Palatinate campaign

Background

The Thirty Years War started in 1618 when the Protestant Bohemian Estates bypassed the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II and instead offered the Bohemian crown to Frederick of the Palatinate. Most of the Empire stayed out of it, seeing the conflict as a simple inheritance quarrel, and the rebellion was put down quickly. But since neither Ferdinand nor Frederick would give in, Imperial forces invaded the Palatinate. This move against a hereditary prince fundamentally altered the war’s scope and character.

Other Protestant states got involved, including King James of England and Scotland, whose daughter Elizabeth was married to Frederick. In May 1620, James backed his son-in-law by letting Count Dohna, a Palatine envoy, raise volunteers at his own expense. Dohna recruited roughly 10,000 London citizens and put Horace Vere in command. Protestant states inside the Empire, as well as external powers holding Imperial lands, saw this as a threat.

Nassau-Dillenburg belonged to the Dutch Prince of Orange, and Christian IV of Denmark was also Duke of Holstein. This escalation happened as the Twelve Years’ Truce between the Dutch Republic and Spain ended, and it gave France an opening, since France was dealing with Spanish-backed Huguenot revolts.

Ferdinand’s position grew worse when Gabriel Bethlen of Hungary started an anti-Habsburg campaign in Hungary for the Protestant cause. Spain sent its Army of Flanders, about 20,000 troops under Don Ambrosio Spinola. In August 1620, Spinola marched from Brussels into the Lower Palatinate to join the Catholic side.

Aftermath

James had sent De Vere instructions believing a deal with Philip IV would restore Frederick to his lands, but that assumption was wrong. Ferdinand removed Frederick from his position as an Imperial Prince-elector in February 1623, transferring the vote to Maximilian of Bavaria. The Battle of Stadtlohn on 6 August saw Tilly defeat Christian of Brunswick’s Protestant army, after which Frederick agreed to an armistice with Ferdinand, closing the Palatine Phase of the Thirty Years’ War.

Ferdinand then made Bohemia a hereditary Habsburg territory, seized land from rebellious Protestant nobles, and pushed forward a Catholic Counter-Reformation. This guaranteed the conflict would persist, and in 1624 a broad anti-Habsburg coalition formed, including England, France, the Dutch Republic, Sweden, Denmark-Norway, Savoy, Venice, and Brandenburg. Frederick was also formally stripped of his Electoral Palatinate title. Horace Vere received a lifetime appointment as Master-General of the Ordnance on 16 February 1623 and joined the Council of War on 20 July 1624.

The Spanish held the Palatinate until 1652, after the Peace of Westphalia, due to ongoing pressures from the Franco-Spanish War.