The German Question, Part Twenty-Four

"The Thirty Years' War Brings Death, Destruction & A Partial Answer To The German Question," Part Two-"The War"

Bohemia* was a part of the Holy Roman Empire, and in the latter part of the 1300s and early 1400s, a man named Jan (John, in English) Hus was a leader of a group of political and religious reformers. He was executed as a heretic, but his popularity brought together his followers in what eventually became more of a religious movement, and they were called "Hussites," and they became a Protestant sect which dominated Bohemia, much to the chagrin of the Church and of the Habsburgs, who were staunch Catholics, and emperors of the German Empire. The territory was ruled by the "King of Bohemia,"** but when one king, Louis II ("Lajos" in Hungarian, as he was also King of Hungary) was killed in battle against the Ottoman Turks in the 1500s, he left no son as an heir. His brother, Ferdinand, who was married to a Habsburg, became king, and thus Bohemia joined the growing possessions of the Habsburgs. While the Habsburgs were Catholic, there was a bit of a truce for decades, allowing freedom of religion until another Habsburg, German emperor Ferdinand II (and also King of Bohemia), wanted to establish Catholicism throughout his lands. This brought about a revolt in Bohemia in 1618.

The revolt in Bohemia triggered other religious conflicts within the Habsburg lands, including in certain parts of Austria, where Protestants were majorities. Certain Hungarian Protestants sought to aid the other Protestants, and later still, the Danes, staunch Lutherans, joined the military operations in northern Germany to aid the Protestant German state of Lower Saxony against advancing Imperial (Catholic) forces. Then later still, Sweden, another staunchly Protestant country, joined the action in the northern/northeastern part of Germany. One major exception to the religious reasons for the conflict was France. France was heavily Catholic, but the French hated and feared the Habsburgs, and they agreed to support Sweden financially, and then later, actually entered the military conflict by declaring war on Spain (ruled by a branch of the Habsburgs) and on the German Empire/Holy Roman Empire, which had a Catholic Habsburg as emperor. The war raged on, with Catholic armies gaining ground at times, and then Protestant armies retaking many lands. The French had a difficult time, suffering some terrible defeats, with Paris itself threatened at one time by Habsburg forces.

The Protestant forces and their French allies gradually turned the tide, inflicting some devastating defeats on the Catholic forces of the Habsburgs. Both sides were exhausted, and a series of treaties were negotiated between the various participants, but two major treaties, one signed in Osnabrück and one in Münster, two German cities in the province of Westphalia (Westfalen, in German), brought about the end of the Thirty Years' War and its companion war, the Eighty Years' War between Spain and the Dutch, which had essentially become one with the Thirty years' War. See: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2010/07/german-question-part-twenty.html

To be continued, as this will require a Part Three..... (A Word History is below the notes)

* For those unfamiliar with European geography, Bohemia later became the leading part of the new nation of Czechoslovakia after World War One. It now has a similar role in the "Czech Republic." In the time period involved in this article, while it undoubtedly had a Czech majority population (the Czechs are Slavs), it had a substantial German minority, mainly formed in a German majority populated sort of semi-circle around Bohemia, but Germans were also somewhat mixed in with the "interior" Czech population.

** The individual "states" within the German Empire (Holy Roman Empire) were more like independent "countries," with some being ruled by kings, princes, dukes, archdukes, etc. Further, it was not uncommon for some rulers to carry several titles, if they ruled a variety of states: for example, one German emperor, Rudolf, was designated "Rudolf II," as his title as emperor, but simply as "Rudolf," with no numeral, in his capacity as King of Hungary and Croatia, but again as "Rudolf II" as King of Bohemia, but as Rudolf V, in his capacity as Archduke of Austria. Initially, the ruler of Bohemia was called a "duke," but later it was changed to "king," then back to duke, before returning once again to king.

WORD HISTORY:
War-This seems to go back to the Indo European root "wers." This gave Old Germanic "werso," which seems to have meant "cause or bring into confusion," and probably also "mix," which would certainly tie in with "confusion." This gave Frankish (the Franks were a Germanic tribe) "werra," seemingly with the same basic meaning. This then passed into Old French as "guerre," but in the northern dialect of Old French as "werre," with the meaning "war" (Italian and Spanish, for example, also picked this up, but as "guerra," their word for "war"). Old English acquired the word from the northern French dialect at some point prior to the Norman Invasion as "werre/wyrre/warre," later being reduced to the shorter form "war." Interestingly, the Germanic dialects, including Anglo-Saxon, of long ago did not have a set word for "war," and English used a whole variety of forms, too numerous to get into, to express the notion of "war." Modern German has the related word (ver)wirren, which still has the meaning "confuse, bewilder," but also "tangle/entangle," which also adds the "mix" meaning.