Anyone wanting to know what the Thirty Years' War was really about needs to adopt a slightly different approach to Europe for once. [1] If we look at the war as a whole and picture Europe as a single space, at the same time relegating the welter of individual interests and even the ubiquitous religious conflicts to the background, as it were, the structures of political action emerge with almost geometric clarity.In the centre of this virtual space there rises a pyramid, one with the slender, obelisk-like shape popular since the Renaissance.According to the fashion of the time, it stands on a base upon which, in huge letters, three words are engraved:IMPERIUM, CHRISTIANITAS, and MONARCHIA. All around, the walls are hung with portraits showing the rulers of the day, dressed in their coronation robes, bearing the insignia of power, and striking imperious poses (mounted on horseback, some of them even sporting armour). Each of the four walls is dominated by a crowned representative of the principal European warring powers: the emperor, the Spanish king, and the kings of France and Sweden. [2] Diagonally across, between the imperial and Spanish sides, two victorious royal sons shake hands on a battlefield. [3] However, the eyes of all the crowned heads are directed at the pyramid, resting as if spellbound on its summit, on which falls all the light of the time. What do they think they can see there?

The model, which might be imagined as an exhibition set, a computer animation, or a lost contemporary title-page engraving, shows how different was the seventeenth century's conception of order and illustrates the basic power-political problem of the Thirty Year's War as it flowed from that idea. For all its sub-divisions, Europe was indeed, in the eyes of its political powers, still a single space, a universal entity within a seamless context of order. The pyramid indicates that that ideal of order was a hierarchical one. This was in line with ecclesiastical and aristocratic forms of organisation, the feudal system, and the pyramid of estates. It followed that the only possible arrangement in Europe as a universal entity was likewise a single pyramid with a single summit. Whereas in terms of ideal types the Europe of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries might be thought of as a chessboard of individual states existing side by side, in the seventeenth century the universalist, hierarchical ideal of order symbolised by the pyramid was still a psychological reality. It was founded upon and derived its legitimacy from the three terms engraved on the base.

IMPERIUM served as a reminder that Europe's unity stemmed from the Roman Empire and that that prototype of all world empires, even in the limited form of the 'Holy Roman Empire of the German People', only ever provided for a single imperator. CHRISTIANITAS had since the Crusades and the wars against the Turks also implied the political unity of Christendom, although only half of Christendom accepted the papacy as supreme and the position of head, though provided for, was in dispute. MONARCHIA originally meant not simply 'monarchy' in the sense of a form of government in individual countries but 'sole dominion' in the world as a whole. To make this all-embracing concept of monarchy clear, since the sixteenth century it had been usual to use the term monarchia universalis. [4] A widely-held theory was that of the four world kingdoms whereby, according to a biblical prophesy in the Book of Daniel, [5] history consisted of a self-contained sequence of world empires, the fourth and last of which was the Roman, now the Romano-German.

These three fundamental terms, together with their variants, complemented and intersected one another; they were also in competition with one another and were not beyond dispute. However, they kept alive in people's minds the idea of a supreme power (at least in rank) as the one true order. One could cite any number of pamphlets and handbills dating from the period of the Thirty Year's War and dealing with the rights and wrongs of monarchia universalis or the 'fifth monarchy'. The top position in Europe was not currently occupied by joint agreement, but it could be seen as part of a plan and as awaiting a fresh occupant.

