Bohemian-Palatine
Revolt, White Mountain, Palatinate overrun.
The 1555 Peace of Augsburg and the 1608-09 Union and League are the necessary preface. 1618 was a spark on dry timber.
Phase names (Bohemian, Danish, Swedish, French) are teaching tools; civilians experienced one long occupation.
Timeline
- Defenestration
Prague: Bohemian revolt begins.
- White Mountain
Habsburg victory; Bohemian revolt crushed.
- Denmark enters
Christian IV's intervention; later failure and the Treaty of Lubeck (1629).
- Sweden lands
Gustavus Adolphus enters Pomerania.
- Magdeburg
City sacked; Protestant propaganda's central atrocity.
- Breitenfeld
Swedish-Saxon victory; the war's operational turning in the north.
- Lutzen
Swedish victory; Gustavus dead.
- France enters
Open Franco-Habsburg war layered on the German war.
- Rocroi
French victory over Spain -- a western hinge of the last phase.
- Westphalia
Treaties signed; the imperial war ends.
Eras
Danish
Christian IV, Wallenstein's rise, Edict of Restitution (1629).
Swedish
Gustavus, Breitenfeld, Lutzen, Heilbronn League.
French-Swedish
Great-power war on German soil; talks at Westphalia from 1643.
Pyrenees coda
Franco-Spanish war to 1659; the Empire begins a long recovery.
Milestones
Demographic shock
Parts of the Empire suffered losses unmatched until the twentieth century.
Westphalia
A constitutional peace that later theory over-interpreted.
Sweden as a great power
A Baltic outcome of a German war.
1648 did not make Europe peaceful; it made the Empire's civil war stop. France and Spain fought on.
The sovereignty textbook story should be read after the clauses, not instead of them.