audience as the leader of the Catholic campaign against Protestant countries of central Europe. The Emperor deposed the Protestant daughter and son-in-law of King James. The King sent three diplomatic missions to Vienna in 1619, in 1620 and in 1623. John Jowett has recently discovered an exact source for Lucio's remarks about dukes and the King of Hungary in a printed English newsletter published on 6 October 1621. The printed news sheets reported that the King of Hungary was near Vienna. This news and the possibility of war were debated in the English Parliament. The war that took place - the Thirty Years War, involved a greater part of Europe and threatened England. It is commonly divided in periods:В The Bohemian Phase, The Palatinate Phase, The Danish Phase, The Swedish Phase and The French Phase of the Thirty Years War and it officially ends on 24 October, 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia. Though pre-eminently a German war, it was also of great importance for the history of the whole of Europe, not only because nearly all the countries of Western Europe took part in it, but also on account of its connection with the other great European wars of the same period and on account of its final results. The series of conflicts, military and political, which make up the Thirty Years War are highly complex.
The Collected Works of Thomas Middleton and its companion volume Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture provide an essential guide to matters at the heart of the English literary world in the early seventeenth century, from authorship and collaboration to censorship, civic pageantry, and the London book trade.-James Shapiro.
Background to the Thirty Years War
After the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 Lutheranism had been given official recognition in the Holy Roman Empire. Lands of the Roman Church which had previously been taken by secular powers belonged again to the Church. German rulers could also impose their religion on their subjects. However, the Peace agreement did not help to settle the conflict in Germany. A number of rulers became Calvinists and were, thus, outside the treaty. Protestants continued to take over Catholic properties, particularly in North Germany. The Catholics commanded a majority in most of the organs of government; the Protestants came to distrust these bodies and the machinery of government began to break down. The Catholics and Protestants formed armed alliances to preserve their rights: the Catholic League under Maximilian I of Bavaria and the Protestant Union under Elector Frederick V of the Palatinate (James's son-in-law). p> At the beginning of the seventeenth century the regions ruled by the German Habsburgs included Upper and Lower Austria, Bohemia together with Moravia and Silesia, the lesser part of Hungary which had not been conquered by the Turks, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, the Tyrol, and the provinces bordering on Germany. This territory, however, was divided among three branches of the family, the main line, the Styrian, and that of Tyrol-Vorarlberg. Although the main line of the German Habsburgs held the larger part of these landed possessions yet its territories did not form a compact whole, but were only a number of loosely connected countries, each having its own provincial estates, which were largely composed of nobles. Having been constantly in opposition to the dynasty, the nobles desired religious freedom, that is the right to become Protestant and to introduce Protestantism into their domains. The struggle of the nobility against the dynasty reached its height during the last decade of the reign of Rudolph II (1576-1612). Even at that time the nobility maintained relations with the active Protestant party in the empire. In 1604 the Hungarian nobles revolted with the aid of the ruler of Transylvania, and in 1607 they rebelled again and became the allies of the Turks. On 25 June, 1608, Rudolph was obliged to transfer the government of Hungary, Austria, and Moravia to his more compliant brother Matthias; he did not, however, give up his rights as King of Bohemia, and in 1609 was able to pacify an outbreak of the Bohemian nobility only by granting the Imperial Charter ( Majestätsbrief ) which gave religious liberty not only to the nobles and their dependents in Bohemia but also to those living on the crown lands. This concession greatly strengthened the power of the nobles. br/>
The Bohemian Phase
The Bohemian Phase of the war is obviously more relevant to the present research as it involves the historical figures implicitly mentioned in the play. This phase encompassed the years 1618 through 1621. Official cause of this conflict was the Defenestration act. p> The religious situation in Bohemia was complex: the Habsburg rulers were staunch defenders of the Roman Church. The Bohemian population was divided among ...
