Peace of Prague (1635)

Emperor Ferdinand II, ca 1635

The Thirty Years' War began in 1618 when Frederick, the Protestant ruler of the Palatinate, accepted the crown of Bohemia. Many Germans remained neutral and viewed it as an inheritance dispute. With Bavarian support, Emperor Ferdinand quickly suppressed the Bohemian Revolt. Troops under Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria invaded the Palatinate in 1622 and sent Frederick into exile. However, depriving a hereditary prince of his lands changed both the nature and the extent of the war.

Christian IV of Denmark invaded Northern Germany in support of his fellow Protestants until he was defeated and forced to withdraw in 1629. Success led Ferdinand to pass the Edict of Restitution, which required any property transferred since 1552 to be restored to its original owner, which was in nearly every case the Catholic Church. By effectively undoing the 1555 Peace of Augsburg, the edict forced moderate Protestants like John George of Saxony and George William of Brandenburg into opposition.[6] That increased after 1627 by having a large Imperial army based on their lands, whose rarely-paid troops simply took what they wanted.[7]

Conflicts in 17th-century Europe often drew in foreign participants because of the rivalry between the Bourbon kings of France and their Habsburg rivals in Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. Habsburg territories in the Spanish Netherlands, the Franche-Comté and the Pyrenees blocked the expansion of France and made it vulnerable to invasion. As a result, the Catholic Bourbons supported their Habsburg opponents, irrespective of religion, including the Ottomans, the Dutch and the Danishs-Norwegians.[8]

John George of Saxony, ca 1652

In 1630, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden invaded Pomerania with money from France and support from Saxony and Brandenburg-Prussia. After his death at the Battle of Lützen (1632), Sweden formed the Heilbronn League. Composed of smaller Protestant states and funded by France, the League won a series of victories until it was defeated at Nördlingen in 1634.[9]

That re-established a military balance and highlighted differences between the Heilbronn members. Sweden sought to preserve its grip on the lucrative Baltic trade and to retain its post-1630 acquisition of Swedish Pomerania. To strengthen its borders in the Rhineland and the Low Countries, France supported the Dutch and Swedish competitors in the Baltic and Maximilian of Bavaria, a leader of the anti-Swedish Catholic League. The German allies wanted to restore the territorial position of 1618, which implied reversing French and Swedish gains.[10]

After 1632, Ferdinand accepted Catholicism could not be re-imposed by force and opened discussions on amending the Edict of Restitution in February 1633, eighteen months before Nördlingen.[11] The execution of Imperial Commander Albrecht von Wallenstein in February 1634 removed a major obstacle since he had become an independent agent. With the Lutheran states of Denmark-Norway and Hesse-Darmstadt acting as mediators, the two parties agreed a preliminary draft in November 1634, known as the Pirnaer Noteln. Although subject to many corrections and revisions, that was the basis of the 1635 agreement.[2]

The treaty was a bilateral agreement between Ferdinand and John George, and other states joined later. Negotiations took eight days and were held in Prague Castle, the site of the Defenestrations of Prague, which had begun the war in 1618.[12] Its terms included the following;

• The Edict of Restitution was effectively revoked, and the date for returning properties was established as 12 November 1627. However, under the Reservatum ecclesiasticum, Protestant administrators of formally Catholic prince-bishoprics and imperial abbeys were excluded from the Imperial Diet.

• Formal alliances between states within the Empire or with outside powers were prohibited, which led to dissolution of the Catholic and Heilbronn Leagues.

• In principle, the armies of the various states were unified into the Army of the Holy Roman Empire, but that proved almost impossible to enforce;

• A general amnesty was granted to those who had fought against Imperial troops, apart from descendants of former "Winter King" Frederick V of the Palatinate (1596–1632).

• Asbach, Olaf, Schröder, Peter (2014). "22. The Peace of Prague – A Failed Settlement?". The Ashgate Research Companion to the Thirty Years' War. Ashgate. p. 347. ISBN 978-1409406297.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Espenhorst, Martin (2016). "22. The Peace of Prague – A Failed Settlement?". The Ashgate Research Companion to the Thirty Years' War. Ashgate. p. 362. ISBN 9781317041344.
• Bireley, Robert (2003). The Jesuits and the Thirty Years War: Kings, Courts, and Confessors. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521820172.
• Bireley, Robert (1976). "The Peace of Prague (1635) and the Counterreformation in Germany". The Journal of Modern History. 48 (1): 31–69. doi:10.1086/241519. S2CID 143376778.
• Engel, Gustav (1980). Politische Geschichte Westfalens (in German). Grote. ISBN 978-3774564428.
• Knox, Bill (2017). Tucker, Spencer (ed.). Enduring Controversies in Military History Volume I: Critical Analyses and Context. Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-1440841194.
• Onnekink, David, Rommelse, Gijs (2019). The Dutch in the Early Modern World: A History of a Global Power. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1107125810.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Wedgwood, CV (1938). The Thirty Years War (2005 ed.). New York Review of Books. ISBN 978-1590171462.

German Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Peace of Prague (1635)

• Scan of the Imperial-Saxon treaty at IEG Mainz, 81 pages