Page:A general history for colleges and high schools (Myers, 1890).djvu/648

582 THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR.

(1618–1648.)

Nature and Causes of the War.—The long and calamitous Thirty Years' War was the last great combat between Protestantism and Catholicism in Europe. It started as a struggle between the Protestant and Catholic princes of Germany, but gradually involved almost all the states of the continent, degenerating at last into a shameful and heartless struggle for power and territory.

The real cause of the war was the enmity existing between the German Protestants and Catholics. Each party by its encroachments gave the other occasion for complaint. The Protestants at length formed for their mutual protection a league called the Evangelical Union (1608). In opposition to the Union, the Catholics formed a confederation known as the Holy League (1609). All Germany was thus prepared to burst into the flames of a religious war.

The Bohemian Period of the War (1618–1623).–The flames that were to desolate Germany for a generation were first kindled in Bohemia, where were still smouldering embers of the Hussite wars, which two centuries before had desolated that land (see p. 505). A church which the Protestants maintained they had a right to build was torn down by the Catholics, and another was closed. The Protestants rose in revolt against their Catholic king, Ferdinand, elected a new Protestant king, and drove out the Jesuits. The Thirty Years' War had begun (1618). Almost an exact century had passed since Luther posted his theses on the door of the court church at Wittenberg. It is estimated that at this time more than nine-tenths of the population of the empire were Protestants.