To have called to mind some of the principal points in the peace of
Westphalia is not sufficient for understanding the real significance of
the treaty without some consideration of the war which it closed. As
already suggested, this war, looked at from a scientific point of view,
is an unconscious experiment of nations, an attempt to solve a problem
in abnormal international psychology. In order to comprehend this
experiment and its resultant treaty, just how it brought about permanent
religious peace, some of the main events of the war must be recalled as
a basis upon which to work.
The Protestant Reformation had great influence upon almost everything
political in Europe, until the peace of Westphalia. The religious peace
of Augsburg (1555) furnished no settlement to questions stirred up by
the Reformation. It was inevitable that such fundamental disagreements
should lead to a general war. The Thirty Years' War marked the end of
the Reformation, which changed the idea of Christian unity and altered
the theory of a holy Roman empire, replacing it by the idea of autonomy
for individual states.
On May 23, 1618, a body of Protestants entered the royal palace at
Prague and threw two detested representatives of the Crown from the
window. This act started a struggle that for 30 years involved Europe in
a war which spread gradually from Bohemia over southern Germany, then
slowly to northern Germany and Denmark, until country after country
began to take part and the fighting became general. The war might have
ended in 1623, making it a five years' war, had it not been for the
outrageous treatment of the Protestant states of northern Germany,
resulting in a political disintegration in which Germany lost half of
her population and two-thirds of her wealth. Her religion and morality
sank low, and the intellectual damage required generations to restore.
The Roman Catholic Church, having guided Christianity for centuries
without a rival, naturally felt greatly wronged by Protestant secession.
This explains the uncompromising enmities of the Thirty Years' War.
Various parties claimed the control of the religious doctrines to be
taught the people, as well as control of worship; they were fighting
each other for this power, ready to sacrifice their lives for it. The
Lutherans were as intolerant toward the Calvinists as they were toward
the Catholics. The Catholic Church, convinced of the absolute truth of
its doctrines based upon 13 centuries of growth, naturally could not
tolerate some young reformers to arise and challenge its divine right,
especially not since these reformers seized old monastic and
ecclesiastic foundations with domains and edifices and administered them
in their own interest. The resistance of the Catholic hierarchy, to the
last drop of blood, was a normal reaction. As so often happens, the
conditions were abnormal, not the human beings.
Had the war stopped in 1623 the Catholics would have been left with
decided advantages. Their own ambitions, however, prevented it. Gustavus
Adolphus appeared, and by his efforts Protestantism is said to have been
saved from extinction. During 13 of the 30 years the lands of the
Protestants had been devastated; during the next 17 years an
equalization of the exhaustion of the parties developed before a lasting
religious peace was made. It became clear in the end that neither
Catholics nor Protestants could crush their opponents without perishing
likewise.