Hoppe and the Thirty Years' War

Economics Political Theory
1

Hoppe points out in DTGTF that monarchical wars tend to be less of a bloodshed than democratic wars for various reasons, including the lack of ideology monarchical wars tend to have.

While many examples of this principle can be found, what about the Thirty Years’ War? It must have been the most disastrous war of the monarchical age and doesn’t fit at all to Hoppe’s description of royal warfare. Religious ideology, nonvoluntary civilian involvement and arbitrary destruction were all to be found.

If someone has special insights into the topic and would like to elaborate on Hoppe’s idea in contrast to said war, I’d be very thankful.

2

It wasn’t really all that ideological, if you look closer; it had to do with determining who would hold power in Germany. France, a Catholic power, intervened to stop Habsburg dominance in the region despite the fact that the Habsburgs too were Catholic. As for the destruction, frankly, all wars involve a degree of aggression against innocents, and so it isn’t surprising considering the consolidation of the state that had preceded the war that, with a great deal more power, kings would wreak more havoc than they could have done under the feudal system in which they were largely impotent. Even so, the destruction was not necessarily intentional, owing more to the violent tendencies of soldiers than to the princes’ desires; Magdeburg, after all, was accidental in that it occurred because the officers were unable to keep their enraged soldiers in line. However, even afterwards there was a decline in destruction in war (up until the Napoleonic wars, that is, which really can’t be considered monarchical, and afterwards up until World War I.) Had it been egalitarian democracies, which regularly destroy just to destroy, rather than monarchies fighting the Thirty Years War, the destruction would have been far more pronounced.

3

Without going much more into detail, the 30 year war was kind of a watershed, as after the treaty of Munster had ended it, the time of absolutism began. Even though wars during the absolutism where not even close to what democracies made of war, it was sure a new quality of warefare. One of the reasons, i suppose, was the schisma in the catholic church (protestantism), which led to a nationalization of churches. Remember that the catholic church was an antipode of the medieval Emperors and the conflict between secular powers and the curch kept them too busy to think about changes in society too much. That changed when Luther seperated christianity into the catholic and protestant church. The protestant church got closely tied in with kings and the protestant christians lacked from there on the internationality of the catholic church. The international catholic church was an unintended means to have the kings and Emporers stick with feudalism rather than focus on changes in the society, because they had to struggle with the church over the wealth, whereas in the now protestant countries church and state pulled at the same end of the rope together (like in any other despotic system outside western europe as well).

Now, feudalism is based on contracts. A king had no more right than any of his barons or knights outside his personal realm. Kings, barons, knights, they all where sovereign inside their realms. By contract, a baron had the duty to fight for the king, usually about one or two months a year, and to bring a certain amount of knights into the battle. Knights had a contract with the barons to fight for them, usually a little longer than the barons had to provide arms for the king, as there had to be some time left outside of the kings wars for skirmishes between the barons itself.

Warfare changed dramatically during and after the 30 years war, as kings tore off the feudal system and managed to made themselve the only source of law inside their realm (later called nation). This led to standing armies, which in turn meant higher taxation, and a new dimension on the scale of wars.

Have a great time

4

I’d like to add in that Catholicism ended up in the same boat as Protestantism, since the Church ended up as a supplicant to maintain itself in monarchies such as Spain, France and Austria, who in turn used their Catholicism to centralize power against rival religions (Counter-reformation), whereas previously the Church itself held far more sway since the roles were largely reversed.

5

The Thirty Years War wasn’t a monarchical war in the sense that it didn’t involve two monarchies disputing a territory. Although there were monarchies in it, it was purely a revolutionary war that attempted to overthrow the political and social order of the time, and largely did.

6

I agree

7

I agree it was a very different war. It does not really matter if you look at the 30 years war as the first war of absolutism or as a mix. My point is that after the treaty of Munster a new social order came into life (though parts of it where present before but did not really impact society at first) with absolutism and with it a huge change of the social order toward militarism and centralisation.

8

Ah, so Hoppe’s remarks on monarchical governance only applied to the feudal era, not to modern forms of monarchy like absolutism, constitutional monarchy or parliamentary monarchy?

What still bugs me, however, is the connection between Luther’s schism and the resulting social changes. If it’s true that the Catholic church played a major role in limiting the king’s power and ability, doesn’t that invalidate Hoppe’s theory as it was not monarchy, but simply a power dispute which kept monarchs from engaging in further exploitation?

9

No, it applies to all forms of private ownership of government.

10

I think that the question is how monarchy is defined. If the US would declare G.W. Bush King George the Great, and change nothing else, would the US be a monarchy now, and if so would that somehow magically chance the social environment? I doubt it [:)]

My understandding is, though i have not read intensely Hoppes ideas on that, but concluding from his overall point of view I think I understand, he refers to the feudal monarchical system, where the king was only a sovereign over his own estates in terms of property and had some extra rights (by contract) to call the barons and dukes in for war (only for a specific period of time a year). Other forms of government, even if the head would be called a king, Hoppe would not mix mith monarchy but would call it by the proper name like despotism, oligrchic etc. Yet, again this is just an educadet(more or less) guess.

The fact that the catholic church had such a huge influence in the power struggle is primarily based on the double allegiance of the peoples to King and church. Yet, the church was an international body, i.e. the catholic church was equally present in france, italy, in western europe for short. So the people in each of these countries where first of all christians, not italian, french etc. Even more a thing like france or italy didn’t even exist. People lieved in areas that where ruled by a knight, a duke or a baron, not by a national government. They had a double allegiance. One to their sovereign (the knight, baron or duke) one to the church, which had a universal sovereignity in issues of faith (which was much more important than today) and had a lot of folks (priests, monks, bishops) spread out all over the baronies and kingdoms in western europe. Means they where pretty present in everydays life of the people, much more than the secular sovereign was. If some prince or knight wanted to raise taxes, which they always wanted, one could just leave the realm of that prince and go somewhere else, as there where all christians and there was the same church, with the same priests, monks and ritual. In short, people where relativly free to search a better place, very different from what was the fact in despotic countries, where the peoples where enslaved as bond slaves like in russia.

So the relativ freedom in europe during the feudal era was higher than anywhere else in the world we know about, and for sure higher than in the following centuries when absolutism centralized all power and souvereignity into the hand of the absolute monarch and his bureaucrats.

An interesting side note here is, that the rise of absolutism goes along with the rise of the court. Kings wanted to have their aristocracy close to them rather than sitting in their baronies and challenge the kings rule. So the court system emerged, and, because the now useless barons and dukes needed something in exchange for feudal skirmishes and occasional wars, the whole system of good manners and courteous behavior (and the intrigues at the court as well) arose.