What caused the Thirty Years War?

Question

What was this war and how did it begin?

Answer 1

kind of a war of independence

Princes and their subjects had to break away from the corrupt power and control by the Catholic church and the Pope of that era.  

The Defenestration of Prague and the start of the Thirty Years’ War

By 1816, the Czech nobility, which was unhappy with the situation in the Czech lands, brought charges against two governors in Prague and threw them out of their windows at Prague Castle. The resulting noble revolt lasted another two years and marked the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War, which devastated a large part of Europe.

The Czech nobility, clinging to the still-valid Letter of Majesty of Rudolf II , were angered that it was continuously being broken. For example, the emperor refused to reopen Protestant churches and forbade Protestants from congregating in Prague. In March 1618, the emperor put a stop to councils of the Czech estates.

In response, the Czech nobility sent their complaints to Vienna on March 23, 1618. After a secret meeting, members of the Czech nobility threw governors Wilhelm Slavata and Jaroslav Borzita Von Martinicz, along with their scribe Philip Fabricius of Rosenfeld, out of their office windows.

Although none of the men was injured by the fall, the event did have its consequences and led to the so-called uprising of the Czech estates, an initial part of the Thirty Years’ War. On May 25, 1618, a government of thirty directors was chosen to be responsible for the administration of the state. The nobility began to form an army. Emperor Mathias approached the uprising moderately, but his successor Ferdinand II was much more severe. The directorate did not acknowledge his taking of the throne in 1619 and appointed Frederick V, who stood up against the estates in the last battle of While Mountain in 1620.

Soon after, a systematic process of Catholicization and the establishment of absolutism began. Rudolf’s Letter of Majesty of 1609, which provided religious freedom, was annulled, and a re-established constitution was published leading to large confiscations of property.

The years from 1618 to 1629 are considered to be the first, so-called Bohemian phase of the Thirty Years’ War, which was to continue another three decades before its end in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia.