their forces storm the city, after it had been besieged for a month, and it fell. However, it seems that the conditions within the city itself had a bearing on its fall.
Concerning the fall of Magdeburg, the German historian Friedrich Schiller wrote: “Here commenced a scene of horrors for which history has no language, poetry no pencil. Neither innocent childhood, nor helpless old age; neither youth, sex, rank, nor beauty could disarm the fury of the conquerors. Wives were abused in the arms of their husbands, daughters at the feet of their parents; and the defenseless sex was exposed to the double sacrifice of virtue and life. . . . In a single church fifty-three women were found beheaded. The Croats amused themselves with throwing children into the flames; Pappenheim’s Walloons with stabbing infants at the mother’s breast.”
When some officers of the Catholic League, horror-struck at what they saw, reminded General Tilly that he could order a stop to these atrocities, he replied, “Return in an hour. . . . I will see what I can do; the soldier must have some reward for his dangers and toils.” To clear the streets, more than six thousand bodies were thrown into the river Elbe, and a much greater number of bodies were consumed by the flames. The plunder and carnage were stopped by the flames—but only for a time. The total number who perished is estimated at 30,000.
What the historian Trench has to say about the Thirty Years’ War was especially true of the crime against Magdeburg: “It was indeed the bitterest irony of all, that this War, which claimed at the outset to be waged for the highest religious objects, for the glory of God and for the highest interests of his Church, should be signalized ere long by a more shameless treading under foot of all laws human and divine, disgraced by worse and wickeder outrages against God, and against man, the image of God, than probably any war which modern Christendom has seen.”
More and More Political
Gustavus, in the matter of two years, from 1630 to 1632, succeeded in turning the tide in favor of the Protestants; thereafter theirs was no longer a lost cause. But only because Catholic France came to the aid of the Protestants. How so? Because Cardinal Richelieu, the power behind the throne in France, was determined not to let the House of Hapsburg dominate Europe. So now religion receded into the background and political considerations came more and more to the fore. These years saw the worst phases of the war. Both sides took to plundering. Famine conditions got so bad that cannibalism became widespread, graves were robbed of the newly buried, gibbets were robbed of their victims, children and prisoners disappeared mysteriously. To top it all, pestilence raged through the land. The war not only greatly impoverished Germany, it also reduced the population from some 30 to some 12 million.
No wonder that from time to time each side got weary of the fighting and showed signs of willingness to negotiate. These negotiations finally resulted in the Treaty of Westphalia. France and Sweden, having been largely victorious, had the major say in the peace terms. France saw to it that she got certain territories she greatly coveted, and the Swedes, while getting some territorial advantages, were chiefly concerned with religious benefits. Mainly as a result of their efforts the treaty granted religious freedom to ever so many who had not enjoyed it before. Thus Calvinists and other Protestants were accorded the same rights as the Lutherans, rights that went even beyond those granted by the Augsburg Treaty and which had been nullified by Ferdinand’s 1629 Edict of Restitution.
Christendom as Unchristian as Ever
But is all this merely interesting history? No, because it has a bearing on current events. Today in Ulster, Ireland, there are professed Christians, Catholics and Protestants, hating and killing each other. Time magazine, July 13, 1970, reported: “A pall of anger hung over Ulster last week following the fiercest battles between Catholics and Protestants in eight months. In addition to the seven dead, at least 250 people were wounded or injured, stores and pubs were fire-bombed and buses were overturned to make barricades.” And U.S. News & World Report, October 26, 1970, quoted a top Ulster official as saying: “This country is ungovernable. No one agrees on what is to be done. Ulster is a paradox—a small, insignificant place, but devilishly difficult to govern.” And practically all there profess to be Christians, either Catholics or Protestants!
Throughout the rest of the world, too, Christendom belies by its fruits its claim to be Christian. Widespread crime and violence, political corruption and corporate greed, drug addiction and loose morals are evident everywhere. And in particular do wars between professing Christians belie their claim to be followers of Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love among yourselves.” Clearly all those fighting with carnal or fleshly weapons are not followers of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.—John 13:34, 35.
[Footnotes]
a Says one historian: “Twenty-seven of the chief Protestant nobles were beheaded at Prague in one day; thousands of families were stripped of all their property and banished; the Protestant churches were given to the Catholics, the Jesuits took possession of the university and the schools . . . The Protestant faith was practically obliterated from all the Austrian realm . . . The property which was seized by Ferdinand II in Bohemia alone was estimated at forty millions of florins!”—History of Nations, Germany—Taylor and Fay, pp. 270, 271.