Hi I’m John Green.
This is Crash Course European History and today we’re going to look at what is sometimes
called the “seventeenth century crisis.”
Now I know what you’re thinking: This whole history business is just one crisis after
another.
And yes, dear viewer, it’s true.
Humankind careens from disaster to disaster, but still we press on, like boats against
the current, and sometimes we even learn from previous disasters.
And since the Seventeenth Century Crisis involves climate change and catastrophic war, we should
maybe pay attention to this one.
[Intro] Let’s begin with the Little Ice Age.
The Little Ice Age began in 1300, but it really escalated beginning in 1570 and then the climate
continued to cool for over one hundred years after that.
It was a global phenomenon.
In some places, the temperature may have shifted two degrees Celsius or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit,
but the average was about half a degree Celsius.
That may not sound dramatic, but it was.
Intense rainfall, lack of sunshine, and lower temperatures decreased harvests or ruined
them entirely.
Europeans suffered hypothermia; the birthrate dropped; and famines became more common--as
did cannibalism.
In New England, the end of the 17th century was the worst part of the Little Ice Age.
1797 was especially brutal: Settler Samuel Sewell noted in his diary: “To Horses, Swine,
Nett-Cattell, Sheep, and Deer, Ninety and Seven prov’d a Mortal yeer.”
Now, unlike contemporary climate change, the Little Ice Age was not caused primarily by
human behavior--it may have been caused by volcanic activity or orbital cycles or cyclical
lows in solar radiation.
We like to think of the Earth’s climate as entirely stable, but it never has been.
That said, contemporary climate change IS caused by humans--and even the most ambitious
goals to limit it would result in an average global temperature change of 1.5 degrees celsius,
far higher than the average shifts seen during the catastrophic Little Ice Age.
And something else was also happening in the 17th century that felt as mysterious and strange
as lower temperatures: Higher prices, sometimes called a “price revolution,” that increased
prices for food and other goods.
This was caused partly by the growing population we discussed in our last episode, and partly
by inflation--more precious metals were entering Europe, especially due to mining in the Americas,
which decreased the value of coinage.
But this was really baffling for people--I mean, imagine that you’re living in Spain
in the 17th century, watching precious metals pour into your country via the New World,
and despite all this new wealth, you’re finding it harder to pay for bread, and clothing,
and almost everything else.
Inflation, like climate, is extremely complex, and also a hugely important historical force.
And so as prices soared and harvests declined, it really did feel like the 17th century might
just be the end.
As one pamphleteer from Spain wrote in 1643: “Every nation is turned upside down, leading
some great minds to suspect that we are approaching the end of the world.”[i]
And then there was the 30 Years War, which unlike the 100 Years War, actually did last
for 30 years.
The war, which took place from 1618 to 1648, was tremendously destructive in Central Europe--millions
of people were killed, including many from starvation brought on by the war.
Many different states within the quickly fracturing Holy Roman Empire were involved,
as were France and Sweden and Denmark and England.
The war started in 1618 over, you guessed it, religion.
It began when Ferdinand II, the devotedly Catholic new Hapsburg king of Bohemia, sent
representatives to inform powerful Protestants that Prague and the rest of Bohemia would
be Catholic territory from now on.
Unsurprisingly, the Protestant lords in Prague weren’t terribly happy with this news.
In fact, the were so unhappy that they threw Ferdinand’s representatives out--literally,
out the window, in the so-called Defenestration of Prague.
Did the center of the world just open?
Is there a window in there?
Now, this is a famous moment in European history, in part because it’s called the Defensetration
of Prague, which is just irresistible, but in part because it was the SECOND defenestration
of Prague.
The first one occured in 1419 and resulted in the deaths of seven people, the second
one, the one we’re concerned with now, resulted in the deaths of no people, because all four
of the defenestrated landed in a pile of manure.
Ferdinand’s people, of course, called this a divine miracle, while the Protestants were
like, “they landed in poop!”
