"A History of Europe" Ferdinand Schevill, 1925.

Germany or the Holy Roman Empire

"What determined the history of Germany in the Middle Age more than any other one thing was that through the coronation of the Frank kin, Charles the Great, as emperor on Christmas day, 800 A.D., it became involved in the attempt to unite Europe by reviving the Roman Empire. The restored Empire, because of its close association with the Christian Church, became known as the Holy Roman Empire; and without doubt the Holy Roman Empire did for some centuries occupy a preeminent position, although it never affected the union of all Europe but only of its middle area comprising chiefly Germany and Italy. When, in the thirteenth century, in the days following the defeat of the house of Hohenstaufen, Italy repudiated the imperial connection, the Holy Roman Empire became substantially restricted to Germany. Thenceforth the Holy Roman Empire and Germany became interchangeable terms.

"The emperor had originally been a powerful sovereign of the feudal type. But his defeat in Italy reacted disastrously on his position in Germany. On finding him engaged to his full strength in Italy his leading German vassals, the great dukes, counts, and bishops, had raised their head against him, had forced him to make heavy political concessions whenever he asked for military help, and by slow degrees had reduced him to a puppet. By the middle of the fourteenth century the triumph of the great feudataries [sic] was so complete that they resolved to incorporate it in a constitutional enactment which from its official seal (bulla) has received the name of the Golden Bull (1356). The situation created by the Golden Bull is illuminating, especially in the matter of the emperor's dependence on the great lords. Elected in the past by the whole baronage, he was now made the nominee of a select body of the seven greatest princes of the realm. Of this number three, the archbishops of Mainz, Trier (Treves), and Cologne, were ecclesiastical princes, while four, the king of Bohemia, the duke Saxony, the margrave of Brandenburg, and the count palatine of the Rhine, were lay lords. . . .

"Toward the end of the fifteenth century, as a result of the breath of nationalism which stirred every country of Europe in connection with the Renaissance, an attempt was made to revive the central power of the emperor. The nationalist sentiment was strong enough to create a part of constitutional reform within the diet (feudal assembly). . . . The Emperor Maximilian (1493-1519) belonged to the house of Hapsburg established in the old east mark of Germany, called Austria. Possessing a mobile mind and hospitably disposed to the new influences of the Renaissance, he was none the less so greatly under the sway of the colorful medieval dreams of chivalry that his contemporaries were well inspired to hail him as 'the last knight.' Driven by contradictory emotions, he steered an uncertain and quixotic course and by a long string of failures proved himself one of the poorest politicians that ever lived. However, his father, the Emperor Frederick, had evolved a matrimonial program which, extended by the son, succeeded in the course of two generations in raising the house of Hapsburg to a leading position in Europe. In 1477 Maxmilian himself was joined in wedlock to Mary of Burgundy, heiress of the Netherlands, one of the busiest and wealthiest city areas of Europe. Then, in 1496, the son of this union, Philip, married another and even greater heiress, Joan, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. The oldest-born of this match, Charles by name, represented the junction of three great reigning houses and in due course entered upon possession of Austria, the Netherlands, and Spain. In the eyes of the aging Maximilian his grandson Charles must have been more than a compensation for his many political disappointments, since the young man was the visible proof and symbol of the greatness of the house of Hapsburg, for which Maximilian and his father before him had labored and intrigued during a long life." pp. 71-74.

"As an instructive introduction to both Renaissance and Reformation let us examine the implications of the unshaken domination in Germany, and almost alone in Germany, of the Church. We are aware that the Middle Age was so thoroughly ruled by organized Christianity that the pope was able to proclaim the theory that, since all power came from God and he himself was God's earthly vicar, all government, civil as well as ecclesiastical, was of right vested in his person. Of course, the doctrine of papal authority in this, its extreme form, never enjoyed universal acceptance and never hindered the European monarchs from asserting their independence in the civil field. None the less, in every country of Europe, the Church secured a position which placed it outside the national frame; and in view of the fact that the pope succeeded in acquiring substantial control of each national Church, he rose in every instance to a coordinate position with the monarch, exercising sovereignty in the monarch's territory, chiefly by laying taxes on ecclesiastical property and by controlling the higher ecclesiastical appointments. . . .