The rulers around the walls represent the chief warring participants among the powers, and characteristically they were those who aspired to the top position with the best chances and the greatest successes. An unusual feature is that there were four rulers but only three candidatures. In the case of the Habsburgs, the dynasty laid claim to universal dominion, basing its case on the one hand on the imperial crown of Ferdinand II and on the other hand on the global nature of the Spanish crown of Philip IV. It was true that what under Charles V had still been combined in the person of the emperor was now divided between different lines, but that was really only a division of labour within the dynasty; the shared handshake of the 'two Ferdinands' on the Nördlingen battlefield illustrated this symbolically on the day of their greatest success. France, currently represented by Louis XIII and managed by Richelieu, was the strongest and oldest contendant; she had already fought a "duel over Europe" (Heinrich Lutz) with the Habsburgs in the sixteenth century. The surprise candidate of the war was the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus, who had come on the scene with very much weaker resources but with the largest measure of martial energy and ideology. However, all three principal combatants shared the same war aim, which was to occupy the vacant position at the head of Europe and so become a world power or defend such a universalist image of themselves. Under the pyramid ideal of order, that was not regarded as illegitimate from the outset, unlike later hegemonial aspirations on the basis of the state system. Because in the mind of the time the pyramid existed, and the best way of keeping the enemy away from the supposed summit was to conquer it oneself.



II

Each of the rulers competing against one another in the Thirty Year's War had a certain amount to contribute, and it was on this that their respective claims to the top position in Europe were based. To start with, there were the various titles, each of which was in its way unbeatable — the emperor in terms of age, rank, and uniqueness, but also the 'Most Christian King' (Roi très chrétienne) with his claim to the primacy of the French crown within Christendom. This was in turn vigorously opposed by the Spanish king, notably in the journalism of the Thirty Year's War, with the equally general and orthodox title of 'Catholic king'. In addition there were such devices as the famous if enigmatic initials used by Emperor Frederick III, AEIOV, which in his own day were read as 'Austriae est imperare orbi universo', [6] were inscribed in stone, [7] and were demonstrably cultivated in the seventeenth century to refer to the House of Austria's claim to world dominion. The 'plus ultra' of Emperor Charles V further enhanced this motto, which the French in turn 'outbid' with a nemo plus ultra or nulla obstacula regi on portraits of Louis XIII. [8] In quite a different way, but no less ambitiously, the rex Suecorum, Gothorum et Vandalorum staked his universalist claim. For ever since Gustavus Adolphus's predecessor Charles 'IX', the kings of Sweden had as a result of a fictitious genealogy been officially termed the last kings of the Goths, and the Goths were not merely a conquering people: they were traditionally regarded as enjoying world dominion.

This led to the various historical justifications of the universalist aspiration, which developed the greatest impetus in the case of Gustavus Adolphus. Swedish Gothicism, based on the idea that Sweden was the original home and the Swedish people the true heirs of the Goths of the 'age of migrations', developed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (alongside and in competition with the Gothicism that emerged in Spain, eventual destination of the Visigoths) and reached its climax in the Thirty Year's War. As the world's most ancient country, said the king's records, it was right that Sweden should have precedence of all others, and in his speeches Gustavus Adolphus repeatedly cited as examples the glorious deeds of his Gothic forbears throughout the world. At his coronation in 1617 the orator even slipped into the role of the Gothic King Berik: the craving for fame and valiant deeds could 'no longer be contained within the frontiers of the fatherland, great as it is', and lest he be accused of mere speech-making the new 'Berik' added that the reason why the Goths had not conquered even more of the world was in order to leave something for future generations to do. [9] Gothic warriors were even to sail (as adornments) on the king's flagship, which however sank prematurely. [10] Before Gustavus Adolphus actually crossed to Germany, he exhorted his nobles to continue to show themselves "true heirs and descendants of the ancient Goths, who in their day conquered almost the entire world, placing many kingdoms in subjection". [11] This 'Greater Gothic' universalism was accompanied by a host of other historical references to Greater Scandinavian and Greater Polish universalisms, to dynastic and maritime universalisms of the north, and by references back to Old Testament and classical heroes and conquerors, notably to the Roman Empire, of which of course the Goths were, in a way, among the heirs. For the Habsburgs, the historical reference was mainly dynastic in character. On the one hand through claiming kinship with key names in the Bible and Antiquity and making genealogical demands upon half the world, [12] on the other hand in realistic family trees by emphasising the unity of the two branches, Austria Hispanica and Austria Germanica, in garlanded medallions. [13] By contrast, Spain and France vied with each other in the journalistic run-up to the war over the age, orthodoxy, and hence ranking of their respective crowns. France appealed by way of Troy and Gaul to the prestigious classical world while simultaneously laying claim, through the Franks and Charlemagne, to half of Europe and the emperorship. Under Salian law, whatever the crown of 'France' had once possessed still belonged to it. That, so far as territorial rights were concerned, was the French understanding of universalism at the time of the Thirty Year's War.

