Alpha Book

[Sidenote: The Thirty Years' War.]
The chief warfare of the seventeenth century centers, therefore, in the
long, terrible conflict between the Habsburgs and the Bourbons. Of this
struggle, the so-called Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) may be treated as
the first stage. Let us endeavor to obtain a clear idea of the
interests involved.
When Richelieu became the chief minister of Louis XIII (1624), he
found the Habsburgs in serious trouble and he resolved to take
advantage of the situation to enhance the prestige of the Bourbons. The
Austrian Habsburgs were facing a vast civil and religious war in the
Germanies, and the Spanish Habsburgs were dispatching aid to their
hard-pressed kinsmen.
The war, which proved momentous both to the Habsburgs and to their
enemies, resulted from a variety of reasons--religious, economic, and
political.
[Sidenote: The Thirty Years' War: Ecclesiastical Causes]
The peace of Augsburg (1555) had been expected to settle the religious
question in the Germanies.


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