Sweden and France

The situation changed dramatically in 1630 when the Protestant king of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus, "the Lion of the North," sent his armies across the Baltic Sea. The Swedish involvement was financed by King Louis XIII and his minister Richelieu (a cardinal of the Catholic Church!). The Swedish "blue and yellow" brigades of highly disciplined soldiers cut through the Imperial armies which were, at that point, formed largely from Swiss and German "landsknechts" - mercenary soldiers who fought for money and not from conviction.

The Swedes avenged the destruction of the lovely Lutheran free city of Magdeburg. They defeated an imperial army at Breitenfeld and then cut like lightning through imperial territory between the Rhine and the Danube defeating every army sent against them. Wallenstein finally confronted Gustavus Adolphus in November 1932 at the Battle of Lutzen. Once again the Swedes were victorious but the Swedish king was killed. His death deprived the Protestants of their champion and the war bogged down to a stalemate which was to continue for sixteen years.

From 1635 to 1648 war against the Catholic powers was led by Catholic France. Cardinal Richelieu, Louis XIII's first minister, not only continued to finance Protestant Sweden and Holland, but sent French armies to fight the Catholic powers. By 1639 the tide of the war had turned. Spain had lost control of the vital Atlantic sea route to the English and the Dutch and had lost Alsace to France. The defeat of the Spanish army at Rocroi by the Duc d'Enghien in 1643 marked the beginning of the end, and although the war was to drag on for another five years, the Catholic, Habsburg powers had been decisively beaten.

The Treaty of Westphalia (1648) marked the end of the Habsburg's Imperial dream. The states of the Empire were officially given their independence, although the emperor was accepted as a symbolic head. Calvinism, as well as Lutheranism, was officially recognised and the authority of the emperor was dependent on an assembly of states, the Imperial Diet, which included Sweden as well as all the German Protestant states. The most important consequence of the treaty was the emergence of France as the great power in Europe with the collapse of Habsburg Spain and the disintegration of the unity of the Empire.

Events: The Thirty Years' War (Opens in new window)