The Thirty Years’ War

CNG 108, Lot: 1090. Estimate $500. Sold for $550. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

THIRTY YEARS’ WAR (Dreißigjähriger Krieg), Germany. Breisach. Besieged by the Swedes, 1633. AR Zwölfbatzner – 48 Kreuzer Klippe (31x31mm, 16.59 g). Dated 1633. Coats-of-arms of Austria, Elsaß, and Breisach, with six-petaled flower above · between arms of Austria and Elsaß; · 1 · 6 · 33 · above; XL VIII flanking arms of Breisach; all within linear and pearl circular border / Blank. Berstett 88; Mailliet 3⁴; Brause-Mansfeld I, pl. 57, 28. Good VF, toned.

Ex Archer M. Huntington Collection, ANS 1001.57.5006 (Numismatica Genevensis SA VII, 27 November 2012), lot 640.

Fought primarily in Central Europe between 1618 and 1648, The Thirty Years' War was one of the longest and most destructive of the religious wars of the seventeenth century. Approximately eight million fatalities resulted from a combination of civilian violence, famine and plagues, as well as direct military engagements, including sieges. The majority of victims were inhabitants of the Holy Roman Empire, with the remainder being foreign mercenaries. So traumatic was this war that it still remains in the memory of the region’s inhabitants, few of whose ancestors were not in some way affected.

Beginning as a localized conflict between various Protestant and Catholic states in the fragmented Holy Roman Empire, the war developed into a broader conflict involving most of the great European powers. With these states utilizing large mercenary armies, the war became less religious in motivation and more of a rivalry for European political dominance.

The election of Ferdinand II as Holy Roman Emperor provided the catalyst for the war. An ardent Catholic, he wanted to restore Roman Catholicism to the Imperial domains and suppress Protestantism. The northern Protestant states, angered by the violation of their rights to choose that had been granted to them in the 1555 Peace of Augsburg by Charles V, banded together to form the Protestant Union. As a result, the Protestant Bohemians revolted against their nominal ruler, Ferdinand II. After the so-called Defenestration of Prague, which violently deposed the Emperor's representatives there, both Protestants and Catholics prepared for all-out war. The Bohemians elected the Protestant Frederick V, Elector of the Rhine Palatinate as the new king of the Kingdom of Bohemia. The mainly Roman Catholic southern states, led by Bavaria, formed the Catholic League to expel Frederick in support of the Emperor. At the Battle of White Mountain, the emperor crushed the rebellious Bohemians and shortly after, executed its leading aristocrats.

The universal Protestant condemnation of the Emperor's action at White Mountain escalated the war to a broader, more poltical, war. Following the events in Bohemia, Saxony threw its support to the Union. Sweden, then a rising military power, intervened in 1630 under its king Gustavus Adolphus, “The Lion of the North,” transforming what had initially been an imperial attempt to curb the Protestant states into a full-scale European war. His death at the Battle of Lützen in 1632 proved to be a serious blow for Protestant leadership. Spain, which had hoped to end the Dutch Revolt once and for all and crush the young Republic, intervened under the pretext of helping Austria. No longer able to tolerate the presence of Habsburg Spain and the Holy Roman Empire on its borders, Catholic France joined the Protestant side. Entire regions were devastated by famine and disease. Germany and Italy, Bohemia, and the Southern Netherlands all suffered from high death rates. Sieges occurred frequently as mercenaries and soldiers in fighting armies looted or extorted tribute for money. Finally, Europe, torn by this conflict, underwent a mania of witch burnings.

Of all the European states, The Dutch Republic benefitted from the Thirty Years’ War. It was a time of great prosperity and development for the Republic. Known as the Gouden Eeuw, or Dutch Golden Age, the Dutch Republic became one of the world's foremost economic and naval powers. The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, with additional treaties at  Osnabrück and Münster, dramatically changed the political European landscape from a medieval to modern one. Borders of modern nation-states were emerging, the Bourbons in France were poised to dominate the second half of the seventeenth century under Louis XIV, Habsburg domination was on the down-swing, and Sweden emerged as a great power. This new balance of power set the stage for the great wars of the rest of the seventeenth and on into the eighteenth century.