Protestant North Germany

Abstract

For most of Europe, the first three-quarters of the seventeenth century was a period of almost continuous war. Even though much of the Thirty Years War (1618–48) took place in central Europe, its death, misery and destruction spread to the northernmost regions, even the lands bordering on the North and Baltic seas. In addition, the continuing rivalry between Sweden and Denmark added constantly to the unrest in this region until the last decades of the century. In the second decade of the Thirty Years War, the Habsburg army of Wallerstein invaded Denmark and went on to overwhelm much of the Baltic coast of eastern Pomerania. Sweden, under the leadership of King Gustavus Adolphus, entered the war in 1630 by invading Pomerania, and quickly swept into the heartland of Germany as far south as the Rhineland. The Peace of Westphalia (1648) formulated solutions, albeit often temporary, to the various international conflicts, but peace did not endure. France and Spain continued their war, and soon England and the United Dutch Provinces initiated their own hostilities. After Sweden invaded Poland in 1655, Denmark again attacked Sweden, but the Danes were defeated by the superior forces of Sweden’s Charles X. The Treaty of Roskilde (1658) established the territorial integrity of the Swedish mainland. However, five months later the Swedes invaded the Danish mainland, beginning yet another war that achieved little but an impasse between these two northern powers. Their armies would meet again in battle in 1676, and at Lund the Danes suffered another defeat, and for the last time were forced to withdraw from the Swedish homeland.