"In Germany where, in distinction from the western monarchies, the crown instead of growing stronger had, especially during the long, disgraceful reign of Frederick III (1440-1493), become steadily more feeble, the papal ascendancy over the German Church had been confirmed. In consequence the popes of the Renaissance exercised a more arbitrary power in Germany than anywhere else in Christendom. They abused their appointive rights by taking money from candidates to office - sin of simony; they taxed the clergy (and that means ultimately the laity) by a frequent levy of tithes on the pretext of a crusade against the Turks which never materialized; and they unflinchingly exacted annates or first-fruits. The impost called annates involved the surrender of one-half of this revenues during the first year of office by each new episcopal incumbent. The German diets of the second half of the fifteenth century never ceased voicing their dissatisfaction with the innumerable papal abuses by loud complaints dispatched to Rome, which quietly pigeon-holed on their arrival, proved no more effective than if they had been messages from Mars. In this connection we must not forget that this was the period of the Renaissance group of popes, who, indifferent to spiritual appeals, desired money and ever more money to satisfy their political ambitions and their sumptuous patronage of the arts. Since such men had but little conscience where their pockets were concerned, they agreed to every shifty measure for replenishing the treasury which their unscrupulous financial advisers might suggest. In an evil hour they agreed to a sale of indulgences in Germany on an unusually extensive scale. . . .An indulgence is a remission of the temporal penalty by means of the Treasure of Grace, defined as the sum total of the merits of Jesus Christ and the great company of saints and martyrs. . . .

"With the coming of the Renaissance and its pressing financial necessities the sale of the papal certificates (indulgencies) was converted into a device for raising taxes. They were consigned to licensed venders who penetrated into every nook and corner of Europe, except where they were excluded by a strong civil power. Because the pope exercised more influence in Germany than anywhere else, the hawkers disported themselves with particular freedom in German territory with the result that they fanned the already dangerous anti-papal sentiment.

"In view of all these facts it is easy to understand the rising tide of national indignation directed against the pope. but unless we understand that this indignation, while possessed of a moral character, was also fed by political and economic considerations, we shall fail to grasp the nature of the hurricane release by Luther's challenge." pp. 92-94.

"Protestant writers, who have often angrily berated Erasmus as a white-livered knave, fail to do justice to his fundamental conviction that the only reforms which are ever worth while come through gradual enlightenment; on the other hand, there is a modicum of truth in the pithy summary of the situation credited to a Catholic contemporary: Erasmus laid the egg; Luther hatched it. To bitter, partisan Catholics Erasmus was quite as great a criminal as Luther.

"Martin Luther was born November 10, 1483, in a village of Thuringia at the foot of the Harz Mountains. His ancestry for many generations back had been hard-working peasants, and much of peasant sturdiness and simplicity, with much of peasant obstinacy and superstition, remained characteristic of this son of the soil to the end of his days. . . . By personal sacrifices his parents managed to send young Martin to school and later, to the university of Erfurt, where he prepared himself for the law; but in the year 1505, during a thunder-storm which overtook him on the highway and filled him with wild terror he made the vow to become a monk. it was a characteristically medieval act inspired by a sense of sin and need of salvation. He joined the Augustinian order of friars at Erfurt and took his duties so seriously that a distinguished clerical career opened before him. In 1507 he was ordained a priest and, immersing himself in his theological studies, he was in 1512 promoted to the doctorate and, shortly after, called to the professorship of theology at the university of Wittenberg. This institution had been recently founded by the Elector Frederick of Saxony at the seat of his government. Luther immediately became a leading professor, largely because in the spirit of the new learning he based his instruction not on the medieval schoolmen but on the living Christian sources, the Fathers and the Bible. (p.99-100, Schevill)

[On October 31, 1517 Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the castle church of Wittenberg.]

