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Peaking Yona Show. Thomas is back and we are continuing
the series on the thirty Years War. Thomas take it away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm pleased that the series has been well received
thus far, because it's an enormous topic and it's very
labor intensive to present it with adequate thoroughness. I realized
that the conclusion of the last episode that it was
imperative to discuss the configuration of political power on the
continent in the in the epoch, all of which flowed
from the Holy Roman Empire. And this story of modern
Europe is, you know, uh, the story of European power
consolidating in the German state, and this reaches Zenus in
the early modern period and the reconstitution of that structure
across a broad spectrum of human activity, most relevant obviously
political organization and conceptual reality. You know, that's that process
continued from sixteen forty eighth until nineteen forty five. And
this doesn't really make sense and unless I describe what
the Holy Roman Empire was and how it functioned, and
even in relatively serious university curriculums, this isn't presented properly.
And this was one of the proximate causes of the
war of hostilities at least as much as the sectarian
considerations and confessional loyalties. Obviously these things are all tied
together within a common nucleus eoperative fact, but structural political
variables and dynamic changes they're in owing the historical processes
were at least as significant as religious motivations and conspiring
to create a conditions where war became imminent. The whole
empire was ruled by an actual constitution and the trajectory
of politics. It was shared between the emperor, who was
alternatively known as the Holy Roman Emperor, the King, the
King of the Germans, the King of the Germans and
the Romans. But for brevity we'll refer to the rank
of the office as the Holy Roman Emperor. The Emperor.
He was the overlord and sovereign, and his power derived
directly from his title as essentially caesar more, you know,
in lieu of possession of any particular fee for collection
of feasts. So the imperial office was above the medieval
structure that was tethered to the land and and rank
that a crude owing to lordship over the land and
aristocracy of the sword, which is fascinating, and that's one
of the legacy institutions that ties the Roman Empire to
the European political order as it developed, and how this
relationship between the emperor and his vassals was defined. This
said profound implications not just for dynastic elements that were
vying for power or were committed to retaining a privileged
position and perpetuity, first among them the Habsburgs, but also
in terms of confessionalist allegiance. This had implications that were
structurally coded, you know, and there was there's always gonna
be interstitial and intermediary elements that are able to insinuate
themselves into the power apparatus, even when there is an
imperial office with a mandate that is that monolithic. To
be clear, the Habsburgs, they didn't, they didn't monopolize the
imperial title in the role by right. Electors decided who
was uh, you know, to be insinuated into the office.
And it was often possible if the electors could be
persuaded to accept primogeniture and an emperor could designate a successor,
but the electors had to accept that and assent to it.
It wasn't axiomatic that a son would inherit, you know,
his father's title in office he had, he had no
claim of right to it. If no decision could be
reached on who was to be the emperor, the king
of the Germans and the Romans, there would be an
interreganum that was governed by what was called the Golden Bull.
We're not talking about an animal. The Golden Bull. It
was a thirteen fifty six decree that was issued by
the Imperial diet and Nur the UH. It fixed really
for almost four hundred years, essential aspects of the constitution
of the Holy Roman Empire. It provided administrative remedies to
disagreements between thiefs under the dominion of the electors. It
set about protocols for you know, management of hostilities within
imperial lands. It clarified processes which technically renounced their precluded
papal involvement in the selection of the Holy Roman Emperor.
I mean, obviously in reality that wasn't the case. But
you know, most importantly, it set out that there'd be
seven electors prince electors who were to vote by majority
consensus and the you know, determine who would be the
Holy Roman Emperor. And to be clear, it was a
majority consensus. This was it was explicitly stated that four
to the seven votes would always suffice to elect a
new emperor, and a minority consensus could have no power
to veto or block the election. And finally, and this
is the most important, these principalities that constituted the electorate,
they were indivisible, which meant that they were always passed
down through primogeniture. They couldn't be divided up persturpes, They
couldn't be seated as fiefs. They you know, they could
only be handed down to the firstborn son, and in
the absence of an appropriate male heir, you know, a designate,
and they couldn't be divided. So it very much fixed
the structure of power and imperial succession in a way
that was basically insurmountable until the Westphalian piece, you know. So,
And to be clear, the growth of the Habsburg dynasty
and their domination of the Holy Roman Empire, it wasn't
just on grounds of wealth and the capture of essential
fiefdoms that in turn conferred military power and the allegiance
of essential elements. The Hasburgs were universally respected and the
understanding was that the man who selected to be the
whole room and emperor, he's supposed to abide a certain
aristocratic sensibility, and he's supposed to have a certain pedigree
that is above that even of his peers and generally
the generally the Habsburgs qualified at least uh in the
early modern period, you know, they were they were gonna
lead lineage. Despite this cliche that aristocrats are always these
inbred morons, or they're they're always kind of second rate,
or they lack merit, that's that's really not true. Dynasties
aren't built out of nothing or based on you know,
the reputation of centuries past. You know, they're a mixed bag.
