Schmalkaldic War

6 Key excerpts on "Schmalkaldic War"

• 

  eBook - PDF

  The Causes of War

  Volume III: 1400 CE to 1650 CE

  • Alexander Gillespie(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Hart Publishing

    (Publisher)

  62 Dickens, A (1965) Reformation and Society (London, Thames) 122–24; Elton, G (ed) (1968) The New Cambridge Modern History: The Reformation , Vol II (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press) 102–04; Weart, S (1998) Never At War: Why Democracies Will Not Fight Each Oth er (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press) 95–97. 63 The ‘Schmalkaldic League’ (1531) as in Reddaway, F (ed) (1930) Select Documents in European History , Vol II (London, Methuen) 59; Ocker, C (2010) ‘The Birth of an Empire of Two Churches: Church Prop-erty, Theologians and the League of Schmalkalden’, Austrian History Yearbook 41, 48–67; Gilmore, M (1952) The World of Humanism (NYC, Harper) 106. 64 Luther, as quoted in Miller, G (2007) ‘Wars of Religion and Religion in War: Luther and the 16th Century Islamic Advance into Europe’, Seminary Ridge Review 9 (2), 38, 48. among us’. 61 Zwingli then directed his forces to erect a blockade around the opposing cantons. The five cantons replied by declaring war on Zurich, and Zwingli found that his devout faith was not enough to save him, or his 2,500 men, from the larger force of 8,000 Catholics. Despite this victory, there was no serious effort at a counter-reformation at this time. The Treaty of Cappel that followed anticipated the Peace of Augsburg by a quarter of a century, allowing each canton to decide its own religion, except in the reformed areas, where the Catholic minorities were to be protected. Protestant preach-ing in the Catholic cantons was forbidden. 62 Fearing that such a conflict could also break out in Germany, the Protestants, fol-lowing Saxony’s lead, agreed to the compact that formed the Schmalkaldic League in 1531, so named after the town of Schmalkalden on the border between Saxony and Hesse where the League assembled.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Luther, Conflict, and Christendom

  Reformation Europe and Christianity in the West

  • Christopher Ocker(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Deutungsstrategien im Kampf um den evangelischen Glauben umd die Reichsverfassung (1546–1552),” Das Interim 1548/50. Herrschaftskrise und Glaubenskonflikt , ed. Louise Schorn-Schütte (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2005), 166–191, here 168. After the Smalkaldic War: Competition for Luther 185 185 Habsburg power even though he respected it. On the Protestant side, not every member of the League chose to fight, most notably, as repeat-edly mentioned, Duke Moritz of Saxony, ruler of the Saxon domain in the Albertine line, “the Judas of Meissen,” as he was henceforth known among other members of the Smalkaldic League. 30 In an irony that speaks volumes about German politics in these years, Moritz’s betrayal of the League made him a richer and much more influential kind of Protestant, as we will see. And when all was said and done, the Protestant defeat helped the estates settle into Germany’s emerging bi-confessional arrangement. After the Smalkaldic War: Competition for Luther It took decades for imperial politics to settle into that bi-confessional arrangement. As before the war, so after: the arrangement arose out of ad hoc agreements during a near constant negotiation of friendships and alliances, and as the Catholic–Protestant divide hardened, internal Protestant parties rearranged themselves. In the process, the movement toward a German-national church ended. 31 It is a fabulously early- modern sort of irony that when the prospect of Protestant–Catholic rec-onciliation withered and died, the terms of religious détente became clear and eventually led to religious peace. The story of post-war religious division began at the first imperial diet after the war, at Augsburg.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  State Formation and Shared Sovereignty

  The Holy Roman Empire and the Dutch Republic, 1488–1696

  • Christopher W. Close(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  144 Such nationalist bravado stoked tensions that worsened in October 1538 when the Chamber Court placed the city of Minden under ban for its religious reforms. Schmalkaldic Estates decried the decree as a violation of the Truce of Nuremberg and the first step in a League of Nuremberg war. Then in December, Philipp intercepted letters from Duke Heinrich that contained plans for an attack on Hesse. For Philipp, this correspondence exposed the League of Nuremberg’s true purpose – to destroy the Reformation. 145 Johann Friedrich 140 Mentz, ed., Johann Friedrich, vol. 3, 374. On wider fears of the Empire becoming a hereditary monarchy, see Bosbach, Monarchia Universalis; Schmidt, Spanische Universalmonarchie, 95–162. 141 PC, vol. 2, 482; Lies, Krieg, 330–1. 142 PC, vol. 2, 488. 143 PC, vol. 2, 500. 144 PC, vol. 2, 642. 145 Lies, Krieg, 404–10. 82 Alliances and the Early Reformation (1526–1545) concurred that the confiscated letters showed how “all members of the Nuremberg League are entirely focused on attacking and assaulting our side in order to uproot the Gospel violently with the sword and to estab- lish corrupting, papal, idolatrous teachings.” 146 Just as Evangelicals had formed an alliance to protect the true faith, Catholics had created one to exterminate it. League of Nuremberg members proved equally suspicious of Schmalkaldic Estates, whom they saw as “even more inclined to war and upheaval than they have been until now.” 147 Rumors swirled about an imminent invasion of Catholic territories by Schmalkaldic armies seeking to spread “their Gospel.” 148 Writing to Charles V in January 1539, the Bavarian dukes portrayed the Schmalkaldic Estates as “more willing to obey the Turks than their proper Christian lord and neighbors” by plotting a “burdensome and destructive war” that could upend the Empire. 149 Ludwig X even accused Philipp of abrogating the Truce of Nuremberg by capturing Heinrich’s letters.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Beyond the Military Revolution