"The three years from 1517 to 1520 constitute an extraordinarily important interlude when there was still some hope that a compromise might be effected which would restrain the audacious friar from taking an irrevocable step. . . . Germany had just passed through the throes of an imperial election. In January, 1519, the Emperor Maximilian [died] . . . Emperor Charles V ascended to the Spanish throne. As the head of the house of Hapsburg he called a diet at the city of Worms on the Rhine. Many matters demanded his attention, but all were overshadowed by the conflict which ranged around Luther. [Luther] had just been condemned by the pope. It was incumbent on emperor and diet to declare their stand with reference to the papal sentence.

"The sovereign who confronted his German subjects for the first time at Worms was a lad of but twenty- one years. He had passed his life in the Netherlands and in Spain, where he had been brought up as a good Catholic who might acknowledge the existence of abuses in the Church, but who, in the main, gave it an unhesitating allegiance. Therefore he, personally, was prepared to dispose of Luther without more ado. But there were certain considerations which could not be overlooked. So large a section of the German princes and people were secret or open supporters of Luther that to condemn him unheard might cause an armed insurrection. Accordingly, Charles agreed to have him summoned to Worms for a public hearing under a special pledge of safety. . . . [Charles] attention at that moment was fixed not on Germany but on Italy, where the predominance won by his Spanish predecessors was again in question. . . . He had interests in the most widely separated regions, in Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and America. In Italy the king of France had recently renewed the Franco-Spanish struggle for ascendancy with the successful seizure of Milan (1515). From this vantage-point, from which he threatened the Spanish control of the peninsula, Charles was firmly resolved to oust him. Clearly in such an enterprise an alliance with the pope would prove helpful. But unless he gave support to the papal bull against Luther how could he hope for papal assistance against France? Accordingly, on May 26, 1521, Charles published the edict of Worms, which, not without a measure of deceit, he had wrung from the diet and which pronounced the ban of the empire against the heretic. In the hope that he had thus disposed of a dangerous religious crisis Charles turned his attention to other matters, more particularly to the French war and reconquest of Milan.

"But the Reformation had already acquired too great a momentum to be stopped by an imperial gesture. If Charles could have remained in Germany to see personally to the execution of his decree against Luther, or if the civil power in Germany had not substantially lain with the princes, who, from the nature of the case, were divided in their sympathies, the history of the Reformation might have been different. As it happened, Charles remained away from Germany for the next decade, and the princes and imperial cities, left to themselves, found agreement impossible in the face of the strong national support behind Luther. For to most of his countrymen he was since Worms a hero sent from heaven. Consequently the hostile decree remained a dead letter and the party of reform, encouraged by the vacillation of the central government, grew so strong that, by the time Charles saw fit to return to Germany, it could defy him as well as the pope. " (pp. 99 - 106)

"Since the Lutheran ferment spread to every class it was clear that the humble tillers of the soil would not be immune. Serfs, attached to the manors of the nobility and the Church, they had in recent decades frequently registered a protest against their hard lot by rising in insurrection. Not only had all their rebellions been cruelly suppressed, but their burdens had been multiplied by increased rents and services as well as through the seizure by the lords of the woods and pastures once owned by the villagers in common. With the expansion of trade characteristic of the Renaissance the old medieval simplicity was passing, and we need not think of the lords as necessarily harder of heart than their forebears if they tried to meet the higher cost of living by squeezing a larger return from their peasants. . . bringing an unusual pressure to bear on all classes alike. Such considerations do not alter the fact that the peasants dwelt in a deepening gloom, into which the wild hopes universally aroused by the Reformation fell like a ray of light. . . . In mistaken hope they rose and armed themselves as best they could, first (1524) in the extremesouth on the borders of Switzerland. [This was followed by another peasant war of 1525 and the peasants' threat to the entire existence of order in the society. When Luther sided with the princes he caused "irreparable injury to the general development of Germany" and "broke with these popular forces which would have been able to renew Germany politically and to assure the periodic freshening of the Reformation stream." Conflict ensued beginning with the first war of religion in Germany, called the Schmalkaldic War which broke out in the year of Luther's death, 1546 - lead by evangelical princes, John Frederick of Saxony and Philip of Hesse - and ending with the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. This ended the domination of Catholicism and the unity of the Church. Essentially, this divided the land into those ruled by Lutherans vs. those ruled by Catholics. "The privilege of choice between two legal religions must not be confused with modern individual toleration with which it has nothing to do. The conceded choice, narrow to begin with, pertained only to rulers and not to their subjects, who, if they were Catholics, might be evicted from Protestant regions and vice versa. Indeed a fresh wave of intolerance may be said to have inundated Europe with the coming of the Reformation, since the theological fury of the Lutherans reacted on the Catholics and made them more rigidly doctrinal than they had been in the immediately preceding centuries. it would be difficult to prove that Lutheranism or any other form of Protestantism directly and intentionally promoted toleration in the modern sense; and yet it is clear that indirectly Protestantism helped considerably to bring about the triumph of this precious principle,. . . in 1555 individual toleration was still so far from the comprehension of men that not a voice was raised in its behalf." "Charles V saved himself the humiliation of putting his signature to the Peace of Augsburg by abdicating the crown, a step which, long meditated, the finally took in 1556." ] -p. 119

