The Kingdom of Bohemia comprised not only the province of Bohemia, but also the provinces of Silesia, Lusatia, and the margravate of Moravia. The Hapsburgs welcomed Bohemia with open arms in large part because it had considerable wealth derived from agriculture and commerce. In so doing, they made Bohemia a constituent state of the Hapsburg dynasty. In the early 16th century, the Bohemians had elected a Hapsburg prince as their king largely for protection against the continuing menace posed by the Ottoman Turks. All things considered, the Roman Catholic Church still had a firm grip on southern Europe. Although Calvinism was practiced widely in the United Provinces, beyond that it existed in scattered enclaves throughout Europe.
The seeds of the conflict lay in the emergence of Lutheranism and Calvinism in the first half of the 16th century.Īt the beginning of the 17th century, Lutheranism flourished in northern Germany and Scandinavia. The first phase of the Thirty Years War involved the struggle for control of Bohemia between the Protestant Bohemians and the Catholic forces of deposed King Ferdinand of Bohemia, who belonged to the powerful Austrian branch of the House of Hapsburg. The time had arrived to send the Protestant heretics to Hell and restore the Catholic Church to its rightful place as the true religion of Christian Europe. They were proud of the army that advanced before them, and they had every expectation of victory that crisp autumn day. Johann Tserclaes, the Count of Tilly, watched the advance. To the left and right of the sea of foot soldiers, iron-breasted cuirassiers armed with razor-sharp sabers sat astride powerful war horses.įrom the relative safety of the rear of the army, Duke Maximilian I of Bavaria and Lt.
Musketeers armed with muzzle-loading muskets swarmed the front and sides of the tercios. In the center of the tercios were armor-plated pikemen carrying 15-foot, steel-tipped pikes that rose in chorus toward the heavens. The foot formations were the vaunted tercios, composed of hundreds of men in deep files and broad rows that seemed to swallow the tall grass and fallow fields through which they tramped. Men from Austria, Germany, Spain, Italy, Burgundy, and Flanders tramped toward the enemy. A sea of red, green, yellow, and gold banners representing the Catholic forces of southern Europe hovered over dense blocks of foot soldiers and horsemen. In the valley south of the hill known in Czech as Bitna Hora, a vast host assembled by the Austrian Hapsburgs advanced toward the ranks of the Protestant rebels blocking the path to Prague, the capital of Bohemia.
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