History of germany

Peace of Prague: 1635

Exhaustion among the German princes now at last makes a compromise possible. The conflict which flared up in Prague in 1618 is resolved, at least in local terms, by a peace agreed in Prague in 1635. 

It is the emperor who makes the major concession. Instead of the ownership of church lands being restored to the situation that prevailed in 1555, as demanded by Ferdinand's Edict of Restitution, the date of the agreed status quo is now to be the very recent one of 1627 - reflecting the period immediately before the issue of the edict in 1629. (In 1648, in the peace of Westphalia, there is a final minor change - the relevant year becomes 1624). 
If the war had only involved the German states, the agreement at Prague might well have ended it. But it has had from the start a broader theme, with the Spanish Habsburgs giving active support to the emperor, their Austrian cousin. From 1621 Spain has also renewed her war against the United Provinces of the Netherlands. And the Swedes, at war with the emperor and the Catholic League, are not party to the peace of Prague.
Most significant of all, the improvement in Habsburg fortunes alarms the dynasty's greatest enemy, France. During the months before the peace of Prague, Cardinal Richelieu forms alliances with the United Provinces and Sweden. And he declares war on Spain and the Austrian empire. 


Final years and the peace of Westphalia: 1635-1648

The active intervention of France, as the ally of Sweden and the United Provinces against imperial Austria and Spain, ensures that warfare rumbles on for several more years after the peace of Prague in 1635. But it does so in a somewhat haphazard manner, with numerous local encounters across Europe from the Netherlands to Bohemia and with no clear outcome.

There are certain significant turning points. In 1640 Portugal seizes the opportunity to reassert its independence, thus diverting Spain from her efforts to recover the United Provinces. A new northern war adds urgency from 1643, when the Swedes attack Denmark. 
By 1643 all sides are eager for a settlement. In July of that year delegates to a peace congress gather in the Westphalian towns of Münster and Osnabrück.
Eventually there are 150 such delegates(all but forty of them German), representing the various interested parties. Their deliberations, spread over five years, are complicated by the fact that warfare is continuing - so the situation over which they are bargaining is in a state of constant flux. Apart from that unusual element, this is the first example of a modern peace conference.
By 1648 major decisions have been agreed, involving both redistribution of territory and the acknowledgement of newly independent states. In territorial terms the main winners from the peace of Westphalia are Sweden (gaining valuable Baltic territory, much of it from Denmark) and France (receiving from the Habsburg empire various rights in Lorraine and Alsace). The Rhine Palatinate is restored to the heir of Frederick V. Outside Germany the independence of the United Provinces is at last accepted by Spain, and that of the Swiss Confederation is now formally acknowledged (having been recognized in effect

since the peace of Basel in 1499). The most significant concessions are those over which the series of wars has primarily been fought. The Holy Roman emperor (by now Ferdinand III) no longer claims to be the ruler of the German principalities. They are recognized as independent states with the right to engage in their own international diplomacy. 

Their future struggles will be not against the anachronistic Holy Roman emperor but among themselves, to discover which of the great German princely dynasties eventually has the strength to assert a new form of leadership within Germany.On the religious issue, rulers may still (as agreed in the Peace of Augsburg) choose the religion of their own territory, but freedom of conscience is also assured - citizens professing another form of Christianity now have the right to worship in private or to emigrate. An exception to this is one of the few points gained by the emperor; he alone may impose Roman Catholicism on his subjects (though he too makes exceptions, as in the case of Protestant Silesia).
In international terms the effect of all this is a weakened empire, a strengthened France (which does not finally make peace with Spain until 1659), and a fully independent Dutch republic now free to concentrate on its enormously successful commercial and imperial enterprises.