In images (not least in geographical images), universalist claims were often made with even less restraint. A particularly fine example from the period immediately preceding the Thirty Year's War is the silver cosmos dish of Emperor Rudolph II, on which a map of Europe is engraved in such a way as to represent simultaneously a female figure. The 'head' is the Spanish peninsular, with the result that the crowned Spanish monarchy is made out to be the symbolic head of Europe. [14] The same motif was widely used in engravings, and such figurative maps were generally popular — though only where it made political sense did they lay immediate claim to the whole of Europe: the lion of the Low Countries, brought forth by Spain, physically coincides only with the Low Countries. [15] Following the discovery of the New World and European expansion, with a delay of almost an entire century the portrayal of European universalism acquires a world-wide dimension (initially, of course, in Spain) in depictions designed to impress with hugely exaggerated globes autographed in Spanish (e.g. posthumously with Charles V) and often borne by Atlas. [16] A popular motif are envoys or personifications of the four corners of the earth rendering allegiance to the Spanish throne or alternatively (and against all probability) bowing before the emperor and the Reich, and of course as soon as the Thirty Year's War is under way paying homage, for whatever reason, to the French throne as well. Here it is very clear that we are not dealing with an extension of European universalism; these cosmopolitan images represent a means to an end in the struggle for supremacy in Europe.

A different kind of propaganda through geographical imagery can be seen in a pro-Swedish handbill series: the Swedish king concludes peace in Poland and, behind a fortification bisecting the picture, meets an angel who shows him the way to the Reich, which he then traverses in a triumphal car before entering the Reichssaal, where emperor and electors sit enthroned. The key to the series is that all the way through it a bird carrying a general's hat in its beak flies before him to the throne, as once (according to Livy) did actually happen to a general, who was subsequently crowned king in Rome. [17] What was in fact illustrated here was the acquisition of the emperorship, which was apparently the Swedish king's destiny, as other providential signs suggested — for example, the fact that the names Gustavus and Augustus contain the same number of letters.

Ranking one's own royal house above all others was something in which disciples and advisers also indulged. This emerges very clearly from the memoranda submitted by the French and Spanish chief ministers. 'Once La Rochelle is taken, the King must proceed, if he wishes to become the most powerful monarch in the world and its most respected prince...', [18] begins a memo penned by Richelieu. Olivares, adviser to the Spanish king, saw his man as already occupying such a position: 'Your Majesty is already in possession of more than enough countries to be deemed the first ruler in the world.' [19] That was precisely what so exercised Richelieu, of course, when he explained the king's options, the first of which he subsequently translated into action: 'The advantages of the first lie in the fact that one might utterly ruin the entire House of Habsburg and thus be free for ever from the fear, envy, and expense that its greatness has long imposed on France; that one might derive benefit from that ruin and the King make himself head of all Catholic monarchs in Christendom and in consequence the most powerful ruler in Europe'. [20] These parallels in the internal offers of advice provided by either side could be continued, with not only the ultimate objectives but also the formulations of priorities and the concepts of supremacy appearing virtually interchangeable. The spectrum sketched in here, from titles through historical justifications to geographical representations and diplomatic documents (examples of which will be found in the actual exhibitions in Münster and Osnabrück) makes it possible to reconstruct the mental world of the three powers with the brightest prospects. Visualising this background, we realise how well-armed they all were, ideologically speaking, for the struggle for supremacy in Europe: the House of Habsburg with its imperial-Spanish dual summit, the French super-monarchy, and the greater-Gothic King of Sweden.