But the most dominant noble houses and lineages they practice
their own sort of eugenics. Okay, and at some point
this breaks down, and in the case the Spanish Habsburgs,
it led to catastrophic outcomes over time. But you know
again that that's uh, that's the you know, there's there's
always the creviitude that precedes you know, the end of
dynastic ragn That's not the whole story, but this was
the ceedy European power, you know. And to be clear,
as we'll get into a lot of this. A lot
of these institutions that were enshrined in the Golden Bull,
they derived from things they were emergent in truly ancient
of a truly ancient heritage. You know, the eighth and
ninth centuries a d. You know, the time of Charlemagne,
when the Franks were the dominant element in Central Europe,
and and it was what's now western Germany and France
that was the imperial seat, you know, rather than Europe Central,
which is really fascinating, and this is where the political
culture emerged from. Now, the status of these imperial fiefs
that constituted the several territories of the Holy Roman Empire,
there was two primary statuses that they represented. There was
imperial estates and this was what was called crease of states,
both of which were represented in the Reichstag and their
regional assembly, and the vassals of which had djury comparable rights,
although circumstances would have dictated the relative power that they wielded.
The Emperor was the personal overlord, how over both of them.
But imperial estates increase of states so designated there was
no one above them other than the Holy Roman Emperor. Okay,
so they couldn't be subordinate to any intermediate lord, regardless
of his wealth, or his title, or his proximity to
the emperor by way of his bloodline or anything else.
And uh, this was actually highly sophisticated, you know. And
uh that's really where mixed the concept that mixed the
government originates from on the continent, you know. And that's
one of the reasons I object to this canard that
modern Germany was characterized by this kind of overlordship of
Bismarckian figures and you know, later of course the fear
and things, because that makes hash with the historical record,
and it also selectively invokes examples of existential emergencies whereby
you know, competing elements with then the sovereign apparatus are
subdued in favor of a unitary executive who needs to
act with splendid power, decisionism amidst you know, a paradigmic
calls for it now increase estates. They had certain obligations
relating to collective defense, and this became a very critical
function during the entirety of the conflict paradigm against the Ottomans.
You know, that culminated in the long War against the Turks,
you know, immediately prior to the onset of hostilities and
sixteen eighteen. It made it a very concrete mobilization paradigm,
you know, not just a set of legal strictures that
were allegedly incumbent based on the letter of the law
or ancient custom or something, you know, and that also
deriving from the ancient conce after the aristocracy of the sword.
Although although disabused from the person of the lord and
you know, his discrete characteristics or that of his title,
it imposed the structural framework on you know, whatever man
held the the fief in question, you know, by virtue
of structural necessity relating to military imperatives, you know. And
as the Ottomans were, for all practical purposes a military
superpower the day, if we can speak in such terms,
and even the largest aggregation of allied principalities or common electorates,
they lacked the military might to stand alone against the
Ottoman threat, and even in times of comparative peace, they
lacked the resources for any kind of independent political and
economic existence. Now, admittedly, economics of the early modern period
weren't nearly as complex as today that it was. You know,
production was localized in the household for the most part,
and everything revolved around commodities and the whims of the
harvest and acts of God and things. But there was
a rudimentary interdependence that was essential, particularly in Central Europe
where there's a basic dearth and arable land, which uh
was one of the major catalysts for the you know,
movement eastward of Germanic peoples over a millennia. Really, you know,
and to be clear, uh, the imperial estates they dated
from the Carolinian era. The the crease of states, the
Reich's crease, which quite literally means imperial circles, you know,
the metaphor suggesting cooperative unity and a defensive parameter. You know,
they really became most relevant a few centuries preceding the
onset of hostilities in six and eighteen. But the imperial estates,
the reichsteand they uh, they dated to the Carolinian era.
