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What was the Thirty Years War?
Thirty Years’ War Year – 1648, is a large-scale European country melee evolved from the civil war of the Holy Roman Empire, and it is also the first all-European war in history.
This war is the product of the conflicts between European countries competing for interests, establishing hegemony and intensifying religious disputes. The war ended with the defeat of the Habsburgs and the signing of the Peace of Westphalia.
In the late Middle Ages, the Holy Roman Empire was declining day by day, and the internal feudal lords were constantly fighting. After the Reformation Movement, a sharp confrontation between Catholicism and Protestantism developed. In addition, the surrounding countries rose one after another. From 1618 to 1648, major European countries were involved in the German Civil War. large-scale international wars, also known as “religious wars”.
The war was basically between the German Protestant princes and Sweden, Denmark, France (France was Catholic, but stood with the Protestant countries in order to dominate Europe), and was supported by the Netherlands, Britain, Russia; Holy Roman Emperor , the German Catholic princes and Spain on the other side, with the support of the Pope and Poland.
This war promoted the formation of European nation-states and was the beginning of modern European history. This war wiped out about 25% to 40% of the population of the Germanic states; three-quarters of the population of Lutheran Wittenberg was killed, 65% of the population of Pomerania was killed, and Siri A quarter of the population of West Asia was killed, and nearly half of the men of the Germanic states were killed.
The Thirty Years’ War promoted the formation of modern European nation-states and was the beginning of modern European history. This war directly led to the division of Germany; the independence of the Netherlands and Switzerland was guaranteed, and the Netherlands was not only officially independent, but also became a new maritime hegemon; Spain declined and lost its status as a first-class power; France and Sweden rose.
At the same time, the war also changed the tactics. During the war, the countries began to implement the conscription system, and established a standing army and a logistics system, so that the army could conduct a protracted war. The army has also been gradually simplified to meet the requirements of mobile warfare; the military reforms carried out by King Gustav II of Sweden, that is, replacing spearmen with musketeers, first using artillery to conduct concentrated fire attacks, and then using cavalry to conduct assaults , and finally the infantry was responsible for cleaning up the enemy’s three-stage tactics, which became the standard tactics in subsequent wars.
The conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia recognized many of the states under the Holy Roman Empire as independent sovereign states. As a result, a large number of independent sovereign states emerged in Europe. It established the principles of national territory, sovereignty and independence in international relations, and is considered to be the beginning of modern international relations.
The signing of the “Peace of Westphalia” marked the formation of an international society in the modern sense, and the international law determined by it also came into being. The Treaty of Westphalia established the Westphalian system. The international order it built had far-reaching influence and continued until the Vienna System established by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. And the influence of the Westphalian system continues into the contemporary era.