III

In the usual historical accounts, however, the beginning and the first ten years of the Thirty Year's War read quite differently. The Defenestration of Prague led to the election of the Count Palatine as King of Bohemia by the Protestant estates, involving half the Reich and eventually Denmark too in conflict against the emperor. True, but not the whole truth. Because what was already 'up for grabs' here was the European status of the mightiest of the potential universal powers.

The fact was that, after it had been possible, in Europe, almost to think that a strong Spain meant that the Habsburgs had already won the struggle for supremacy, on the eve of the Thirty Year's War a grave crisis came to light. Politically, it found expression in the imminent crumbling-away of the dynasty's main seat of power. In the Dutch War of Independence against the Spanish branch and the long-threatened rebellion of the Bohemian estates against the Austrian branch, the dynastic universal union looked like losing its principal sub-centres. In this situation the House of Habsburg, under the new emperor, Ferdinand II, and the young Philip IV with his chief minister Olivares, made a fresh start, renewing and co-ordinating its dynastic solidarity and unity of action. It was very successful. Following expiry of a truce against the Low Countries in 1621, Spain and its army commander Spinola appeared to be on the road to victory, and in Germany, not least thanks to Spanish gold and military assistance, the emperor won his two wars (the 'Bohemian/Palatinate' and the 'Danish/Lower Saxon' conflicts), extending his sphere of power as far as the Baltic.

The other two aspirants to universal supremacy, while keeping a watchful eye on Habsburg successes, concentrated for the time being on expanding their own immediate spheres of power (Richelieu by taking La Rochelle, Gustavus Adolphus against the Balts and Poles bordering the Baltic) and, together with the directly implicated Low Countries, organising a counter-campaign. This consisted in first putting up minor German princes and sending the Danish king to the front with money and fine words or fighting limited preparatory and vicarious actions (e.g. France's War of the Mantuan Succession against Spain, which had been building up throughout the 1620s). Neither risked open hostilities until 1630, when the Swedish king allowed himself to be provoked by the emperor's encroaching on what in his declaration of war he described as Sweden's 'ancient' sphere of influence around the Baltic, which Gustavus Adolphus was particularly keen to develop. Actually, the real rival here would have been Denmark, which controlled access to the Baltic and was still occupying half of southern Sweden. Denmark, however, was also anti-Habsburg, and for the time being Gustavus Adolphus spared it. Nor did the Swedish king linger long around the Baltic but immediately pushed on to attack his Habsburg arch-enemy. In an unparalleled triumphal advance he forced his way through to the Spanish sphere of influence on the Rhine and the very heart of the Reich around Nuremberg, Augsburg, and Munich. The pacts whereby with varying degrees of willingness the princes of the Reich placed themselves under his protection might have formed the core of a new Reich on the soil of the old. But Gustavus Adolphus fell in the Battle of Lützen, and the fortunes of war turned at last. Sweden had already been in alliance with France. The fact that France did not officially enter the war until 1635 (although unofficially it had inflicted harm on its Habsburg rivals at every opportunity) also had to do with its universalist pretensions, which as Richelieu's notes reveal almost confronted the French statesman with the problem of squaring the circle. [21] Because on the one hand the successes of the Habsburgs, so dangerous for France's own ambitions, must be halted by military means as soon as possible. On the other hand, the 'Most Christian King' partly based his primacy on his high reputation in the Catholic camp, which would be imperilled were he to be caught in alliance with Protestant princes. The answer was an undercover war, which France waged for years before a fresh Habsburg success in the Battle of Nördlingen in 1634 made such a policy no longer tenable, forcing France openly to commit resources of her own in the following year.

