Treaty of Westphalia

“ They are the most important happenings in the public life of man since the Treaty of Westphalia nearly 300 years ago. That treaty brought to an end religious war and legalized religious persecution, established freedom of thought and freedom of worship, and set the nations of modern EUrope on their feet, each to go its way, in the long process of nation building. They have conflicts and wars without number, culminating in the great war, the greatest that humanity has ever recorded, and, please God, the greatest that history will ever record. ”

“ A long period of peace had softened the minds, and deadened those hereditary hatreds that oppose the communication of feelings and the similarity of ideas between different nations. Europe, since the treaty of Westphalia, had become a republic of perfectly balanced powers, where the general equilibrium of power resulting from each formed a counterpoise to the other. ”

“ New principles of alliance.In this state of things, a new principle of alliances and wars is opened. The Treaty of Westphalia is, with France, an antiquated fable. The rights and liberties she was bound to maintain are now a system of wrong and tyranny which she is bound to destroy. Her good and ill dispositions are shown by the same means. To communicate peaceably the rights of men is the true mode of her showing her friendship; to force sovereigns to submit to those rights is her mode of hostility. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That the clause relating to religion, in the fourth article of the treaty of Ryswick, and contrary to that of Westphalia, should be annulled; and the state of religion in Germany restored to the tenour of the treaty of Westphalia. ”

“ The colossal labour of concluding this solemn, and ever memorable and sacred treaty, which is known by the name of the peace of Westphalia; the endless obstacles which were to be surmounted; the contending interests which it was necessary to reconcile; the concatenation of circumstances which must have co-operated to bring to a favourable termination this tedious, but precious and permanent work of policy; the difficulties which beset the very opening of the negociations, and maintaining them, when opened, during the ever-fluctuating vicissitudes of the war ”

“ Pore Bougeant’s, of the treaty of Westphalia, is an excellent one; those of Nimeguen, Ryswick, and Utrecht, are not so well written; but are, however, very useful. ‘L’Histoire des Traites de Paix’, in two volumes, folio, which I recommended to you some time ago, is a book that you should often consult, when you hear mention made of any treaty concluded in the seventeenth century.
Upon the whole, if you have a mind to be considerable, and to shine hereafter, you must labor hard now. No quickness of parts, no vivacity, will do long, or go far, without a solid fund of knowledge ”

“ 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) . ”

“ Denis and the Virgin, but by Sun-god Belleisle and the Chateauroux, under these sad new conditions! Which did not prosper as expected.
"Let the Holy German Reich take no offence," said this Army, eager to conciliate: "we come as friends merely; our intentions charitable, and that only. Bavarian Treaty of Nymphenburg (18th May last) binds us especially, this time; Treaty of Westphalia binds us sacredly at all times. Peaceable to you, nay brotherly, if only you will be peaceable!" Which the poor Reich, all but Austria and the Sea-Powers, strove what it could to believe. ”

“ 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" ”

“ 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.) ”

“ By thus making a certainty of the most important question of all history, no matter how difficult and delicate matters of greater or less importance may be, the League of Nations will have assured its success in advance as the greatest and most beneficent influence that the world has ever experienced, just as the peace of Westphalia was in its generation. ”

“ The Peace of Westphalia coincides with the beginning of great changes throughout Europe. The leading position on the Continent, which Germany had preserved from the treaty of Verdun until the accession of Charles V.—nearly 700 years—was lost beyond recovery: it had passed into the hands of France, where Louis XIV. was just commencing his long and brilliant reign. Spain, after a hundred years of supremacy, was in a rapid decline; the new Republic of Holland was mistress of the seas, and Sweden was the great power of Northern Europe. ”

“ The constitutional changes made by the treaty had far-reaching effects. The territorial sovereignty of the states of the empire was recognized. They were empowered to contract treaties with one another and with foreign powers, provided that the emperor and the empire suffered no prejudice. By this and other changes the princes of the empire became absolute sovereigns in their own dominions. The emperor and the diet were left with a mere shadow of their former power. The emperor could not pronounce the ban of the empire without the consent of the diet. ”

“ As religious wars are admitted to be the most intense, most idealistic, and most sacrificial of all wars, and therefore most difficult to stop, can it be ascertained just how the Thirty Years' War, culminating in the peace of Westphalia, brought about the end of all religious wars? This might suggest how all political wars may be made to cease. If the seventeenth century accomplished the more difficult task, the peace conference at Paris ought to succeed in the less difficult one. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The kingdom of Westphalia, which was formed by Napoleon for his brother Jerome after the Treaty of Tilsit, was an entirely new creation, not an enlargement of a former German state like Bavaria and Würtemberg. It consisted of the Electorate of Hesse-Cassel, the Prussian territories on the left of the Elbe, including the bishoprics of Paderborn and Hildesheim, the Old Mark of Brandenburg, etc., the Duchy of Brunswick, a portion of Hanover, and other scattered districts. ”

“ The Treaty of Utrecht changed the map of Europe as no previous treaty had done, not even that of Westphalia. Each of the chief combatants got its share of the Spanish booty over which they had been fighting. The Bourbon Philip V was permitted to retain Spain and its colonies on condition that the Spanish and French crowns should never rest on the same head. ”

“ The emperor negotiated an alliance offensive and defensive with the states-general, binding the contracting parties to co-operate with their whole power against France and her allies. It was stipulated that neither side should engage in a separate treaty on any pretence whatsoever; that no peace should be admitted until the treaties of Westphalia, Osnabruck, Minister, and the Pyrenees, should have been vindicated; that, in case of a negotiation for a peace or truce, the transactions on both sides should be communicated bona fide ”

“ 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. ”

“ In 1637 the agents of the emperor began to negotiate at Hamburg with Sweden, though the mediation of Christian IV., king of Denmark, was rejected by Sweden, and the discussions dragged on for years without result. In the meantime the new emperor Ferdinand III. proposed at the diet of Regensburg in 1640 to extend the peace of Prague to the whole empire, on the basis of an amnesty, from which, however, those Protestant estates who were still leagued with foreign powers were to be excluded. ”

“ In all cases, whether of great or small States, treaty rights or no treaty rights, the real test has almost always been the frigid raison d'état. The United States has been less affected by this restriction than the European Powers, and on many occasions has shown a really noble example of the purest altruism in international politics. [10] [6]
II. INTERVENTIONS ON GROUNDS OF HUMANITY.
Long before the Peace of Westphalia an attempt was made by the famous Jewess, Donna Gracia Nasi, to obtain protection for her persecuted co-religionists by diplomatic action, and it proved successful. ”

“ Church, toleration was secured for the three great religious communities of the empire. Within these limits the governments were bound to allow at least private worship, liberty of conscience and the right of emigration, but these measures of toleration were not extended to the hereditary lands of the house of Habsburg. The Protestant minority in the imperial diet was not to be coerced by the majority, but religious questions were to be decided by amicable agreement. Protestant administrators of church lands obtained seats in the diet. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Cannibalism existed for thousands of years, slavery also, yet both have been practically abandoned, and now there seems to be a chance to do away the last and greatest enemy of humanity—war. To stop an evil that has existed so long and whose roots reach back into the beginning of history will necessarily require colossal effort and great sacrifice. Such an effort has been successful only once in the history of the world. That was when the Westphalian peace treaty was signed, in 1648 after the Thirty Years' War. ”

“ Among the many schemes which the Imperial brain is supposed to be continually engendering, it is far from impossible that one may be the reconstruction of the kingdom of Westphalia, or at least of some Rhenish kingdom with the concurrence of Prussia, by concluding a bargain of partition with her. ”

“ 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. ”