What is the significance of the Peace of Westphalia

The Westphalia area of north-western Germany gave its name to the treaty that ended the Thirty Years' War, one of the most destructive conflicts in the history of Europe.

The war or series of connected wars began in 1618, when the Austrian Habsburgs tried to impose Roman Catholicism on their Protestant subjects in Bohemia. It pitted Protestant against Catholic, the Holy Roman Empire against France, the German princes and princelings against the emperor and each other, and France against the Habsburgs of Spain. The Swedes, the Danes, the Poles, the Russians, the Dutch and the Swiss were all dragged in or dived in. Commercial interests and rivalries played a part, as did religion and power politics.

Among famous commanders involved were Marshal Turenne and the Prince de Condé for France, Wallenstein for the Empire and Tilly for the Catholic League, and there was an able Bavarian general curiously named Franz von Mercy. Others to play a part ranged from the Winter King of Bohemia to the emperors Ferdinand II and Ferdinand III, Bethlen Gabor of Transylvania, Christian IV of Denmark, Gustavus II Adolphus and Queen Christina of Sweden, the Great Elector of Brandenburg, Philip IV of Spain and his brother the Cardinal-Infante, Louis XIII of France, Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin and several popes. Gustavus Adolphus was shot in the head and killed at the battle of Lutzen in 1632. The increasingly crazed Wallenstein, who grew so sensitive to noise that he had all the dogs, cats and cockerels killed in every town he came to, was murdered by an English captain in 1634. Still the fighting went on.

The war was largely fought on German soil and reduced the country to desolation as hordes of mercenaries, left unpaid by their masters, lived off the land. Rapine, pillage and famine stalked the countryside as armies marched about, plundering towns, villages and farms as they went. ‘We live like animals, eating bark and grass,’ says a pitiful entry in a family Bible from a Swabian village. ‘No one could have imagined that anything like this would happen to us. Many people say that there is no God...’ Wenceslas Hollar recorded devastation in the war zone in engravings of the 1630s and starvation reached such a point in the Rhineland that there were cases of cannibalism. The horror became a way of life and when the war finally ended, the mercenaries and their womenfolk complained that their livelihood was gone.

The peace conference to end the war opened in Münster and Osnabrück in December 1644. It involved no fewer than 194 states, from the biggest to the smallest, represented by 179 plenipotentiaries. There were thousands of ancillary diplomats and support staff, who had to be given housing, fed and watered, and they did themselves well for close to four years, despite famine in the country around. Presiding over the conference were the Papal Nuncio, Fabio Chigi (the future Pope Alexander VII), and the Venetian ambassador.

The first six months were spent arguing about who was to sit where and who was to go into a room ahead of whom. The principal French and Spanish envoys never managed to meet at all because the correct protocol could not be agreed. A special postal system handled reams of letters between the envoys and their principals at a time when it took ten days or more to send a communication from Münster to Paris or Vienna and twenty days or more to Stockholm or Madrid. Slowly deals were hammered out. Even then it took almost three weeks just to organise the signing ceremony, which commenced at 2pm on the afternoon of Saturday, 24 October 1648.

The treaty gave the Swiss independence of Austria and the Netherlands independence of Spain. The German principalities secured their autonomy. Sweden gained territory and a payment in cash, Brandenburg and Bavaria made gains too, and France acquired most of Alsace-Lorraine. The prospect of a Roman Catholic reconquest of Europe vanished forever. Protestantism was in the world to stay.

Peace of Westphalia (1648)Anuschka TischerLAST REVIEWED: 07 April 2021LAST MODIFIED: 28 July 2021DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199743292-0073

Introduction

The Peace of Westphalia, concluded in 1648 in Münster (Germany), ended the Thirty Years’ War, which started with an anti-Habsburg revolt in Bohemia in 1618 but became an entanglement of different conflicts concerning the constitution of the Holy Roman Empire, religion, and the state system of Europe. This contest was a civil “German war,” but foreign powers played a crucial role. The Peace of Westphalia ended with the signing of two treaties between the empire and the new great powers, Sweden and France, and settled the conflicts inside the empire with their guarantees. A new electorate was established for the exiled son of the revolt’s leader, the elector Palatine. Bavaria kept the electorate that it had been given for its support of the emperor Ferdinand II during the revolt. This compromise in 1648 meant a change of the empire’s fundamental Golden Bull of 1356 and was a symbol that all conflicts occurring since 1618 were resolved and that those who made peace did not avoid radical cuts and invented fresh ideas in order to make peace. Catholics and Protestants (now including Calvinists as well as Lutherans) accepted each other. Several regulations guaranteed their balance: 1624 was declared the “normal year” of any territory’s denomination, minorities were tolerated or had a right to emigrate, and no one could be forced to convert any longer. The Peace of Westphalia is regarded as a milestone in the development toward tolerance and secularization. This settlement also strengthened the imperial Estates: they could enter into foreign alliances and decide important matters, such as peace and war, along with the emperor. The suspected ambition of the Habsburgs for a “universal monarchy” was thereby controlled, in particular because the Franco-Spanish negotiations in Münster did not bring peace between France and Spain and left open conflict areas, such as Lorraine. Moreover, France and Sweden got territorial “satisfaction,” especially in Alsace and Pomerania. The Peace of Westphalia also confirmed the legal independence of the Swiss Confederation, whereas by a separate peace with Spain, in Münster, the United Provinces of the Netherlands officially became a sovereign state after eighty years of war. The Peace of Westphalia was crucial in German and international history. Its precise role in the European state system and international law is, however, subject to controversy, such as the debate over the “Westphalian System” in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Controversies about the Peace of Westphalia are not new. The history of its reception and interpretation is as long as the history of its emergence. Unquestionably, though, the negotiations were a milestone in diplomacy and peacemaking. Sources on the peace are most valuable for always changing methods and perspectives of history. Research on the Peace of Westphalia increased enormously with its 350th anniversary in 1998 and its several conferences and exhibitions.