From the outset, then, all three powers with universalist aspirations were involved in this war in the background, and the basic pattern of the main conflict emerged with increasing clarity until by the early 1630s it was unmistakable. At the same time, however, the structural problem also became clear, whereby only one of the candidates could win the struggle for supremacy in Europe. A conflict with such mutually exclusive objectives on the part of the main combatants was in fact beyond solution. That was the politico-structural reason why the war lasted for thirty years.



IV

At this point, however, an obvious question poses itself. If it really was so simple a basic political problem that structured this puzzling Thirty Year's War, surely the history books must have known about it for ages? In fact, though, it was only discovered a few years ago and has by no means been taken on board as yet by all historians in Europe. [22] It is necessary to look at least briefly at the wrong turnings and roundabout paths taken by researchers but also at the approaches that led somewhere. The obstacles to knowledge here are national traditions of interpretation — not merely in the sense that national prejudices can exist but because a particular country's history is taken too far back into the past and not seen sufficiently in terms of a European comparison. As a result, so far-reaching an objective as that described here often appears difficult to accept in terms of a specific national history.

Regarding the Habsburgs' pretension to universal power there has in fact been broad unanimity for some time. It was so clearly formulated under Charles V and its practical successes were so blatant as to put it altogether beyond doubt. The problem is that Spanish and international historians on the one hand and German and Austrian historians on the other have understandably concentrated on the institutions and problems of their respective countries and as a result failed to give full attention to the dynastic objectives of and instances of co-operation between the Habsburg lines. Even in the two books on the Thirty Year's War in which they are specifically examined, more space is devoted to differences of interest and conflicts. Eberhard Straub, writing from a pro-Spanish point of view, blames them on the Austrian side for showing too little sympathy for the peace plans of Olivares — which amounted to a Pax Hispanica for Europe. [23] Conversely, from the institutional perspective of emperor and Reich Hildegard Ernst defends the German constellation of interests, though she too refers to problems of communication and to the incompatibility of the policies of the two allies. [24] In neither case, however, is it clear why despite everything the alliance endured for thirty years. Because in view of the disputes that normally afflict dynasties and the friction losses among allies that have characterised every war since time began, it is this very steadfastness that is remarkable and requires explanation. The universalist war aim that neither side could have achieved on its own needs to be taken into account here.

The case of France seems more difficult. Because here, although there is no doubt that since Charles V France had been combating the universal monarchy of the Habsburgs, this is often viewed asymmetrically, rather as if France had already been countering with the right of the individual sovereign state. Even within Germany this modern misrepresentation lent credence to talk of a 'Habsburg pincer movement' directed against France, i.e. against the allegedly weaker party by the stronger. This is a nineteenth-century geo-political illusion of a kind that is wholly foreign to seventeenth-century thinking —much like the later 'encirclement' of Germany, which because it found its way into the school textbooks became part of the involuntary baggage of generations to come. On the subject of geographical factors, international research would be better directed at the vulnerability of military lines of communication between the different parts of the Habsburg Empire via the Alpine passes and the Rhine, which France could easily cut off and which were in fact, in the 1620s and during the War of the Mantuan Succession, once again in dispute. [25] But of even greater weight as regards assessing the role of France is the fact that the very idea of modern statehood is often used anachronistically in this context. This is due not least to a widely-shared view of Richelieu that exaggerates his alleged modernity. Rationalism is not the same thing as modern thinking, and the great 'statesman' was not a man of any individual national political entity. Hermann Weber's verdict on the cardinal is apposite: 'For Richelieu himself this was not consciously a piece of power politics directed at national statehood. In his mind, it stemmed far more from an ideal of "most Christian" kingship pushing forward into universalist, imperial spheres.' [26] Anyone reading Richelieu's political writings, from which we have already quoted here, cannot help but see that the Richelieu expert is right. However, the high degree of coincidence with Habsburg universalism prompts one at the same time to pronounce on France's practical policy.

