Wars of Religion and Westphalia

One king, one law, one faith

Almost everyone in the 1500s believed that a society could not survive with more than one religion. Religion was the glue of social order, and heresy was a kind of treason. A French slogan ran: un roi, une loi, une foi, "one king, one law, one faith." So when Western Christianity split, politics split with it. Rulers fought to impose their faith, and religious minorities fought to survive or to take over. The result was more than a century of warfare, the Wars of Religion.

Historians debate how "religious" these wars really were. Dynastic ambition, the rivalry between the French and Habsburg monarchies, noble factions, money and territory all mattered enormously. Catholic France often allied with Protestants against the Catholic Habsburgs. But Peter Marshall's volume insists that religion was not just a cover for politics. People truly believed eternal truth was at stake [check].

A century of religious wars

Europe's religious map around 1600

Germany: the Peace of Augsburg

The emperor Charles V wanted to restore religious unity in Germany, but for years he was distracted by wars with France and the Ottoman Turks. When he finally attacked the Protestant princes' Schmalkaldic League, he won at Mühlberg in 1547, but he could not force Protestants back to Rome. Exhausted, he left his brother Ferdinand to negotiate the Peace of Augsburg (1555): each prince could choose Lutheranism or Catholicism for his territory (cuius regio, eius religio), and dissenters could emigrate. Calvinists and Anabaptists were not included. The next year Charles abdicated and retired to a Spanish monastery, worn out and defeated in his life's goal.

France: the Huguenot wars

In France, Calvinism spread rapidly in the 1550s, especially among nobles and townspeople. By 1562 there were perhaps 2 million Huguenots, about 10 percent of the population. When the strong king Henry II died in a jousting accident in 1559, leaving weak young sons, rival noble families competed for power. The Catholic Guises and the Protestant Bourbons each had a religious banner. In 1562 the Duke of Guise's men massacred Protestants worshiping in a barn at Vassy, and civil war broke out. Eight wars followed over 36 years.

The most notorious event came in August 1572. Thousands of Protestant nobles had gathered in Paris for the wedding of the Protestant Henry of Navarre to the king's sister. On the night of 23–24 August, St Bartholomew's Day, probably with the approval of the queen mother Catherine de' Medici, the Protestant leader Admiral Gaspard de Coligny was murdered. Paris mobs then massacred Protestants throughout the city, and the killing spread to the provinces. Perhaps 5,000–10,000 died. In Rome, Pope Gregory XIII had a medal struck and a Te Deum sung in thanksgiving. Protestants across Europe were horrified.

The wars ended only when Henry of Navarre became king as Henry IV of France. To win Catholic Paris, he converted to Catholicism. He is said, perhaps legendarily, to have remarked "Paris is well worth a Mass." In 1598 he issued the Edict of Nantes, granting Huguenots freedom of conscience, the right to worship in certain places, and fortified towns for security. It was one of the first large-scale experiments in religious coexistence. In 1685 Louis XIV revoked it, and some 200,000 Huguenots fled to England, the Netherlands, Prussia, South Africa and America.

The Netherlands: revolt

The wealthy Low Countries belonged to Philip II of Spain of Spain, a devout and determined Catholic. His heavy taxes and persecution of Protestants, including a wave of Calvinist iconoclasm in 1566 met by the brutal Duke of Alba's "Council of Blood," sparked a revolt in 1568, led by William of Orange ("the Silent"). After eighty years of on-and-off war, the seven northern provinces became the independent Dutch Republic, officially Reformed but relatively tolerant of Catholics, Jews, Mennonites and others. The south, roughly modern Belgium, stayed Spanish and Catholic.

The Thirty Years' War

The last and most destructive war of religion began in Bohemia, the land of Hus, where Protestants were a majority. When the new Catholic king, the Habsburg Ferdinand II, restricted their rights, Protestant nobles in 1618 threw two of his officials out of a high window of Prague Castle. The officials survived, landing in a dung heap, Protestants said, or saved by angels, Catholics said. This "Defenestration of Prague" began the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648).

The war went through several phases:

1. Bohemian phase: Ferdinand crushed the Bohemians at White Mountain (1620) and forcibly re-Catholicized Bohemia.
2. Danish phase: Lutheran Denmark intervened and was defeated by the imperial general Albrecht von Wallenstein. In 1629 Ferdinand ordered all church lands taken by Protestants since 1552 to be returned.
3. Swedish phase: King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, the "Lion of the North," invaded to save German Protestantism, and he won brilliantly until he was killed at Lützen (1632).
4. French phase: Catholic France, led by Cardinal Cardinal Richelieu, joined on the Protestant side against the Habsburgs. Politics had overtaken religion.

The war devastated Germany. Armies lived off the land, looting and burning. Plague and famine followed. The sack of Magdeburg (1631) by imperial troops killed about 20,000 people. Overall the German population fell by perhaps 20 percent, and in some regions by a third or more.

The Peace of Westphalia, 1648

After years of negotiation in the towns of Münster and Osnabrück, the Peace of Westphalia (1648) ended the war:

• The Peace of Augsburg was confirmed and extended to include Calvinists.
• A "normal year," 1624, was set to fix which territories were Catholic or Protestant, ending the constant reshuffling.
• Some private worship was allowed for religious minorities.
• The independence of the Dutch Republic and Switzerland was recognized.
• Pope Innocent X condemned the treaty as "null, void, invalid, unjust," and he was ignored.

Westphalia is often seen as the birth of the modern system of sovereign states, each controlling its own internal affairs, including religion. It marked the end of the medieval dream of a single Christendom under pope and emperor. Shelley ends his Age of the Reformation in 1648 for this reason.

Britain: the last war of religion

In the British Isles, religious tensions helped cause the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1639–1651), including the English Civil War. King Charles I's attempt to impose a High Church prayer book on Presbyterian Scotland sparked rebellion. In England, Puritans and Parliament fought the king. Charles was executed in 1649, and Oliver Cromwell ruled a Puritan Commonwealth (see Puritans, Baptists and Quakers).

What the wars taught

A century of slaughter in the name of Christ had lasting effects. Many Europeans grew weary of religious zeal. Thinkers began to argue that faith cannot be forced, that the state should keep peace rather than enforce truth, and that religion should be reasonable and moral rather than dogmatic. The road led toward toleration and the Enlightenment (see The Enlightenment). Some historians argue that the wars, more than any theological argument, convinced Europe that religious coexistence was necessary.