you have the right jerrold hoping they can win on the battlefield and put pressure on the emperor. who need a quick peace and it will offer them territory to get it is that advisable of course the longer the war lasts the more they ll demand i ll be talking to the french again today better yield to the catholic french than the protestant swedes. fun question for france and sweden a continuation old long duration of the war was rather positive because the longer the war lasted the more gains they stood to make at the hapsburgs expense you stretch a key it s a new strategy a first waiting and seeing how the other side presents itself also derives of course from the worry that you might be making demands that are not high enough that are well below what you could achieve if you don t have doesn t play investment said some countries. that. the congress also presents
a highly emotional high starch and that s all shot from a so politically the holy roman empire of the german nation was a structure that in some ways resembles say the european union of our day a patient on your own in a hot. the holy roman empire is the main battlefield of the thirty years war at the outbreak of the war it unites about three hundred imperial cities special perks and counties under one rule or the emperor. but they take different sides and are bitter adversaries. before the peace negotiations in minster and also work many attempts to mediate between the rival powers have failed. but battlefield defeats and the high level of indebtedness on all sides broke no other solution. the power of diplomacy has come. as it does think it has to i think this is the real treasure in this whole of peace
territories and all sorts of other things feeling part time d. and the multitude of parties involved in multiple negotiations and meetings in munster and also not brooke is remarkable and the reason it s remarkable is of course because the war they were trying to end was remarkable and of itself likely . to understand how the thirty years war came about let s go back to its beginnings in bohemia in sixteen eighteen when a local event in prague becomes the catalyst for one of the great catastrophes in european history. christianity has been divided since the reformation and hatred and mistrust smaller among both catholics and protestants especially in bohemia a part of the catholic hapsburg empire that has seen repeated uprisings. in
lives far away from these political intrigues. the farmers in bohemia till their fields and can live well from their harvest. a few of them are religious fanatics but they feel oppressed by the catholic emperor even in the practice of their protestant faith. the nobles uprising offers them the opportunity to fight for their faith and against the catholics so many join the bohemian army. they still little suspect what awaits them. the men addiction monastery our lady victorious is a place of pilgrimage marking the first great battle of the thirty years of war. it lies on the white mountain at the time considered militarily impregnable. to bohemian army occupies the ridge for days as the imperial commanders debate whether to risk an attack.
sixteen zero nine protestant bohemia is guaranteed freedom of worship. but nine years later emperor ferdinand reverses the decree. in response protestant nobles march into prague castle and threw three of the emperor s representatives out of the windows. they survive the so-called defenestration of prague by landing in a dung heap anything window but the emperor refuses to accept any attack on his authority and the battle for faith and power takes its course so and that s when the confessor inspection and screen as soon as we start to talk about the forced religious conversion i m likely to mobilize all the reserves i have left to resist this is and that of course is a fundamental importance in a war like the thirty years war where after all what s at stake is the certainty of salvation for guns and i love the title. the people of europe are leading their