"The Peace of Augsburg of 1555 must undoubtedly be construed as a victory for German Protestantism. But it was also, since it took the control of religion out of the hands of the central authority, the emperor, and gave it to the princes, a victory for the principle of decentralization. The significance of such a development in a Europe whose states were becoming daily more powerful through the opposite movement of centralization must not be overlooked. Weakened and disunited Germany would draw the covetous gaze of her stronger neighbors and would henceforth be exposed to their attack.

"However, though a victory for Protestantism and decentralization, the Peace of Augsburg did not prove to be a final settlement of the German religious conflict. Unfortunately it left many important matters in suspense. For instance, it recognized Lutheranism without extending any rights whatever to the followers of Calvin." p.236. Another author states: They asked toleration for Lutherans in all Catholic territories, but proposed to grant none to Catholics to their own. These extreme demands were naturally resisted, and the result was a compromise, the Peace of Augsburg, of September 25, 1555. By its provisions equal rights in the empire were extended to Catholics and Lutherans -- no other Evangelicals were recognized. [Walker, p. 342]

"A History of the Christian Church," Williston Walker. Third Edition, 1969.

"John Calvin was born in Noyon, a city of Picardy, about fifty-eight miles northeast of Paris, on July 10, 1509. His father, Gérard Cauvin, was a self-made man, who had risen to the posts of secretary of the Noyon bishopric and attorney for its cathedral chapter, and possessed the friendship of the powerful noble family of Hangest, . . . with the younger members of this family John Calvin was intimately acquainted, and this friendship earned for him a familiarity with the ways of polite society such as few of the reformers enjoyed. . . . He was still simply an earnest, deeply learned humanist.

"Between [his] publication in the spring of 1532 and the beginning of 1534 Calvin experienced a 'sudden conversion.' Of its circumstances nothing is certainly known, but its central experience was that God spoke to him through the Scriptures and God's will must be obeyed. Religion had henceforth the first place in his thoughts. How far he even yet thought of breaking with the Roman Church is doubtful. He was still a member of the humanistic circle in Paris, of which Roussel and his intimate friend Nicolas Cop were leaders. (p.349)

[As Calvin rose to the defense of his fellow French Protestants who were being slandered as anarchists, he published several literary masterpieces which pushed him into the leadership of that group. From 1536 to 1559 he wrote and revised extensive works known as the Institutes, scholarly works that "were the most orderly and systematic popular presentation of doctrine and of the Christian life that the Reformation produced. Calvin's mind was formulative rather than creative. Without Luther's antecedent labors his work could not have been done. It is Luther's conception of justification by faith, and of the sacraments as seals of God's promises that he presents. Much he derived from Butzer, notably his emphasis on the glory of God as that for which all things are created, on election as a doctrine of Christian confidence, and on the consequences of election as a strenuous endeavor after a life of conformity to the will of God. But all is systematized and clarified with a skill that was Calvin's own." p. 350]

