The Thirty Years' War was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history, lasting from 1618 to 1648. Fought primarily in Central Europe, an estimated 4.5 to 8 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of battle, famine, or disease, while parts of modern Germany reported population declines of over 50%. Related conflicts include the Eighty Years' War, the War of the Mantuan Succession, the Franco-Spanish War, the Torstenson War, the Dutch-Portuguese War and the Portuguese Restoration War.
Artois is a region of northern France. Its territory covers an area of about 4,000 km2 and it has a population of about one million. Its principal cities include Arras, Saint-Omer, Lens, and Béthune. It is the eponym for the term Artesian.
The Battle of Nördlingen took place on 6 September 1634 during the Thirty Years' War. A combined Imperial-Spanish force inflicted a crushing defeat on the Swedish-German army.
The Treaty of the Pyrenees was signed on 7 November 1659 and ended the Franco-Spanish War that had begun in 1635.
The Eighty Years' War or Dutch Revolt was an armed conflict in the Habsburg Netherlands between disparate groups of rebels and the Spanish government. The causes of the war included the Reformation, centralisation, excessive taxation, and the rights and privileges of the Dutch nobility and cities.
Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand was a Spanish and Portuguese prince, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, Cardinal of the Holy Catholic Church, Archduke of Austria, Archbishop of Toledo (1619–41), and a general during the Thirty Years' War, the Eighty Years' War, and the Franco-Spanish War. He is largely considered to be the best Spanish general of the time with some contemporary sources claiming him to be the last great general of the Spanish Empire. He is as well, one of few generals to be undefeated on the battlefield.
The County of Artois was a historic province of the Kingdom of France, held by the Dukes of Burgundy from 1384 until 1477/82, and a state of the Holy Roman Empire from 1493 until 1659.
The Peace of Prague, signed on 30 May 1635, ended Saxony's participation in the Thirty Years War. Other German princes subsequently joined the treaty and although the Thirty Years War continued, it is generally agreed Prague ended it as a war of religion within the Holy Roman Empire. Thereafter, the conflict was largely driven by foreign powers, including Spain, Sweden, and France.
The Burgundian Circle was an Imperial Circle of the Holy Roman Empire created in 1512 and significantly enlarged in 1548. In addition to the Free County of Burgundy, the Burgundian Circle roughly covered the Low Countries, i.e., the areas now known as the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg and adjacent parts in the French administrative region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais. For most of its history, its lands were coterminous with the holdings of the Spanish Habsburgs in the Empire.
The Reapers' War, also known as the Catalan Revolt, was a conflict that affected the Principality of Catalonia between the years of 1640 and 1659. It had an enduring effect in the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659), which ceded the County of Roussillon and the northern half of the County of Cerdanya to France, splitting these northern Catalan territories off from the Principality of Catalonia and the Crown of Aragon, and thereby receding the borders of Spain to the Pyrenees.
The War of the Mantuan Succession (1628–1631) was a conflict related to the Thirty Years' War and was caused by the death in December 1627 of Vincenzo II, the last male heir in the direct line of the House of Gonzaga and the ruler of the duchies of Mantua and Montferrat. Those territories were key to control of the Spanish Road, an overland route that allowed Habsburg Spain to move recruits and supplies from Italy to their army in Flanders. The result was a proxy war between France, which supported the French-born Duke of Nevers, and Spain, which backed a distant cousin, the Duke of Guastalla.
The Battle of Honnecourt took place on 26 May 1642, during the 1635 to 1659 Franco-Spanish War. A Spanish army led by Francisco de Melo defeated and largely destroyed a French force under the Comte de Guiche.
François de Blanchefort de Créquy, later Marquis de Marines, 2 October 1629 to 3 February 1687, was a 17th-century French noble and soldier, who served in the wars of Louis XIV of France.
The Franco-Spanish War was fought from 1635 to 1659 between France and Spain, each supported by various allies at different points. The first phase, beginning in May 1635 and ending with the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, is considered a related conflict of the Thirty Years' War. The second phase continued until 1659, when France and Spain agreed to peace terms in the Treaty of the Pyrenees.