You know, this is the eight hundreds AD, you know,
around the time of Charlemagne approximately. You know, that's six
and seven years prior to the prior to the epoch
in question. You know, that is truly ancient. Obviously, Now,
what these conditions began to conspire in favor of was
the rise of the impersonal absolute state. You know, office
is divorced from any discrete lineage or man or the
person of the monarch. And again, although there were trappings
of you know, traditional succession and primogeniture was the norm,
oftentimes that was customary. It wasn't fixed by law, and
after a while it was no longer particularly customary. The
electors by the turn of the seventeenth century, they often
didn't even personally know the Emperor Maximilian the Second in
fifteen sixty two, his coronation was the last coronation of
a Holy Roman emperor to be attended by all the
electors plus all these minor counts and prelates and dukes,
where there was this full personal recognition of the man
himself by electors and vassals who personally presented themselves. You know,
increasingly the process of selecting the emperor, that kind of
early modern version of shuttle diplomacy, decided how the electors voted.
There was guys who could quote a lobbyist at court.
You know, all the features of what we'd think of
as a modern political culture were emergent. You know, and
to be clear, this is a big deal. There's a
reason why old school palls even you know, well in
living memory, like LBJ, they're all about glad handing, because
that's important. And if you're an elector from Heidelberg or wherever,
you meet other electors, or you get to know the
king himself, you find out that you know, you've got
common interest in hunting or art or in painting, or
maybe you just like to drink a lot and chase skirt.
You know, that makes a difference. These personal affinities make
a big difference, you know, particularly when you're talking about power,
political affairs and political structures that are very much coded
towards warren peace questions, where people are expected to truly sacrifice.
This makes a big difference, especially where sectarianities are a
very real phenomenon. You know, personal relationships taken on outside significance,
and the diminution of these things very much made hostilities
possible in a way they wouldn't have been in the past.
I believe that that's a constant in political cultures ancient
and extant alike. The Piece of Augsburg in fifteen fifty
five is essential too, because technically it guaranteed religious freedom.
What was laid down in Augsburg, and one of the
reasons why, you know, to this day of the Lutheran
churches that identify as Augsburg Confessional churches. This is why.
You know. It was a settlement that attended wider constitutional
reforms that you know, gave relief to poorer fiefdoms in
terms of tax obligations and quotas, and it tried to
create some got of uniformity and currency and elements of
public order and like a rudimentary kind of policing and
things like this. But most importantly, Emperor Ferdinand pushed through
as an aspect of the Empire's fundamental Eagle regimen that
there was there had to be a basic tolerance for
the confessional orientation of of fiefdoms under a common lordship,
you know, and this is essentially would established the rule
of you know, the land belonged to the confession of
the prince, with the qualifier that the minority element, you know,
be it Catholic or one of the Protestant sex enjoys
a basic equality before the law. And that essentially held
but for about fifty years. But what it did was
it created it created difficulties because in bringing together opposing
confessions within and people who zealously abided opposing and competing
the sectarian commitments under a common legal and political framework.
It created certain conspiratorial tendencies, or at least encourage them.
What it did was it detonated the traditional unity of
law and faith that was essential to the medieval order.
But also it led to intrigues where and some fiefdoms
Lutherans began demanding that Lutherans be allowed to become bishops,
which obviously Roman considered this unacceptable because you know, to
be clear, too many Lutherans they didn't object to the
existence of the Roman Church. It was you know, doc
trinally corrupted in their view. But the Holy See was
very cognizant of the fact that, you know, there were
cadres of Lutheran clergy and layman who had strong sway
within their respective congregations, who had devised a strategy of
you know, conquering clerical offices with their own people, and
you know, essentially making the Roman Church Lutheran. You know,
obviously the Calvinists, they they they didn't have any they
wanted to burn it down, you know, but you you
can't have this kind of confessional equality dajiure where in
the absence of moral consensus, you know, it doesn't work,
and all you're left with is that every venue of
public administration and uh clerical in judicial life becomes a
battleground for sectarian and thus political challenges. And that's exactly
what happened. So by the time of the defenstration of
Prague and when the killing started, it was a fourmond
conclusion in my opinion. You know, this pressure cooker environment
had been created by the the Peace of Augsburg that
not only left the fundamental controversies unresolved, but it arguably
nourished these divisions and allowed them to grow fat on
those tensions that were feeding them until it culminated in
a disaster owing to confidence wrought by conditions or relative
parody between the parties that you know, became combatants, you know.
And it also once identitarian aspects of public life and
political identity are are hollowed out, it creates ambiguities that
have a tendency to institutionalize controversies and allow what would
ordinarily be minor disagreements within consensus. It allows these things
to become monumental. And you know, that's why these sorts
of half measures amidst uh historically untenable conditions. They often
make things worse when from a hostilities do arrive. You know,
it doesn't require one does they need to be an
augur to recognize that it's you know, and to be
clear to the Lutherans played a very savvy game. I mean,
I think part of this was that there wasn't some
even where Lutherans cons do the majority, they didn't do
things like appropriating and looting you know, property the Roman
Church or something. There wasn't a comparable situation to what
happened in England, you know. So there was this odd circumstance.