"The Protestant situation in Germany was further turmoiled by the victorious advance of Calvinism into the southwest. Frederick III (1559-1576), the Elector Palatine, was led by studies of the discussions regarding the Lord's Supper to adopt the Calvinist position. For his territories the young theologians Kaspar Olevianus (1536-1587) and Zacharias Ursinus (1534-1583) prepared the remarkable Heidelberg Catechism in 1562 -- the most sweet-spirited and experiential of the expositions of Calvinism. It was adopted by the Elector in 1563. But Calvinism had no protection under the Peace of Augsburg, of 1555, and not only Catholics but Lutherans were soon protesting against its toleration.

"The disputes in Lutheranism continued with great intensity. . . . The period of Lutheran high orthodoxy had begun, which was to have its classic exposition in 1622, through the Loci Theologici of Johann Gerhard (1582-1637) of Jena. Its scholasticism was as complete as any in the Middle Ages. Under this repression, the Philippists turned increasingly to Calvinism, and Calvinism made larger inroads in Germany. . . . The electoral house of Brandenburg became Calvinist in 1613, though most of the inhabitants of Brandenburg remained Lutheran. . . .Yet though these German "Reformed" churches became Calvinist in doctrine and worship, Calvin's characteristic discipline found little foothold among them.

"Protestantism in Germany reached its flood-tide of territorial advance about 1566. From that time it began to ebb. The revived Catholicism of the Counter-Reformation became increasingly aggressive, led by the Jesuits and supported by earnest Catholic princes like the dukes of Bavaria. Divided Protestantism could not offer united resistance." [Walker, pp. 390-91]

"The Thirty Years' War" [1618-1648]

"The chronicle of the Thirty Years' War is a record of diplomatic intrigue, military campaigns and savage destruction. its interest to the historian lies less in these matters than in its demonstration of the disruptive forces at work in German national life and in its evidence of the vigorous participation of outside powers in imperial affairs. The foreign interest is brought out especially in the various 'periods' -- Bohemian, Danish, Swedish and French --- into which the war is conventionally divided. Even more important than the war itself was the settlement which ended it, for the Peace of Westphalia was to constitute a landmark in the political, diplomatic and religious history of Europe." [Knapton, p. 277]

"The war opened with a revolt in Bohemia where a bitter resentment grew up against what was regarded as unjustifiable interference by the Hapsburgs in the internal affairs of the ancient kingdom. The Emperor Matthias, who held also the title of King of Bohemia, had arranged for his cousin Ferdinand to succeed him in 1617 as king. Protestant and national opinion reacted sharply against this with the result that two imperial emissaries, appearing in 1618 before a gathering of Bohemian nobles in Prague, were unceremoniously thrown from a high window of the Hradschin Palace. By this historic 'defenestration of Prague' war upon the emperor was unofficially declared.

"Matthias died in the following year. When Ferdinand then succeeded him as emperor, the Bohemian Estates proceeded at once to renounce Hapsburg rule and to invite a Rhineland prince, Frederick, the Elector of the Palatinate, to be their king. Frederick, an ardent Calvinist and the son-in-law of James I of England, was hopefully regarded as the leader of the Protestant cause. He went to Prague and was crowned. Here he became something of a curiosity, driving about in a bright red cloak with a large yellow feather struck in his hat, or bathing stark naked in the River Moldau before the queen and her ladies, to the horror of the good burghers of the capital.

