Peace of Westphalia

The Peace of Westphalia is the name given to the treaties signed in 1648 at Osnabrück and Münster, two towns in Westphalia, that ended the Thirty Years' War in the Holy Roman Empire. Negotiated over several years by more than a hundred delegations, it redrew borders, settled religious disputes within the Empire, and confirmed the independence of the Dutch Republic and the Swiss Confederacy. It is often described as a founding moment of the modern system of sovereign states, although historians now question that view.

The Thirty Years' War began in 1618 as a conflict between Catholic and Protestant rulers within the Empire, but it grew into a European struggle drawing in Denmark, Sweden, France and Spain. By the 1640s it was largely a contest between the Habsburgs and their rivals, France and Sweden, fought across devastated German lands. Somewhere between 4.5 and 8 million people had died, from fighting, famine and disease. Preliminary agreements in 1641 set the framework for a general peace conference.

Talks took place in two neighbouring towns, declared neutral for the purpose. At Catholic Münster, the emperor negotiated with France, mediated by the papal nuncio and a Venetian envoy. At Osnabrück, where both Lutherans and Catholics lived, he negotiated with Sweden and the Protestant princes. Delegations arrived from 1643 onwards and never met in a single assembly; agreements were reached through years of separate bargaining, often stalled by events on the battlefield. Many German princes took part in their own right, a sign of how far power within the Empire had shifted away from the emperor.

The Peace of Münster between Spain and the Dutch Republic, signed in January 1648, ended the Eighty Years' War and recognised full Dutch independence. The two main treaties, between the emperor Ferdinand III and France and between the emperor and Sweden, were signed on 24 October 1648.

France gained sovereignty over the bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun, which it had occupied for nearly a century, and rights over much of Alsace. Sweden received Western Pomerania, Wismar and the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden, giving it control of the mouths of several great German rivers, along with a large cash payment for its troops. Brandenburg gained eastern Pomerania and several church territories, laying foundations for the later rise of Prussia. The Palatinate was partly restored to its Protestant ruler, with a new electoral title created for him, and the Swiss Confederacy was formally freed from imperial jurisdiction.

The settlement recognised Calvinism, alongside Catholicism and Lutheranism, as a lawful faith in the Empire. Church property and official religion were to follow the situation of 1 January 1624, and religious minorities gained some protection, including the right to worship privately. The princes and other states of the Empire were confirmed in wide powers to govern their own territories, including the right to make alliances, provided these were not directed against the emperor or the Empire. France and Sweden became guarantors of the settlement.

The peace did not end every conflict: France and Spain fought on until 1659. But it brought an end to the great wars of religion in Germany and left the Holy Roman Empire a loose association of largely self-governing states, while France under the young Louis XIV and Sweden emerged as leading powers. Later writers on international relations made Westphalia the symbol of a system of equal sovereign states that do not interfere in each other's internal affairs. Many historians argue that this reading owes more to nineteenth- and twentieth-century ideas than to the treaties themselves.

Our 1650 map shows Europe just after the settlement, with the independent Dutch Republic, Swedish possessions on the German coast, and the patchwork of the Holy Roman Empire.