We had Lutheran clergy and there counterparts in the Roman
Church who basically enjoyed good offices, if not a basic
basically civilized them consensus at least the mayor's of local administration.
And there wasn't there wasn't the threat of at this point,
you know, the the Lutherans went under threat of being
of being programmed. Nor were the Catholics, where they were
the minority, at at risk of having church property appropriated
and looted. So there was this forum that allowed for
intriguing whereby tensions were intractable, but they weren't so critical
that they were going to resolve in active hostilities. Really
intel matters became totally untenable and scaled to the point
where conflict was inevitable. But at that point, once the
conflict diet was triggered, it it was catastrophic and binary,
you know. And that was my point about half measures
is they've got a tendency to curate scope and severity
in ways that is self defeating. The uh, the Augsbury confessions,
who aren't a big progressive aspects of it as it
was viewed. And this was legitimately a good thing, and
it precluded, uh, it precluded the use of heresy laws
against Lutherans, you know, by the the inquisition, and it
provided uh mechanisms of arbitration to manage disputes across the
sectarian divide, you know. And uh it created a secular
framework for maintaining public peace within the imperial domain well
at the same time affording a basic respect and reverence
for confessional identity and things. But you know that the
fact two of the relative peace within Central Europe internally
bred a kind of complacency. I think two after the
cessation of hostilities in sixteen forty eight. There's odd parallels
with the First World War. You know, otherwise learned men
opposing the rhetorical query, how could this it possibly have happened?
It's like, well, how could this have not happened? I mean,
I mean, it was a perfect storm of circumstances. You know,
I'm sure someone suggests that that's Monday morning quarterbacking, but
I don't think so. It a big issue too became
the right to emigrate, and Ferdinand kind of tried to
strike a middle path on that. I mean, that's a
whole hour of talking about that, But there was this
didn't become as much of an issue as it might
have because I'll get into why this wasn't a minute
in Protestant territories because the Protestant diaspora, both Lutherans and Reformed,
they tended to be more widely dispersed. They were generally
the minority on the ground, with a handful of exceptions,
but also the Protestant cause, both Lutheran and Calvinists. It
was disproportionately led by nobles, which is interesting. So you
obviously nobles aren't going to emigrate, even if they're leading
a minority element. You know, it's it's not like you
had entire blocks and Calvinists and you know, who were
a substantial minority within a Catholic fiefdom who were just
up and you know, moving to beef up their numbers
and some adjacent principality. You know, the demographics just didn't
facilitate that. But it was at the same time an issue.
And you know, people were people were tied to the
land in ways then that they aren't today, just gowing
to the reality of production schema, like even freemen who
weren't serfs or anything, I mean, and even guys who
were fairly wealthy, either owing to land in title or
to success in business. It was a lot more complicated
to emigrate than in the later modern period, you know.
But this also uh, this did uh. There was a
series of uncertainties too that came to be called the
three do be uh do be obviously being the root
of dubious it translates loosely to uncertainties that led to
a kind of a collapse of consensus among the imperial estates,
one of which concerned uh, ecclesiastical lands and holdings of
the Imperial Church. Because again I mean the within Lutheran land,
you know. Again the Osburg Peace declared that, you know,
the Prince's confession is what reigns. And the incorporation of
a Lutheran territorial church property that had become a Lutheran
owing to an absence of Catholic parishioners, but that had,
you know, for centuries been territorial Roman church property. There
was a mechanism by which there was compensation for you know, takings.
But obviously this became politically coded because it had a
negaally geostrategic implication aside from the principled attachments, you know,
people develop owing to sectarian allegiance, whereby they come to
evaluate such controversies as a zero sum regardless of what
the stakes are, you know. And even though the relative losses,
even in overwhelmingly Lutheran territories, was fairly paltry, but this
became a major issue of contention within the public mind.
And the Catholic of view was that, you know, ecclesiastical
reservation of church lands was not just sacred and holy,
but it was also protecting you know, the one true faith,
you know, and people viewed Ferdinand is making a cynical compromise,
you know, and this in turn also led to more
and more Lutherans penetrating chapter cathedrals and bishop ricks to
try and seulate themselves, sometimes in occulted way, you know,
and the church hierarchy. And obviously this wouldn't have been
possible before these liberalizing half measures. Is what made it possible.