And Sweden? What Gustavus Adolphus was looking for in the Thirty Year's War is a question that has been asked so many times in Sweden and Germany that a scientifically correct analysis would need, according to a 1991 census, to take account of at least 166 relevant publications, including 65 Swedish and 71 German, and there have been a number of others since. A recent work usefully sorted them into 11 explanatory categories, and basically they can be reduced even further. [27]

There are two main perspectives from the nineteenth century, which later authorities often confusedly combined into one. The first is the religious-idealist tradition of interpretation, which in fact swallows whole the graphic pamphlet propaganda that had Gustavus Adolphus entering the fray as the hero and saviour of German Protestantism (or no less selflessly of the 'liberty' of the German princes). On the other hand there is a 'realpolitik' interpretation, which at its most absurd saw a threat to Sweden's national 'security' (clearly Gustavus Adolphus had no maps with him at the Augsburg talks) in its widely accepted form of Baltic supremacy, which was indeed the occasion but which cannot have been the whole explanation. A third, more modern tendency, particularly current in Sweden, stresses various commercial and financial interests or sheer military momentum, which while undoubtedly true runs the risk of confusing the means with the true end.

In addition to earlier wrong turnings and more recent roundabout paths, research also reveals avenues that ask to be taken further. That Gustavus Adolphus aspired to the imperial throne is accepted by the majority of historians, but such acceptance is often qualified with untenable restrictions. Some authors suggest that only a kind of north-European emperorship was meant — a theory that very obviously confuses the nineteenth century with the seventeenth, when a number of emper'ors existing side by side would have been unthinkable. Another theory (based on something said retrospectively by the Swedish chancellor Oxenstierna, albeit in a specific tactical situation), to the effect that Gustavus Adolphus had not planned such a campaign but only conceived it as a result of his successes, cannot be ruled out entirely, given the multiplicity of the Swedish king's political options — but what difference would that have made?

A whole series of recent studies has also shown that Gustavus Adolphus ultimately went to war against Habsburg universalism. But the premature conclusion invariably drawn as a result is that he did so on behalf of a 'balance' in Europe, which so far as the early seventeenth century is concerned is again anachronistic. This fixation on the Habsburgs, who in the king's various pronouncements were always (even in defiance of Sweden's territorial interests) seen as the real chief enemy, is certainly striking, but it can more convincingly be explained on the basis of universalist rivalry. And lastly, Swedish researchers have managed very impressively to develop the history and cultural background of Gothicism (sometimes even referred to unequivocally as störgöticism or 'Greater Gothicism'). [28] However, such studies, some of them pursued along philological lines, have never been taken up (or, if they have, only very slowly and in piecemeal fashion, either because of ignorance or through fear of the possible consequences) by political historians and examined in connection with the Thirty Year's War. Here a number of historians have in recent years simultaneously (in some instances independently of one another) brought about a change, attributing to Gothicism, in its association with ancient, Old Testament, Protestant, and other references, the power (to influence behaviour) of an ideology. However, this may be seen in different ways — most clearly by Oredsson as an ideology of invasion and conquest, by Ringmar as an exaggerated historical justification for a national identity with a special need for European recognition, or (the approach proposed here) as the Swedish version of European universalism. [29] Because one thing is surprisingly absent not just from this interesting new interpretative development but also from almost the entire debate about the puzzling question of the reasons for Sweden's intervention, namely serious European comparison.

A comparative perspective of this kind renders the situation of all three powers comprehensible as well as putting historiography, which following the collapse of over-idealised perspectives on the protagonists has given greater attention to peace, in a position to make a just assessment in the European context of the time. And not simply because, say, the other potentates were no better, but because ultimately they were all after the same thing — which only one of them could have. If the Swedish crown went to war for thirty years only for the trifles that Gustavus Adolphus listed in his essentially tactical war manifesto, or if the French crown did so for the modest frontier gains that it eventually procured, or the House of Habsburg purely because it was a bad loser, then they would indeed have been playing a more than dubious game. But what the Thirty Year's War was really about was who should become the ruling power in Europe, and to acknowledge that maximum objective is to lend a certain historical dignity to all three ultimately vain undertakings. But how to climb down from such exalted war aims to a position where the conflict could be brought to an end?



