Leseprobe

The Thirty Years’ War as a European conflict with global implications 64 he saw his control there in jeopardy.This sufficed to provide Emperor Ferdinand II with some breathing space. Bethlen withdrew from his position outside Vienna, which also forced the Bohemian and Moravian troops to retire. He began negotiations for a truce with the Emperor. A decisive factor in the negotiations in Pressburg was— besides the Polish invasion—the attitude of the Ottomans, for whom an escalation of the conflict on their northern bor- der was not in their interests. On 16 January 1620 Bethlen agreed a truce with Emperor Ferdinand II for a period of nine months.13 This cease-fire enabled the Emperor and the Catholic League to muster their troops and launch their own invasion of Bohemia. Hence, Bethlen Gábor had possibly saved the Habsburg monarchy. On 25 August 1620 Bethlen was proclaimed King of Hungary, but was not crowned.14 The Transylvanian troops alone were not in a position to pose a decisive threat to Vienna, and they would henceforth not be able to exert any significant influence on the war in Bohemia. In 1621 the imperial troops conquered important cities and fortresses in northern Hungary.These successes forced Bethlen Gábor to conclude another peace treaty with the Emperor in Nikolsburg (Mikulov) on 31 December 1621. In this treaty, Bethlen renounced his claim to Hungarian territories and the title of King of Hungary. By way of compensation, he was granted the two Silesian duchies of Opole and Ratibor and seven counties in Upper Hungary for the duration of his life.15 Spain’s intervention and England’s support for the Rhenish Palatinate Since King Philip III of Spain had a strong interest in maintaining Habsburg dominance in East Central Europe, he intervened in the conflict and supported his cousin Ferdinand II by providing 6 million thalers and 40,000 sol- diers.16 Furthermore, in August 1620 he had the commander of the Spanish Army of Flanders, Ambrogio Spinola, march with 22,000 men into Friedrich V’s ancestral heartland, the Rhenish Palatinate, thus gaining control of the strategically important Rhine valley.17 To defend the Rhenish Palatinate, King James I of England then sent a regiment to Germany under the command of Colonel Horace Vere. The English FIG. 3 Ulrich Loth (attr.), Imperial General Johann Tserclaes von Tilly , Munich (?), c. 1625–1630, oil on canvas, h. 221 cm, w. 139 cm, Munich, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, inv. no. R 399 troops entrenched themselves in the fortress cities of Mannheim and Frankenthal, as well as in the capital, Heidelberg.18 Taking advantage of a rebellion by the Catho- lics of the Valtellina against the Protestant inhabitants of Grisons (Graubünden), Spanish soldiers occupied the important Alpine route between Spanish Lombardy and Habsburg Vorarlberg in 1620. As a result, the so-called “Spanish Road” between Genoa and the Netherlands was reopened. With the support of Spanish troops, the