1629: COUNTER-REFORMATION AND HABSBURG SUPREMACY

Abstract

The series of victories which the Catholic armies had achieved between 1620 and 1624 was to be continued during the following five years. At the same time more and more countries were drawn into the war. In the early 1620s the war had not yet been a genuinely European conflict. It had focused on two principal issues: the struggle for power in the Empire and the Dutch—Spanish war which was renewed in 1621 after the expiry of the truce. Moreover, these two issues had remained largely distinct, as has already been emphasised. Certainly, Spanish troops fought in the Palatinate as well as against the Dutch, and the States General gave support, mostly financial and logistical, to the Elector Palatine and his allies. But no major Dutch army had come to the rescue of the Palatinate nor could the Spanish count on the active support of the German Catholic Liga against the Dutch. From 1624 onwards, however, the conflict was increasingly internationalised. Powers such as England and Denmark, and ultimately France, too, which so far had stayed on the sidelines, took up arms at last and tried to redress the military and political balance in central Europe. With these new participants the issues dominating the conflict became ever more complex and intricate.