Kingdom of Westphalia

“ If, however, by the Treaty of Tilsit, the throne of Poland was not restored to serve as a barrier between old Europe and the Empire of the Czars, Napoleon founded a Kingdom of Westphalia, which he gave to the young 'ensigne de vaisseau' whom he had scolded as a schoolboy, and whom he now made a King, that he might have another crowned prefect under his control. ”

“ A map must show the crazy patchwork in which this struggle ended, a map of Europe according to the peace of Westphalia (1648) . One sees a tangle of principalities, dukedoms, free states and the like, some partly in and partly out of the Empire. Sweden’s arm, the reader will note, reached far into Germany; and except for a few islands of territory within the imperial boundaries France was still far from the Rhine. Amidst this patchwork the Kingdom of Prussia—it became a Kingdom in 1701—rose steadily to prominence and sustained a series of successful wars. ”

“ The ruthless policy of extermination of the best element in Bohemian national life is best indicated by the fact that when the peace of Westphalia was concluded, the prosperous kingdom was little better than a desert, with about eight hundred thousand impoverished inhabitants. ”

“ In Westphalia, which was then created a kingdom, with Jerome Bonaparte for its king, and in all the Rhenish provinces which were annexed to France, the liberal Code Napoléon took the place of that other written and unwritten code in which Jews were pariahs, liable to be condemned without evidence, and sentenced without appeal. Whether from dynastic reasons, or as a matter of conscience, the Corsican conqueror confirmed the doctrine of full and free emancipation which the Revolution had introduced. ”

“ Sweden and France as guarantors of the peace acquired the right of interference in the affairs of the empire, and the former gained a voice in its councils. For many years Germany thus became the principal theatre of European diplomacy and war. But if the treaty of Westphalia pronounced the dissolution of the old order in the empire, it facilitated the growth of new powers in its component parts, especially Austria, Bavaria and Brandenburg. ”

“ The states had firmly established their “liberties,” the princes were now emancipated from imperial control, and it was evident that, unless by some means the house of Austria could re-establish its ascendancy, the eventual dissolution of the Empire must sooner or later follow. The peace of Westphalia thus marks for Europe, and in a special sense for Germany, the end of an important epoch. For Germany the changes introduced into its political life amounted to nothing less than a revolution, for there “the mainspring of the national life was broken.” ”

“ I call the Westphalian Adventurer a king, because since his day, history has given a kingly title to adventurers who had much less claim to it than Theodore von Neuhoff. A brave nation fighting for its liberty had given him the crown, while others were invested with it at the caprice of a mighty despot. The Westphalian adventurer, at any rate, was King of Corsica, just as fairly as, some fifty years later, a Corsican adventurer was King of Westphalia. ”

“ WESTPHALIA, TREATY OF, a collective name given to the two treaties concluded on the 24th of October 1648 by the empire with France at Münster and with Sweden and the Protestant estates of the empire at Osnabrück, by which the Thirty Years' War (q.v.) ”

“ Consequently lovers of economic independence and national unity began to range themselves on the side of religious toleration and freedom of conscience; and so not only theologians and religious leaders, but statesmen and politicians, educationists and literary men as well, regulated the movements of the times. And so the Peace of Westphalia settled not only the religious disputes, but solved also some of the political problems of the age and determined the boundaries of Spain, France, Prussia, Sweden, and Holland. ”

“ While passing judgment in secret, they often openly dealt blows as unexpected and terrible as they were fatal. Therefore, the most innocent and the most daring trembled at the very name of the Free Judges of the Terre-Rouge, an institution which adopted Westphalia as the special, or rather as the central, region of its authority; the Council of Ten exercised their power in Venice and the states of the republic ”

“ From the tenth century until the peace of Westphalia, these territories belonged to the German empire, being ruled by sovereign dukes and princes. In 1648 portions of both provinces were ceded to France, and a few years later, in times of peace, Strasburg was ruthlessly seized and appropriated by the arch-despot and militarist, Louis XIV. By the treaty of Ryswick, that of Westphalia was ratified, and thenceforward Alsace and Lorraine remained radically and passionately French. ”

“ It was not, indeed, till the settlement of Westphalia in 1648, after the Thirty Years’ War, that this territorial division of Christendom became stereotyped, but the process had been going on for a hundred years previously; in some states, as in England and Scotland, it had long been completed; in others, as in South Germany, Bohemia and Poland, it was defeated by the political and missionary efforts of the Jesuits and other agents of the counter-Reformation. ”

“ The Pope (at that time Innocent X.) declared the Treaty of Westphalia null and void, and issued a bull against its observance. The parties to the treaty, however, did not allow this bull to be published in Germany. The Catholics in all parts of the country (except Austria, Styria and the Tyrol) had suffered almost as severely as the Protestants, and would have welcomed the return of peace upon any terms which simply left their faith free. ”

“ Down to the present day the Peace of Westphalia—the title under which the work of the Congress of Münster and Osnabrück is generally known—is blessed by countless thousands, as having put an end to the most terrible series of carnage which has ever devastated Modern Europe. ”

“ The treaty of Westphalia which ended this war took comparatively little from the Habsburgs, though they ceded Alsace to France; but the Empire was greatly weakened, and its ruler was more than ever compelled to make his hereditary lands in the east of Europe the base of his authority, finding that he derived more strength from his position as archduke of Austria than from that of emperor. ”

“ The territorial power of the archbishops was already great when, in 1180, on the partition of the Saxon duchy, the duchy of Westphalia was assigned to them. In the 11th century they became ex-officio arch-chancellors of Italy (see Archchancellor) , and by the Golden Bull of 1356 they were finally placed among the electors (Kurfürsten) of the Empire. ”

“ Troubles arose (1622) also in the Prättigau through the attempts of the Habsburgers to force the inhabitants to give up Protestantism. Finally, after the emperor had formally recognized, by the treaty of Westphalia (1648) , the independence of the Swiss Confederation, the rights of the Habsburgers in the Prättigau and the Lower Engadine were bought up (1649 and 1652) . ”

“ What is now Westphalia was inhabited by the Sicambrians, a brave and warlike people: the Marsi and Ampsivarii were beyond them, towards the Hartz, and south of the latter the Ubii, once a powerful tribe, but in Cæsar's time weak and submissive. From the Weser to the Elbe, in the north, was the land of the Cherusci; south of them the equally fierce and indomitable Chatti, the ancestors of the modern Hessians; and still further south, along the head-waters of the river Main, the Marcomanni. ”

“ The name is indifferent; it is the power alone that is not so.
The German chancery, ever unchangeable in its stately formalities, has pretended down to our own times that no kings have a right to a higher title than serenity. At the celebrated treaty of Westphalia, in which France and Sweden dictated the law to the holy Roman Empire, the emperor's plenipotentiaries continually presented Latin memorials, in which "his most sacred imperial majesty" negotiated with the "most serene kings of France and Sweden" ”

“ Its culmination. Peace of Westphalia.The political combinations which had thus occurred as Protestantism rapidly acquired temporal power gave rise, as might have been anticipated, to wars. The peace of Augsburg, 1555, furnished the Reformers the substantial advantages they sought—freedom from Italian ecclesiastical authority, the right of all Germans to judge for themselves in matters of religion, equality in civil privileges for them and the Catholics. ”