"Imperial forces were soon mustered against Frederick. At the Battle of White Hill (1620) outside Prague he was defeated by the Austrian commander, Count Tilly. The defeat meant ultimately not only the loss of his Bohemian crown but also the loss of Frederick's ancestral territory, the Palatinate, which went to Maxmilian of Bavaria, an ardent supporter of the imperial cause. An extraordinarily severe repression was imposed upon Bohemia. Leaders of the revolt were executed, their lands were confiscated and redistributed, education was largely given over to the Jesuits, and many scholars including the great Bohemian educator Comenius were driven into exile. Roman Catholicism was firmly reestablished. The old political rights guaranteed by the Letter of Majesty were abrogated and it was eventually provided that the Bohemian crown was to be hereditary in the House of Hapsburg. The bohemian revolt, then, had turned out to be a catastrophe for the Protestant and Bohemian cause." [p. 278, Knapton]

"[In England] other quarrels stemmed from James' ineffective conduct of foreign affairs. In 1604 he made an unpopular peace with Spain. Even though his daughter Elizabeth was married to Frederick, the Elector Palatine and "Winter King" of Bohemia, James showed great reluctance in 1619 to come to the aid of the Protestant cause in the Thirty Years' War. Later James shocked English opinion by sending his son Charles and the unpopular favorite, the Duke of Buckingham, on a matrimonial mission to Spain seeking the hand of the Infanta for Charles. James evidently thought that he might best help the cause of his outcast son-in-law, the Elector Palatine, by ingratiating himself with Catholic Spain. The effort was a disastrous failure; nor was the ultimate solution, the betrothal of Charles to Henrietta Maria, sister of Louis XIII of France, one that England could welcome with enthusiasm. Thus James' death in 1625 meant that unsolved problems of major proportions were bequeathed to the new reign." [p. 301, Knapton]

[Treaty of Westphalia (October, 1648) extended rights "formerly enjoyed by Lutherans throughout the Empire" to the Calvinists. "This concession was still far from constituting true religious toleration, for the power of determination lay with the princes, who had the jus reformandi, or right to enforce conformity by threat of expulsion. That they did not exercise this right on any large scale was due more than anything else to economic reasons; they could hardly afford to suffer the losses that large-scale expulsions would produce. All church property was to remain in the hands of those holding it in January, 1624. The treaty also provided that when the imperial Diet had to discuss matters of religion it was to divide into sections representing the Protestants and the Catholics. Such a provision only added to the confusions of the imperial body." [Knapton, p. 284]

Church and State Under Louis XIV

"'God establishes kings as his ministers and reigns by them over his people.' Thus wrote Bishop Bossuet for the instruction of Louis XIV's son, the Dauphin of France. Seeing that the Church likewise considered itself divinely ordained to carry out god's will upon earth, it becomes important to consider the relations between the two powers. Over the years the government of France had reached a tolerably satisfactory working arrangement with the papacy. . . . To a very considerable degree this 'Gallican' church managed its own affairs. Protestantism, meanwhile, had won a tolerated minority status which certainly brought no threat to the great Catholic majority. . . .

"The Protestants, who at the beginning of Louis XIV's reign numbered more than a million, created a much more troublesome problem. Richelieu's Edict of Alais (1629) had taken from them the very large degree of political independence which they had been granted by the Edict of Nantes. In a religious sense, however, they were still remarkably free. Among these Huguenots could be reckoned, moreover, outstanding industrialists and financiers as well as many of the most highly skilled and most prosperous craftsmen in France. The official attitude towards the Huguenots was one of steadily increasing hostility. For this there were two main explanations: one lay in the personal feelings of the monarch, himself a devout Catholic who assumed that in matters of religion he spoke with the same authority as he did in matters of politics; the other lay in the insistent pressure of the Roman Catholic church. . . . The general policy of the reign towards the Protestants was that of a 'strict construction' of the Edict of Nantes; it was held that the Edict did not apply to lands acquired by France after 1598. Here the Protestants, even though in a majority, were denied the rights granted their co-religionists elsewhere in France. Severe pressure was steadily increased in various ways, for example a decree of 1681 ordered that Protestant children at the age of seven be permitted to 'decide' for themselves whether or not they wished to become Catholics. Other decrees undertook to debar Huguenots from the professions. Few Huguenots were appointed to public office. By various legal devices Protestant churches were closed, so that by 1684 some 570 out of an estimated 815 congregations were unable to assemble. The most ruthless of all devices was the employment of the dragonnades, a term given to the practice of quartering French dragoons and other soldiers in Protestant communities with the understanding that the troops, no matter how badly they behaved, would go unpunished. As a result emigrants began to cross the frontiers, and 'conversions,' whether real or feigned, took place in large numbers.

