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THIRTY TYRANTS

1903

THIRTY YEARS' WAR

Thirty Tyrants, The, were the body of aristocrats who governed Athens in the period after her defeat by Sparta in 404 B. C. The chief of these tyrants was Critias. They were chosen by the Spartans, who hoped to govern Athens by setting the aristocratic above the hitherto dominant democratic party; but in 403 they were overthrown by Thrasybulus and the Athenian exiles who returned with him. A secondary usage of the name occurs in Roman history, as applied to the military commanders who terrorized various parts of the Roman empire during the anarchical reigns (A. D. 253-68) of Valerian and Gallienus.

Thirty -Years' War (i618-48), a terrible, continental struggle in Central Europe partly religious and partly political, which involved Germany and Austria, Bohemia, Denmark, Sweden and Prance, The war had its origin in 1618 in Bohemia, which, from being an elective monarchy and since the days of Huss and Jerome of Prague strongly Protestant, had come into the possession of the Roman Catholic house of Hapsburg, which ruled it despotically. In 1609 Rudolph, king of Bohemia and son of emperor Maximilian II, was forced, though under the influence of the court of Spain, to grant religious freedom to the Bohemian Protestants; but having in 1611 been intrigued against by his brother Matthias and displaced by him from the throne, the latter violated the concession made by Rudolph. The Bohemians retorted by throwing the Imperial commissioners out of a window in the Hall of Regents, insisted on their rights as Protestants, and proceeded to fight for their religious privileges. The forces then arrayed against Protestantism were those of the House of Austria, which feared to lose its territories by the conflict impending, and those of the Catholic League, at whose head was the Duke of Bavaria, whose country was in the war that followed ravaged by the Swedes and French. In 5:619 Emperor Matthias died, and was succeeded by Ferdinand II; him, however, the Bohemians would not accept, but chose a rival in the person of Frederick V, Elector of the Palatinate, son-in-law of James I of England. This action dispelled all hope of reconciliation between Bohemia and Austria, and the war, aided by the Duke of Savoy, was proceeded with under Thurn and Mans-feld; but, though Bohemia at first met with some successes, its forces were hard pressed by those under Count Tilly, who commanded the troops of the Catholic League and in November of 1620 met the elector's army at White Mountain, outside the walls of Prague, and there defeated and routed it, the elector barely escaping capture. Frederick, though he found refuge at The Hague, was deposed and lost his dominions; but Mansfeld and the Protestant party in Bohemia continued the war; which was now

(1625) joined by Christian IV of Denmark, who for the time became leader of the Protestant rising in northern Germany. He however, met with defeat at the hands of Count Tilly at Lutter in Brunswick (Aug. 27, 1626); Mansfeld also suffering defeat in the previous April by Wallenstein, the imperial general, at the bridge of Dessau in Anhalt. After this the whole of Silesia was dominated by the forces of the league, while Tilly and Wallenstein, joining their armies, pursued the Danes to the far north; and presently the whole of Schleswig and Jutland, save a few fortified towns, fell into their hands. Of these, the northern seaports of Stralsund and Gltickstadt heroically held out against their besiegers; but Denmark, having had enough of the war, con" eluded with Ferdinand II the peace ot Lubeck (May 22, 1629), Christian receiving back all his hereditary possessions and resigning all claim to the bishopric held by his family within the Holy Roman Empire. In the following year Wallenstein was dismissed by his master, owing to repugnance at the excesses of his soldiery, complained of at a meeting of the electors of the empire at Ratisbon.

At this j uncture a new period of the Thirty Years' War is entered, by the intervention of Sweden and the appearance of Gustavus Adolphus (q. v.), the great Swedish king and soldier, of the royal house of Vasa. Gustavus had just concluded an armistice with Poland, through the mediation of Richelieu. Being loyal to the principles of the Reformation, he ardently intervened in the struggle between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Unfortunately his career was a short one, for he fell at Lutzen (Nov. 16, 1632), though not before his Swedes were victorious over Wallenstein (who had been reinstated in command), and he had beaten Tilly at Brei-tenfeld wi.th frightful loss to the Austrians. Despite the death of the Swedish king the war went on, Bernhard of Weimar, the companion of Gustavus, leading the Protestants, and Wallenstein commanding the imperial troops. With the religious objects of Ferdinand II and the Catholic League Wallenstein, however, had little sympathy; his object was rather that of selfish aggrandizement. Seeing that to be the case, a conspiracy was formed against him, which led to his assassination, inspired by Spanish gold. This occurred on Feb. 25, 1634.

Wallenstein's removal marks a turning point in the war for it now ceased to be a purely German and Protestant struggle. "In the course of years the German contest had come to involve all the rivalries and enmities which then agitated Europe: the quarrels of Sweden and Poland, the jealousy of Denmark against its northern neighbor, the struggle of Spain to reduce the Dutch into subjection and, above all, the enmity between France and Spain, which dated