The Piedmontese Civil War, also known as the Savoyard Civil War, was a conflict for control of the Savoyard state from 1639 to 1642. Although not formally part of the 1635 to 1659 Franco-Spanish War, Savoy's strategic importance drew in both Habsburg Spain, which controlled the nearby Duchy of Milan, and France.
The Battle of Les Avins took place on 20 May 1635, outside the town of Les Avins, near Huy in modern Belgium, then part of the Bishopric of Liège. It was the first major engagement of the 1635 to 1659 Franco-Spanish War, a connected conflict of the Thirty Years' War.
The siege of Doullens, also known as the Spanish capture of Doullens or the Storming of Doullens, took place between 14 and 31 July 1595, as part of the Franco-Spanish War (1595-1598), in the context of the French Wars of Religion. After ten days of siege, on 24 July, the combined forces of Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, Duke of Bouillon, André de Brancas, Amiral de Villars, and François d'Orléans-Longueville, tried to relieve the city, but were severely defeated by the Spanish forces led by Don Pedro Henríquez de Acevedo, Count of Fuentes, and Don Carlos Coloma. Villars was taken prisoner and executed, and the Duke of Bouillon fled to Amiens with the rest of the French army. Finally, a few days after, on 31 July, the Spanish troops stormed Doullens. The Spaniards killed everybody in the city, military and civilians alike, shouting "Remember Ham"(Spanish: "Recordad Ham"), in retaliation for the massacre against the Spanish garrison of Ham by the French and Protestant soldiers under Bouillon's orders.
The 1644 siege of Gravelines took place during the 1635 to 1659 Franco-Spanish War. A French army captured the port of Gravelines, then in the Spanish Netherlands, now the Pas-de-Calais region of northern France.
The Treaty of Compiègne (1635), signed on 30 April 1635, was a mutual defence alliance between the Kingdom of France and Sweden.
The years 1579–1588 constituted a phase of the Eighty Years' War between the Spanish Empire and the United Provinces in revolt after most of them concluded the Union of Utrecht on 23 January 1579, and proceeded to carve the independent Dutch Republic out of the Habsburg Netherlands. It followed the 1576–1579 period, in which a temporary alliance of 16 out of the Seventeen Provinces' States–General established the Pacification of Ghent as a joint Catholic–Protestant rebellion against the Spanish government, but internal conflicts as well as military and diplomatic successes of the Spanish Governors-General Don Juan of Austria and Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma split them apart, finally leading the Malcontent County of Artois, County of Hainaut and city of Douai to sign the Union of Arras on 6 January 1579, reverting to Catholicism and loyalty to the Spanish crown. In response, most of the remaining rebel provinces and cities would forge or later accede to the Union of Utrecht, a closer military alliance treaty that would go on to become the most important fundamental law of the United Provinces, who on 26 July 1581 proclaimed the Act of Abjuration, a de facto declaration of independence from Spain. While the nascent polity was struggling to find a new sovereign head of state, including Matthias of Austria, Francis of Anjou, William "the Silent" of Orange and Robert of Leicester, before giving up and deciding to become a republic by passing the Deduction of Vrancken on 12 April 1588, the Duke of Parma continued his successful military and diplomatic offensive, bringing ever more provinces and cities in the southern, eastern and northeastern parts of the Netherlands back into royalist hands. Parma's reconquests more or less stalled after the Fall of Antwerp (1585), and finally came to an end with the failure of the Spanish Armada and Philip II ordered him to intervene in the French Wars of Religion to prevent the Succession of Henry IV and France becoming a Protestant kingdom. These developments gave rise to a new phase, the Ten Years (1588–1598), that saw significant conquests by the Dutch States Army under the leadership of stadtholders Maurice of Nassau and William Louis of Nassau-Dillenburg, and the Dutch Republic's rise as a commercial great power.
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