"In these circumstances, and under the influence of his Jesuit confessor and of counsellors such as Louvois and Le Tellier, Louis proceeded to the ultimate step: in October, 1685, the Edict of Nantes was officially repealed. Protestant worship was entirely forbidden and the 'temples' of the reformed faith were to be demolished; Protestant schools were closed; ministers were to quit the realm within fifteen days, leaving behind any of their children over seven; no other members of the reformed religion were to leave France under penalty of being sent to the galleys if caught.

"The consequences of revoking the Edict were disastrous. Despite the ban on emigration and the promise that no Protestant would be molested if he remained quiet, a large movement of surreptitious emigration took place. One estimate puts the number of departures at 250,000; these were in large part skilled workmen whose talents henceforth were put to the service of England, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Brandenburg and even the Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope. France suffered, too, in a military sense, for there were substantial desertions from the army and navy. Internal disorders left a tragic stain on the last years of Louis XIV. A Protestant revolt in the mountainous Cevennes area in the center of France was put down (1702-1705) with great cruelty." [pp. 337-38, Knapton]

"In 1672, accompanied by a galaxy of generals Louis launched his triumphal advance northward. he commanded armies of some 172,000 men. Maestricht fell; the Rhine was crossed; Utrecht, Nimwegen, Sutphen and other famous Dutch towns were seized; Amsterdam itself was threatened. In July, 1672, the States General of the Netherlands recalled William of Orange (great-grandson of William the Silent) and appointed him supreme commander. Only by the desperate measure of flooding large stretches of land was Amsterdam kept from the French.

"The outrageous terms which Louis announced as his basis for peace helped in the formation of another coalition against him. The alliance this time comprised Brandenburg, Lorraine, Denmark, Spain, the Palatinate and eventually the Holy Roman Empire. These powers were united in the fear of what Louis might do across the Rhine. 'The scent of the lilies,' it was written, 'is growing too strong in Germany.' The war broadened in scope so that the French were maintaining armies in Flanders, the Palatinate and Franche Comté. As the costs of war pressed more heavily upon France and as public opinion in England forced Charles II away from Louis and into alliance with Holland, France finally agreed to negotiate.

"The Treaty of Nimwegen (1678) marked a further step in the French advance toward the Rhine. . . . For the next decade Louis embarked upon a new policy [relooking at the area to see whether lands ceded earlier could not be taken back by France. This included Alsace, the principal towns of the Saar Basin, and the city of Strasbourg.]. The countries which had allied against France either in 1668 or 1672 because of its military aggressiveness must have felt that it had now found a highly profitable alternative to war. Moreover, Louis' revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 had caused a wave of indignation and alarm throughout Europe. After initial failures an alliance, The League of Augsburg (1686), was formed which included Spain, the Empire, the Netherlands, England, Sweden, Denmark, Bavaria, Brandenburg and Savoy.

"The War of the League of Augsburg followed the pattern of its predecessors. Louis' generals won some brilliant victories; the Palatinate was ruthlessly devastated by the French in such fashion as to leave bitter memories even to the present day; nevertheless, France was forced eventually to the defensive. ["The ravaging of the Palatinate took place with appalling thoroughness. Town after town was razed, peasants were forbidden to plant crops within five leagues of the banks of the Moselle and the great castle at Heidelberg was blown up. 'All the buildings at Mannheim,' Louvois wrote, 'are to be destroyed. Not one is to be left standing.'" Note. 12.] [Knapton pp. 343-45]

