Politics, Religion and Divine Retribution: The Failed Ambitions of William II of Orange

If you think that the Thirty Years’ War was a German affair, you are wrong. Germany was just the battlefield on which the rulers of Spain, France, Denmark and Sweden pursued their ambitions. An international front was formed at the Rhine. The Protestants and Catholic France stood on one side, and the Catholics around the Habsburg emperor and the Spanish on the other. It was all about the Netherlands. Those who controlled the Rhine were able to use or block the Spanish supply line between northern Italy and the Netherlands.

The envoys of the German states were merely tolerated spectators at the negotiations leading to the Peace of Westphalia. The fundamental decisions were made by the French, Swedish, Spanish, Dutch and imperial envoys. And it was they who decided that, after 30 years of war, Germany finally had a prospect of peace, and that the 80 Years’ War waged by the Netherlands against Spain was thus over, too.