These dramatic events thoroughly alarmed Protestants elsewhere in Germany. Was this, they wondered, the first step in a new Catholic offensive against heresy? Elector Frederick IV of the Palatinate took the lead. On May 14, 1608, he formed the Evangelical, or Protestant, Union, an association to last for 10 years, for self-defense. At first, membership remained restricted to Germany, although the elector’s leading adviser, Christian of Anhalt, wished to extend it, but before long a new crisis rocked the empire and turned the German union into a Protestant International.
The new crisis began with the death of John William, the childless duke of Cleves-Jülich, in March 1609. His duchies, occupying a strategic position in the Lower Rhineland, had both Protestant and Catholic subjects, but both of the main claimants to the inheritance were Protestants; under the cuius regio principle, their succession would lead to the expulsion of the Catholics. The emperor therefore refused to recognize the Protestant princes’ claim. Since both were members of the Union, they solicited, and received, promises of military aid from their colleagues; they also received, via Christian of Anhalt, similar promises from the kings of France and England. This sudden accretion in Protestant strength caused the German Catholics to take countermeasures: a Catholic League was formed between Duke Maximilian of Bavaria and his neighbours on July 10, 1609, soon to be joined by the ecclesiastical rulers of the Rhineland and receiving support from Spain and the Papacy. Again, reinforcement for one side provoked countermeasures. The Union leaders signed a defensive treaty with England in 1612 (cemented by the marriage of the Union’s director, the young Frederick V of the Palatine, to the king of England’s daughter) and with the Dutch Republic in 1613.
At first sight, this resembles the pyramid of alliances, patiently constructed by the statesmen of Europe 300 years later, which plunged the continent into World War I. But whereas the motive of diplomats before 1914 was fear of political domination, before 1618 it was fear of religious extirpation. The Union members were convinced of the existence of a Catholic conspiracy aimed at rooting out all traces of Protestantism from the empire. This view was shared by the Union’s foreign supporters. At the time of the Cleves-Jülich succession crisis, Sir Ralph Winwood, an English diplomat at the heart of affairs, wrote to his masters that, although “the issue of this whole business, if slightly considered, may seem trivial and ordinary,” in reality its outcome would “uphold or cast down the greatness of the house of Austria and the church of Rome in these quarters.” Such fears were probably unjustified at this time. In 1609 the unity of purpose between pope and emperor was in fact far from perfect, and the last thing Maximilian of Bavaria wished to see was Habsburg participation in the League: rather than suffer it, in 1614 he formed a separate association of his own and in 1616 he resigned from the League altogether. This reduction in the Catholic threat was enough to produce reciprocal moves among the Protestants. Although there was renewed fighting in 1614 over Cleves-Jülich, the members of the Protestant Union had abandoned their militant stance by 1618, when the treaty of alliance came up for renewal. They declared that they would no longer become involved in the territorial wrangles of individual members, and they resolved to prolong their association for only three years more.
Although, to some extent, war came to Germany after 1618 because of the existence of these militant confessional alliances, the continuity must not be exaggerated. Both Union and League were the products of fear; but the grounds for fear seemed to be receding. The English ambassador in Turin, Isaac Wake, was sanguine: “The gates of Janus have been shut,” he exulted in late 1617, promising “calm and Halcyonian days not only unto the inhabitants of this province of Italye, but to the greatest part of Christendome.” That Wake was so soon proved wrong was due largely to events in the lands of the Austrian Habsburgs over the winter of 1617–18. The crisis in the Habsburg lands
While the Cleves-Jülich crisis held the attention of western Europe in 1609, the eyes of observers farther east were on Prague, the capital of Bohemia. That elective kingdom (which also included Silesia, Lusatia, and Moravia), together with Hungary, had come to the Habsburg family in 1526. At first they were ruled jointly with Austria by Ferdinand I (brother of Emperor Charles V), but after his death in 1564 the inheritance was divided into three portions: Alsace and Tyrol (known as “Further Austria”) went to one of his younger sons; Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola (known as “Inner Austria”) went to a second; only the remainder was left for his successor as emperor, Maximilian II.
By 1609 fragmentation had advanced even further: Maximilian’s eldest son, Rudolf II (emperor, 1576–1611), ruled only Bohemia; all the rest of his father’s territories had been acquired, the previous year, by a younger son, Matthias. The new ruler had come to power not through strength or talent, however, but by the exploitation of the religious divisions of his subjects. During the 1570s the Protestants of Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary had used their strength of numbers and control of local representative assemblies to force the Habsburgs to grant freedom of worship to their Protestant subjects. This was clearly against the cuius regio principle, and everyone knew it. In 1599 the ruler of Inner Austria, Archduke Ferdinand, began a campaign of forcible re-Catholicization among his subjects, which proved entirely successful. But, when Rudolf II launched the same policy in Hungary shortly afterward, there was a revolt, and the rebels offered the Hungarian crown to Matthias in return for guarantees of toleration. The Bohemians decided to exploit Rudolf’s temporary embarrassment by pressing him to grant similarly far-reaching concessions to the non-Catholic majority of that kingdom. The “Letter of Majesty” (Majestätsbrief) signed by Rudolf on July 9, 1609, granted full toleration to Protestants and created a standing committee of the Estates, known as “the Defensors,” to ensure that the settlement would be respected.
Rudolf II—a recluse who hid in a world of fantasy and alchemy in his Hradčany palace above Prague, a manic depressive who tried to take his own life on at least one occasion—proved to be incapable of keeping to the same policy for long. In 1611 he tried to revoke the Letter of Majesty and to depose the Defensors by sending a small Habsburg army into Prague, but a force of superior strength was mobilized against the invaders and the Estates resolved to depose Rudolf and offer their crown to Matthias. The emperor, broken in mind and body, died in January 1612. All his territories were then ruled by his brother, who also succeeded him as Holy Roman emperor later in the year. The alliance with the Protestant Estates that brought about Matthias’s elevation, however, did not long continue once he was in power. The new ruler sought to undo the concessions he had made, and he looked for support to his closest Habsburg relatives: his brother Albert, ruler of the Spanish Netherlands; his cousin Ferdinand, ruler of Inner Austria; and his nephew Philip III, king of Spain. All three, however, turned him down.
Albert had in 1609 succeeded in bringing the war between Spain and the Dutch Republic to a temporary close with the Twelve Years’ Truce. The last thing he wanted was to involve his ravaged country in supplying men and money to Vienna, perhaps provoking countermeasures from Protestants nearer home. Archduke Ferdinand, although willing to aid Matthias to uphold his authority (not least because he regarded himself as heir presumptive to the childless Matthias), was prevented from doing so by the outbreak of war between his Croatian subjects and the neighbouring republic of Venice (the Uskok War, 1615–18). Philip of Spain was also involved in war: in 1613–15 and 1616–17, Spanish forces in Lombardy fought the troops of the duke of Savoy over the succession to the childless duke of Mantua. Spain could therefore aid neither Matthias nor Ferdinand.