General Overviews

The most recent scholarly monograph on the Westphalian negotiations and peace is Croxton 2013. Dickmann 1998 (originally published in 1959) is still valuable due to the author’s long-term archive research, although it lacks many current aspects and is sometimes even contrary to later research. The sometimes still-quoted Kopp and Schulte 1940 is an unacceptable work of Nazi propaganda. Repgen 1999 covers the main problems of the negotiations and how they were solved in the peace. Westphal 2015 and Brunert 2017 give an overview on the basis of the latest research with a focus on the peace process. Some monographs on the Thirty Years’ War also offer information on the peace (Parker 1997, Wilson 2009, Asbach and Schröder 2014), but they are more focused on the wider political or military frame, or both. Croxton and Tischer 2002, a reference work, includes the variety of new research being done in the late 1990s and provides short explanations of terms, persons, topics, and so on that concern the Peace of Westphalia.

• Asbach, Olaf, and Peter Schröder, eds. The Ashgate Research Companion to the Thirty Years’ War. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014.

  Impressive presentation of the war and its several aspects, including the Peace of Westphalia, by various international scholars. A perfect introduction into the current state of research on the Thirty Years’ War.

• Brunert, Maria-Elisabeth. “Der Westfälische Frieden 1648: Eine Friedensordnung für das Reich und Europa.” In Friedensordnungen in geschichtswissenschaftlicher und geschichtsdidaktischer Perspektive. Edited by Peter Geiss and Peter Arnold Heuser, 69–95. Wissenschaft und Lehrerbildung 2. Göttingen, Germany: V & R Academic, 2017.

  The article, based on a very deep knowledge of the sources and recent research, gives an overview over the Congress and Peace of Westphalia. The focus is on the role of the Peace of Westphalia in the development of a peace order in Germany and Europe.

• Croxton, Derek. Westphalia: The Last Christian Peace. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

  DOI: 10.1057/9781137333339

  Thorough monograph on the Congress and Peace of Westphalia by a recognized expert on the subject. Essential for everyone who is looking for a comprehensive overview in English.

• Croxton, Derek, and Anuschka Tischer. The Peace of Westphalia: A Historical Dictionary. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2002.

  Reference work that offers short explanations and related literature on terms, persons, places, and so on relative to the Peace of Westphalia. Useful selected bibliography.

• Dickmann, Fritz. Der Westfälische Frieden. 7th ed. Münster, Germany: Aschendorff Verlag, 1998.

  Originally published in 1959, this is the only scholarly monograph on the Peace of Westphalia. Although it lacks more than half a century of research and is obsolete in many details, it is an unsurpassed overview. Dickmann even refers to topics that only later became the subject of research (e.g., public media, ceremony).

• Kopp, Friedrich, and Eduard Schulte. Der Westfälische Frieden: Vorgeschichte, Verhandlungen, Folgen. Munich: Hoheneichen-Verlag, 1940.

  What at the first glance might look just like an old-fashioned but rare overview of the Peace of Westphalia is actually anti-French Nazi propaganda. Because of its high circulation, the book is still widespread but should definitely not be used as research literature.

• Parker, Geoffrey, ed. The Thirty Years’ War. 2d ed. London: Routledge, 1997.

  The instructive book, written by several experts, is much quoted for the Thirty Years’ War, the Peace of Westphalia, and the history of its reception. One should be aware, however, that it does not include the very fruitful research of the last two decades.

• Repgen, Konrad. “Die Hauptprobleme der Westfälischen Friedensverhandlungen von 1648 und ihre Lösungen.” Zeitschrift für Bayerische Landesgeschichte 62 (1999): 399–438.

  Concise and instructive article on all important problems of the negotiations and their outcome in the Peace of Westphalia. A similar but shorter English article by Repgen can be found in Volume 1 of Bussmann and Schilling 1998 (cited under Collections of Articles).

• Westphal, Siegrid. Der Westfälische Frieden. Munich, Germany: C. H. Beck, 2015.

  DOI: 10.17104/9783406683039

  The short book gives a very dense overview over the Peace of Westphalia. The focus lies in particular on the peace process and its mechanisms.

• Wilson, Peter H. The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.

  This huge and solid monograph on the Thirty Years’ War includes chapters on the Westphalian peace congress and the aftermath. The focus is strictly on the great political decisions and military development, so the book does not offer a thorough inside view of the negotiations or the peace.

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