V

Only through compromise. As the subsequent course of the war showed, none of the powers would ever succeed in imposing itself as universally supreme power in Europe. Despite all the to-ing and fro-ing on the battlefield, the geographical apportionment of zones of influence that was taking shape on the maps put this beyond doubt. When the Swedes, following the death of their king, also lost the Battle of Nördlingen in 1634, they retreated to northern Germany. There, however, they successfully held and defended their position in the Battle of Wittstock (1636). On the other hand, a fresh thrust towards Vienna had to be abandoned. Southern Germany, wherever French troops or France's allies were successful, became a French zone of influence that scarcely allowed of any lasting expansion. Following the Peace of Prague, the emperor managed to regroup his clientele among the imperial estates, though only periodically was he able to co-operate with them. Conversely, Spain's chances of recovering the Low Countries were becoming increasingly unlikely, though it did retain bastions on the Rhine. So no one was any longer in control of the Reich, the core region of Romano-imperial claims to supremacy. In the end, the emperor had to be content with a loose overall sovereignty and the powers with peripheral areas. Sweden held its own on the Baltic and North Sea coasts and was able to convert several conquests (such as West Pomerania or the dioceses of Bremen and Verden) into territorial acquisitions. France gained a few imperial cities and some territorial rights in Alsace, but that was all. In the allocation of territories that was already emerging in the final years of the war, the details of which crucially affected the peace negotiations, the first and most obvious thing to become apparent was that this would be a compromise peace.

The agreements concluded in the territorial sphere show that all three powers were prepared to make concessions to end a war that had dragged on for decades. They even adopted a conciliatory approach with regard to the formalities of negotiation and the matter of titles, where these were no longer advanced with universalist pretensions but were backed by rational or conventionally historical arguments. Concessions were made to France, for instance, over the use of the French language (already becoming a lingua franca), [30] while the emperor was allowed to retain his titles as presented, despite their universalist connotations. The Swedes were reluctant to permit the use of semper Augustus, but when the imperial delegation established beyond doubt that Swedish kings had in an earlier age employed that appellation vis-à-vis the Habsburg emperors, they gave in. [31] Ultimately, however, the survival of a few individual universalist set-pieces notwithstanding, a new intellectual framework had to be found that did away with the hierarchical structure as such.

The peace treaties themselves offer the best evidence of this. The fact is, out of the large number of combatants it was the three universalist powers that, as the actual contracting partners, concluded the Peace of Westphalia. This was reflected in the preamble to the emperor's peace agreements with the French and Swedish kings in exactly parallel stylisations of the adversaries and their relationship to one another. The peace instrument itself, with its protocol and ceremonial as well as with the promise of perpetual validity, was one of the most powerful means of rehearsing the new and still difficult intellectual framework, and the way in which a return to the principles of the Peace of Westphalia was repeatedly pledged after future wars was to serve as a reminder of the egalitarian nature of this fundamental international treaty.

The new kind of relationship to be cultivated among the powers as negotiating partners on an equal footing also finds expression in certain images associated with the Peace of Westphalia. [32] Illustrated pamphlets in particular contain instances of such equality of status among the rulers of France, Sweden, and the Reich. The pamphlet 'Abbildung dess hocherwünschten Teutschen Friedens' shows all three potentates on a pedestal exchanging conciliatory handshakes. [33] The emperor still enjoys a degree of prominence in that he is seated on a throne while the French king and the Swedish queen stand beside him, holding out their hands. However, that also has something to do with the huge age gaps separating the contracting parties. Even the jaunty portrayal of clover leaves and the joining of three hearts or three doves alludes to the potentates' coming together in peace. In the pamphlet 'AVGVRIVM PACIS' the equality of status among the powers is made even clearer. [34] Here, in an obvious piece of symbolism, horses adorned with the arms of France, Sweden, and the Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs form as it were a team of powers that together draws the chariot of peace.