Ah, god I love history.
Soon after the defenestration, Ferdinand II was elected Holy Roman Emperor, which led
the Protestant Czechs to reject him as king of Bohemia, and choose the protestant Frederick
V of the Palitanate to replace him, and then war truly erupted.
The Czechs would be initially defeated by Hapsburg forces in the Battle of White Mountain
in 1620, and the Hapsburg family would in fact rule the area until 1918.
But that didn’t settle the war--nor, in fact, did Ferdinand’s next victories.
Let’s go to the Thought Bubble.
1.
So on the one hand you have the imperial forces,
2. led by the Catholic Hapsburg Ferdinand II,
3. and on the other hand you have protestant Frederick V
4. and his allies among the protestant aristocrats of central Europe.
5.
The Hapsburgs went on to crush Frederick’s allies.
6.
In the 1620s, Ferdinand took the Palatinate from the defeated Frederick
7. and awarded it to his Catholic ally, Maximilian of Bavaria.
8.
Ferdinand then awarded other lands to Catholic allies
9.
that had belonged to defeated protestant princes,
10. and he decreed that in conquered territories those who had bought Catholic lands, like
monasteries, had to return them.
11.
Furthermore, all citizens needed to return to the Catholic Church or else leave their
homes.
12.
The Little Ice Age, inflation, and war had crashed the economies,
13.
making it difficult for people to dispose of their property before they moved.
14.
And we see this again--and again and again--in refugee crises throughout history.
15.
So it seemed the Catholics Hapsburgs were going to win,
16.
but then the Protestant king of Denmark, Christian IV, a hugely wealthy ruler,
17. decided to enter the war to block imperial expansion,
18.
protect Protestants,
19. and preserve the traditional rights of the many hundreds of independent kingdoms,
and duchies, and cities in the Holy Roman Empire.
20.
And that meant that the war, instead of being over, was just getting started.
Thanks, Thought Bubble.
So, Emperor Ferdinand hired the wealthy Albrecht von Wallenstein to confront the Danish menace
and to continue conquering the Protestant princes in the empire, thus restoring more
property to the Catholic Church.
Wallenstein was Czech- and he’d been born a Protestant, but he’d converted to Catholicism
as a teenager and then married a widow who died a few years after their marriage, leaving
him a lot of property.
But that was just the beginning of Wallenstein gaining property via death and/or marriage.
Wallenstein did his conquering with such gusto and success that Ferdinand constantly rewarded
him with more estates.
And when Wallenstein married again, he gained even more wealth and prestige.
He started out as hired help, but eventually grew to be powerful in his own right.
It’s a real Holy Roman Empire Dream story.
You know, you start out in the war-making mailroom, and then eventually work your way
up to being the CEO of war.
He raised armies of tens of thousands of fighters who laid waste Protestant lands and slaughtered
hundreds of thousands of people.
He also had army officers go house-to-house, collecting regular contributions or “taxes”
to support the ever growing military forces.
And as he built his army, he justified raising taxes.
Wallenstein expanded the battlefield, in the 30 years war, by seeking out any nearby Protestants
whose lands could be captured and returned to the Catholic side, thereby bringing new
entrants into the war.
The Netherlands came to the Palatinate’s rescue; Spain, Italian states, and France
also got involved, as did Sweden, a military powerhouse at the time.
Unlike today, when the Swedes are primarily a Flat Packed Home Goods powerhouse.
Then in 1626, Danish King Christian IV, a Protestant, lost half his army in the battle
of Lutter.
Ferdinand II’s confidence soared, and with it his counter-reformation zeal; in 1629 he
issued the Edict of Restitution—a sweeping confiscation of formerly Catholic lands and
a harsh directive for non-Catholics to emigrate.
And Ferdinand was merciless.
When his armies would defeat the rebels, Ferdinand had those taken prisoner disemboweled after
their right hands were hacked off.