  War in the Seventeenth Century World

  • Jeremy Black(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  17 Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, a Catholic and a relative of Frederick, saw the war as an opportunity to supersede the Protestant branch of the Wittelsbach dynasty. Such competition within dynasties was common and serves as a reminder of the complexity of dynasticism as a motivating force and means of operation in international relations. The overrunning of the Lower Palatinate, a wealthy area in the middle Rhine, provided a clear example of the potential decisiveness of conflict in this period. On 6 May 1622, at Wimpfen, the army of the Bavarian-led Catholic League under Jean, Count of Tilly and a Spanish force under Don Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba heavily defeated an army under George of Baden-Durlach that was seeking to prevent the conquest of the Lower Palatinate. By the end of the year, the principality’s leading cities, Heidelberg and Mannheim, had fallen. Bavaria also annexed the Upper Palatinate to its north, and began a process of re-Catholicisation there. To reward his supporter and further entrench the Catholic position in Conflict, 1616–1650 61 the Holy Roman Empire, Ferdinand II transferred the position of Elector (one of the seven princes of the Holy Roman Empire able to vote for the Emperor) from the Palatine to the Bavarian branch of the Wittelsbachs. War began anew between the Dutch and Spain in 1621, with Spain deter-mined to resume the drive to end the Dutch War of Independence, and hoping to benefit from the new weakness of the United Provinces’ German allies. The context seemed favourable as James I of England preferred the illusion that he might serve as the mediator of Christendom’s divisions to the task of helping the Dutch pursued (eventually) by his predecessor Elizabeth I, while, in 1621, the anti-Spanish faction was not yet dominant in France.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  No longer available |Learn more

  Germany before and after the Thirty Years' War

  From Martin Luther to the French Revolution

  • Egon Harings(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • tredition

    (Publisher)

  Karl V had convened the imperial Diet in Regensburg, where was continued to search for a resolution of the Protestant affair, but what wasn‘t reach. In summer Karl V declared war on the Alliance of Schmalkalden. But the Alliance of Schmalkalden gave up its plan to march towards Ratisbon (Regensburg) immediately with the strong Protestant army of 57,000 soldiers and landsknechts in order to drive the emperor into a corner there. For the worried Protestant princes it seemed not to be wise to expose the own soldiers (after the time of the last knights now began the time of the first soldiers. But it was also the time of the landsknechts) and the expensive guns to a risk. The Alliance decided on a lengthy war of wear and tear, but by it the Protestants laid aside the law of action. So the emperor was able to unite his troops from various Habsburg countries. He had soon subdued all South Germany.

  W e write the year 1547

  Saxony became a centre of the Protestant resistance. Karl V had put his army in charge of the supreme command of the Spanish general Alba, who now advanced against the elector of Saxony with 25,000 Spanish soldiers. By Mühlberg on the Elbe he succeeded in taking the troops of the Alliance of Schmalkalden by surprise: At dawn Spanish soldiers had swum across the Elbe, with the sword between the teeth and covered by the fog, and cut the ropes of the boats of the alliance on the other side. Then they returned with the boats to the Spanish army. Now the Spanish engineers could build a bridge by the boats and the first Spanish soldiers crossed the Elbe. The main army followed shortly after. The soldiers of the alliance hadn’t the faintest idea of that. They were surprised when they were unexpectedly attacked by the Spaniards. Under the troops of the alliance arose a chaos, the German soldiers were confused and ran away. Now some brave German soldiers of the alliance tried to offer resistance near a small wood. They hoped that the fleeing soldiers would come back, that the Protestant army wouldn’t vanish into thin air. But their effort was unsuccessful, they combated in vain. No Protestant soldier came back to help them, so they fought a losing battle. All of them were massacred by the Spanish riders and the Spanish elite troops, the „tercios“.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Seventeenth-Century Europe

  State, Conflict and Social Order in Europe 1598-1700

  • Thomas Munck(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  It has also become apparent that it is meaningless to generalise about the causes and effects of the war in terms of the Empire as a whole: experiences varied enormously from one part to another, and contemporary observers, like some historians later on, tended to portray the conflict in extreme terms. The Thirty Years War, therefore, can be examined in a number of different ways. Earlier generations of twentieth-century historians naturally saw the conflict through their own experiences, as a major European conflict and perhaps the first ‘general war’ – as a conflict which had its roots in issues going back to the Reformation, a conflict where 1648 brought only partial resolution, but which nonetheless brought profound shifts in the balance of power and in the nature of ‘authority’ all over Europe. In that sense it included not only the conflicts between the Habsburg emperors and their rebellious subjects between 1618 and 1635, but also a decisive stage in the long-term conflict between the ruling dynasties of France and both branches of 1 the Habsburg family. Closely related to these was the French search for ‘secure’ frontiers (a longer-lasting quest, thanks to Louis XIV), Spanish efforts to protect their north Italian possessions, and the second phase of the Dutch struggle for independence from Habsburg Spain between 1621 and 1648. Equally, the war encompassed attempts by various princes (and their spiritual or lay advisors) to promote or arrest the Catholic Counter-Reformation, consolidate or stamp out Calvinism in the German lands and elsewhere, or protect Lutheranism from both. Within the Empire, this in some instances led to a growth in aggressive princely territorialism which permanently altered the balance of political power in central Europe.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book