"The seizure of Strasburg and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes befell in a period of nominal peace. They spread such a feeling of uneasiness and insecurity that William of Orange resolved to prepare for the worst by a new coalition, and by 1686, he persuaded Spain, the emperor (Austria), and a large number of German states to join him in a league of mutual protection. The war between Louis and this new combination had already become inevitable, when a happy accident brought England into the fold of the allies. In 1688, James II, who, like his brother, Charles II, cultivated friendly relations with France, was overthrown by the "Glorious Revolution" and William of Orange became king of England. As the temper of the English people had at the same time become thoroughly anti-French, William found no difficulty in persuading them to join Europe against the French monarch. thus in the new war --- called the War of the Palatinate from the double fact that with his usual effrontery Louis put forth an unfounded claim to the Palatinate and that the war began with a terrible harrying by fire and sword of that poor Rhenish land --Louis was absolutely without a friend. [Schevill, p. 323-4]

"This third war (1688-1697) is, for the general student, thoroughly unmemorable. Battles were fought on land and on sea, in the channel, in the Netherlands, and along the Rhine, and generally speaking, the French proved their old superiority; but they were no longer strong enough to reap any benefit from their successes against the rest of Europe, and in 1687 all the combatants from mere exhaustion were glad to sign, on the basis of mutual restitutions, the Peace of Ryswick.

"The War of the Palatinate was the first war by which Louis had gained nothing. that and the circumstance that England had now definitely joined the ranks of his enemies, should have served him as a warning that the tide had turned." [p. 324 Schevill]

"Germany was in a pitiable condition by the time the (Thirty Years' War) finally ended. more than half the people had been killed. Those who survived saw nothing but ruin wherever they looked. Whole cities, villages, and farms had disappeared, and two thirds of all the property had been destroyed. Art, science, trade, and industry languished. It took almost two hundred years fro Germany to recover from the effects of the Thirty Years' War. Thousands of persons left Europe, especially Germany, and went to America to build a new life." [ World Book, vol. 18, p. 200]

"Upon no part of Europe did the collapse of the idea of a unified Christendom bring more disastrous consequences than to Germany. Naturally one would have supposed that the Emperor, being by origin a German, both in the case of the earlier lines, and in the case of the Hapsburgs, would have developed into the national monarch of a united German-speaking state. It was the accidental misfortune of Germany that her emperors never remained German. Frederick II, the last Hohenstaufen, was a half- Orientalized Sicilian; the Hapsburgs, by marriage and inclination, became, in the person of Charles V, first Burgundian and then Spanish in spirit. After the death of Charles V, his brother Ferdinand took Austria and the empire, and his son Philip II took Spain, the Netherlands, and South Italy; but the Austrian line, obstinately Catholic, holding its patrimony mostly on the eastern frontiers, deeply entangled, therefore, with Hungarian affairs and paying tribute, as Ferdinand and his two successors did, to the Turk, retained no grip upon the north Germans with their disposition towards Protestantism, their Baltic and westward affinities, and their ignorance of or indifference to the Turkish danger.

"The sovereign princes, dukes, electors, prince bishops and the like, whose domains cut up the map of the Germany of the Middle Ages into a crazy patchwork, were really not the equivalent of the kings of England and France. They were rather on the level of the great land-owning dukes and peers of France and England. Until 1701 none of them had the title of "King." Many of their dominions were less both in size and value than the larger estates of the British nobility. . . .In 1648 the princes and diplomatists gathered amidst the havoc they had made to patch up the affairs fo Central Europe at the Peace of Westphalia. By that peace the power of the Emperor was reduced to a shadow, and the acquistion of Alsace brought France up to the Rhine. And one German prince, the Hohenzollern Elector of Brandenburg, acquired so much territory as to become the greatest German power next to the Emperor, a power that presently (1701) became the kingdom of Prussia. [The Outline of History, H.G. Wells, pp. 686-87]

Many books on colonial immigration show the impact on Maryland of all the events outlined above, and several I've used for genealogical research are: "The Maryland Germans" by Dieter Cunz, 1948, Princeton University Press and "Maryland Records: Colonial, Revolutionary, County and Church from Original Sources," Gaius Marcus Brumbaugh, M.S., M.D.. 1985, Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc. Several quotes are here.

Thiessens' Index For more history and genealogy.

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Original Post: Oct. 18, 1999
Tuesday, 19-Oct-1999 11:04:42 MDT