His German prince allies counseled moderation, but Ferdinand preferred the advice of his
Jesuit priest to push the Counter-Reformation ever further.
Ferdinand, his confessor announced, could “lose all his kingdoms and provinces and
whatever he has in this world, provided he save his soul.”[ii] So there would be no
compromise.
Then in 1631, Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus defeated the imperial army at the Battle of
Breitenfeld, the first major Protestant victory of the war, which was by then thirteen years
old.
Though Gustavus Adolphus was killed in battle the next year, that Catholic defeat heartened
Protestant forces, who kept the war going.
Meanwhile, the war stopped being about JUST religion.
For instance, Louis XIII of France had allied himself with the Swedish king, even though
Louis was Catholic and the Swedes were Protestant, because Louis didn’t want the Holy Roman
Empire to become too powerful.
Over time, the daily realities of the war became even more brutal, as armies simply
wandered across central Europe killing and scrounging for food.
Young and old peasants and townspeople were stabbed or captured and tortured to death
as waves of soldiers went from house to house.
The first waves took obvious treasure, and then each successive wave settled on smaller
objects like copper and other base metal coins or tiny silver trinkets.
Those were the minor offenses.
Roasting people alive, torturing people’s genitals until victims died, and raping girls
to death now became standard behavior in the war.
Meanwhile, civilians were also dying of hunger, and cold, and disease.
The little ice age was taking its toll along with the armies, who fought in the name of
the Catholic, or Lutheran, or Calvinist cause or just merely to survive.
Desperate refugee families were forced to leave their homes to start over dozens of
times.
Just one example of the horror: in Protestant Magdeberg, city officials faced an imperial
army and its mercenaries at the city limits in the fall of 1630.
And over the course of seven months devastation unfolded.
Residents harassed the Catholic invaders, hurling rocks and other objects on them from
the city’s ramparts.
And once the imperial armies breached the walls, they started to torch the city.
Magdeberg’s citizens struggled to escape both the armies and the fire.
Of 25,000 citizens, only 5,000 were left at the end of the battle for the city--which
was in the end destroyed by fire.
In 1634, Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II had his own general Wallenstein assassinated,
because it appeared that Wallenstein was plotting to make peace with Sweden and perhaps planning
a coup, although why anyone would want to be the Holy Roman Emperor at that point is
an absolute mystery to me.
But the war continued.
The 1640s brought more horrendous weather, and disorder reigned as social and political
systems completely fell apart.
There was often little in the way of a functioning government; economies completely collapsed;
and all manner of social norms broke down.
There were, for instance, many reports of cannibalism.
And public spaces became additionally dangerous when wolves and other wild animals arrived
in villages and private farms.
Finally, in 1648, the Peace of Westphalia finally brought the war to an end.
Even hard-headed theologians by that time allowed concessions to the other religion
in order to obtain peace.
And the fact that French Catholics uniting with Swedish and other Protestants led to
the conclusion that this maybe meant the end of religious war—at least in Europe, at
least for now.
The war tapered off because of political and economic considerations, but also because
the level of devastation just became too horrifying.
Combatants met at a peace conference where Emperor Ferdinand III made concessions of
land and cash reluctantly, forced by exhaustion and the continuing miseries inflicted by the
little ice age.
All of this marked a turn to more “practical” concerns in government policy rather than
just like, going to war to promote your religion.
Rates of mortality were very high in the seventeenth century globally because of the pervasiveness
of the little ice age and because of devastating warfare.
And we need to remember the immense human costs of the thirty Years war: some 20 percent
of the central European population died, while in areas of intense and continuous fighting,
it was closer to 50 percent.
If I can return to a shockingly positive picture, amidst all of that, the creation of our modern
view of science and its benefits was taking place in many of the same regions, which reminds
us that history is not one human story, but all human stories.
Some good news is coming next week.
Thanks for watching.
I’ll see you then.