And I don't intend to cass Ferdinand as some irredeemable
villain or something. I mean, I that's the caricature of
the circumstances that existed. But also I believe the paradigm
as it developed was inevitable. I know that puts me
to odds with most contemporary historians, even guys who are
a bit outside of the court historian consensus. They they
tend to view these things as accidental, particularly truly catastrophic
constellations and circumstances that you know, lead to the most
destructive wars. They view it as a breakdown of processes
that is almost like a machine breaking down or something. It's,
you know, they're the wrong remedies were invoked there, they
weren't timely enough. I mean, obviously I don't I don't
accept that type of thinking. But you know, it also
even very radical Protestants, even thought radical Calvinis, they were
politically savvy enough to not stake any claim to that,
you know, they had a right to appropriate Roman Catholic
lands outright. You know, so generally, not always, there's an
escalation of hostilities from intriguing and you know, acts of
political hostility short of violence that become normative in terms
of relationships between party combatants, and once the potentialities of
within that paradigm that runs its course, there's escalation by
necessity and you know, everything that was resultant from the
piece of Augsburg and paraplitical terms, it tended to facilitate
momentum in that direction. And again I think this is
clear from the historical record of you know, one diligently
research is the relevant variables. It It also made it
easier for rulers to formally convert because it allowed them
to effectively suspend the jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic Church
in basic capacities and to purge clergy from positions of
local authority within the clerical apparatus, you know, which obviously,
prior to the Augsburg Peace, would have led the direct
action against them, you know, And that's another factor tending
towards aggravating potentialities within the Burgning conflict diad, you know.
And these things were openly discussed, the set of problems
called the do be a the uncertainties you know it,
but uh, there's not it was more rumination on you know,
the interactability of resolving schismatic phenomena that you know translates
directly to political hostility, you know. And it's not as
if it's not as if there's there was some leal
remedy or some edict of a high court, even one
that was like for example, you know, even one that
was confessionally mixed, or even some sort of council of
the imperialist states, you know, that wouldn't have This was
a situation that was very much developing locally and impacting
regular people's lives in a very immediate existential capacity, which
in turn translated to power political struggles at scale. You know,
they're and on top of that, there had been a
shattering of the unity of you know, confessional authority and
what people viewed as legitimate sources of law. You know,
and if the law is coded as some neutral product
of reason that refuses to take a position I'm confessional morality, Like,
why should any man pay it any mind? He shouldn't,
you know. And that's one of the reasons why this
is relevant to the present day. Our friend Andrew Isker
texts me before Christmas. He's an interesting dude. I mean,
he's our friend. I mean, you know that I like Andrew,
But you know he's also a learned guy. I mean,
he's he's one of the comparatively few pastors I really respect.
And he made the point that there's a lot of
relevant precedent to the period we're discussing to the present day,
and I agree with that. It's not just a matter
of needing to understand this in a deep capacity, to
understand the political development of Europe and thus the entire
civilized world, and the paradigm I was set in motion
in sixteen eighteen didn't truly resolve until ninety forty five.
But also, you know, there are strong parallels relating to
the fracturing of moral consensus and a resurgence a confessional
life cominant with that, both of which are characteristic of
the final decades of the Cold War, through the twenty
first century and to our present. So this is important.
I'm gonna stop here because I'm I'm still not feeling
great and I've I've got dinner plans and stuff, so
I need to pull myself together here. Man, forgive me
for if that's abrupt. I know people make fun of
me or about being abrupt. My energy level is very man.
It don't mean to sound like a bitch or something,
but that's the reality.
Speaker 1: No, I mean, if that's where the if that's where
the subject end as we pick it up in the
next episode, that's it.
Speaker 2: No fair enough. I didn't. I I felt like I
might have been leaving something out, but I I yeah,
I that's fine. Thank you.
Speaker 1: If you leave something out, you always figure out you
did and then you inserted into the beginning of the
next episode.
Speaker 2: So no, thanks, I appreciate that. Thank you for the
vote of confidence and a good very seriously.
Speaker 1: Of course, everybody go over to Thomas's substack. It's real
Thomas seven seven seven dot substack dot com, and you
can connect to him there and links to everything and
go support him too, and uh get the get his
episodes there so you can hear the uh he's been
hitting up with the Andrew Edwards the last couple episodes
and his his new You know, we don't have a
lot of guys that write fiction, and uh Andrew Andrew
does and he's quite unique in his fiction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so go support Thomas. All right, thank you, Thomas.
See on the next episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, happy new year, Happy to here man s