As an outcome, however, the Peace of Westphalia did more than simply bring about increasing equality of status among the principal powers involved in the conflict; it also widened the circle of established states. For one thing, Spain and France continued to wage war on each other for another eleven years, with the result that the Habsburg lines remained divided and thus formed the nuclei of independent political entities. At the same time, peripheral countries quit the Habsburg 'club' to become states in their own right. The Low Countries attained national sovereignty in 1648 after a struggle that had lasted more than eighty years, and the Swiss Confederation, which in a sense had been going its own way for a long time, was now also, under a separate provision, released from the Reich. So while on the one hand the protracted conflict that was the Thirty Year's War showed France, Sweden, and the Habsburgs that the long-term goal of assuming top position in Europe was no longer practicable, other states finally received recognition in the Peace of Westphalia. Europe was thus set on the road towards developing a political system in which a number of powers could exist side by side with equal entitlement.



VI

But it was a hard road, and there were still a few setbacks to come. Particularly the expansionist policy pursued by France between 1667 and 1714 delivered another blow to the emergent system of nation states. What Louis XIV tried to do, rather like the protagonists of the Thirty Year's War before him, was to achieve a position of supremacy in Europe. Pro-French pamphlets of the period accordingly talked about the 'dignity and pre-eminence of the King in France and of his primacy over other kings', [35] invoking the Merovingians and Carolingians as predecessors of the French kings and inferring that the French royal line was entitled to the imperial crown. [36] Arguments over status between France and Spain injected fresh blood into the period's obsession with precedence. How real such clashes could be is evident from something that happened at a conference in London in 1661, when the French envoys tried to claim right of way with their carriage, only to come off worst against the Spaniards: 'Because as the French refused to give way to the latter, their coachman and carriage were massacred by the Spaniards; although it was mainly the horses that were affected, the people were also hurt and repulsed.' [37] In other words, disputes over status and universalist claims to power were certainly not abolished for ever by the Peace of Westphalia.

However, the model of the peace agreement did take root in the minds of contemporaries, helping to overcome the old ideas of universality. The notion of balance, captured in the image of a pair of scales that must always be in a state of equilibrium, began to determine international political relations in the years that followed. It was even used in German pamphlets to rebut the universalist pretensions of the French crown: 'It is clear, after all, that its power is sufficiently formidable and that the political balance between itself and other potentates is not by any means in equilibrium; accordingly, it is high time that that kingdom was brought back onto an equal footing with the rest.' [38] With the Peace of Westphalia, the pyramid model began to falter. The Thirty Year's War had shown that no power could occupy the pinnacle in Europe.

How, then, should we picture the model after the Peace of Westphalia?



VII

The compromise peace concluded by the powers not only called for willingness to give a little here and there, nor was it a question of anyone unilaterally withdrawing their maximum war aim. No, this was a fundamental compromise, based on a readiness to repeal the old model of European order as no longer realisable. The hierarchical matrix had proved unworkable as regarded further upkeep of the powers file, although new programs were still at the development and testing stages. The architectural symbol introduced at the beginning of this essay best characterises the situation. The pyramid still stood. Indeed, many people believed until well into the eighteenth century that it could be restored. But the Peace of Westphalia had for the first time, for the whole of Europe, taken the top off the hierarchical, universalist order, leaving the pyramid without a summit. The resultant platform, halfway up, provided space for all the former universal powers, plus the first of the new states co-opted from below. It is not yet the model of a fully developed international political system, but the removal of the summit of the pyramid in 1648 marks the point at which that development begins.

FOOTNOTES