"The Thirty Years’ War and England" Topic

"Although fought by many nations, most of the destruction took place within the Holy Roman Empire, a loose concoction of nearly 1,000 semi-independent, small states, in theory controlled from Vienna by the emperor, Ferdinand II, a Hapsburg. The House of Hapsburg then ruled nearly half of modern-day Europe, including Spain and portions of Italy and the Low Countries, i. e., the Netherlands. Ferdinand's bailiwick among the family holdings covered today's Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Austria and included part of Hungary, Poland, and the central Balkans. His lands stretched north and south from the Baltic to the Adriatic Seas, east and west from the Carpathian Mountains to the Rhine River.

The spark that set off the conflagration was religion. Christianity, since medieval times a source of unity in western Europe, had been transfigured by the 16th century's Protestant Reformation into a casus belli between emerging nations. Some within the Holy Roman Empire itself, many Scandinavians, even more English and Scots, and most of the Swiss had converted to Lutheranism or Calvinism or some other Protestant sect, while the Italians, the Spanish, and majority of those in the empire-along with the Hapsburg rulers- remained loyal to the pope in Rome. The new schism cut the old diplomatic ties, and traditional allies such as Spain and England were now at odds over theology. Since religious affinities did not follow territorial boundaries, all the major states found themselves dealing with religious minorities whose first loyalties were to creed, not king.

The Holy Roman Empire had from the beginning been based on a delicate balance between individual principalities and their would-be rulers in Vienna. In 1618, when Ferdinand attempted to reassert his imperial authority over apostate Bohemia by debarring Protestants from public office and shutting down their two major churches, the precarious balance was not so much upset as destroyed. In Prague, the Bohemian capital, an anti-imperial revolt broke out, and-like dominos-not only the German states but neighboring European powers fell into the fighting. At first the alliances were mostly based on religious affiliation, Protestant England, Sweden, Denmark, and the Dutch Republic falling in with Bohemia; Catholic Spain, Poland, and the papal state marching along the imperial front. But the intentions of individual belligerents varied, and sometimes changed moment to moment as events unfurled, between the holy and the profane, the aggressive and defensive, self-assertion and self-preservation. First among the more secular issues was the longing of many German princes and dukes and the rising nation-states butting up against the Holy Roman Empire to counteract and contain the multinational power and the imperial ambitions of the Hapsburg clan…"
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Armand

"The spark that set off the conflagration was religion" – not true and the reasons for the conflict starting are rather more complex than just religion see Wilson, P.

I think the quote and your subsequent comment are both correct.

For example, the spark that set off the American Civil War was the shelling of Fort Sumter. But the reasons for the Civil War are more complex than the simple shelling of a fort.

I claim that without the schisma of the Christian church into Protestant and Catholics the 30yw would not have happened. The religious schisma lies indeed at the core of this conflict, and the urge to "defend the faith" kept the conflict from being solved and closed on several occasions.

This was, however, mainmy a motivating matter to the Emperor and some Protestant rules like Gustav Adolf. For most participants relgion was a tool, not a conviction. France certainly had no religious motives when they entered against the Hapsburgs and supported the Protestant cause.

At the end one of the results was the general recognition that internal affairs should be handled by the respective government, a codex first put into letters at the treaty of Westphalia. The TYW was the last religiously motivated war in Western Europe.