Op woensdag 21 maart 2001 16:07 schreef Flamez het volgende:
voor de gene die twijfelen waarom ik dit topic heb gestart
ik weet ook wel dat het fout is om te generaliseren en dan met de vinger te wijzen
zie het als ''een koekkie van eigen deeg''
ik wou effe zien hoe de hardste schreeuwers tegen theisme nu in ''denial'' zouden gaan als de rollen omgedraait werden
en ze doen het weer prachtig waaahahahahaha
[..]
over Fout gesproken
[..]
da''s toch een poeppie minder
dit zijn schattingen gedaan door verschillende onderzoekers zoals je ziet komen ze niet eens boven de 8 miljoen uit laat staan 50 miljoen
[..]
[..]
vergelijk dat eens met de cijfers van Stalin , Mao en Pol Pot en vergelijk de aantal jaren die er voor nodig waren
bijkomend dat de meeste slachtoffers van hun Democide zijn omgekomen door executies en uithongering
The dear old Holy Roman Empire, How does it stay together?"
asked the tavern drinkers in Goethe''s Faust--and the answer is no easier to find today than in the late 18th, or early
17th, century. The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation was a land of many polities. In the empire there were
some 1,000 separate, semiautonomous political units, many of them very small--such as the Imperial Knights, direct
vassals of the emperor and particularly numerous in the southwest, who might each own only part of one village--and
others comparable in size with smaller independent states elsewhere, such as Scotland or the Dutch Republic. At the
top came the lands of the Austrian Habsburgs, covering the elective kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary, as well as
Austria, the Tyrol, and Alsace, with about 8,000,000 inhabitants; next came electoral Saxony, Brandenburg, and
Bavaria, with more than 1,000,000 subjects each; and then the Palatinate, Hesse, Trier, and Württemberg, with about
500,000 each.
These were large polities, indeed, but they were weakened by three factors. First, they did not accept primogeniture:
Hesse had been divided into four portions at the death of Landgrave Philip the Magnanimous, Luther''s patron, in
1567; the lands of the Austrian Habsburgs were partitioned in 1564 and again in 1576. Second, many of the states
were geographically fragmented: thus the Palatinate was divided into an Upper County, adjoining the borders of both
Bohemia and Bavaria, and a Lower County, on the middle Rhine. These factors had, in the course of time, created in
Germany a balance of power between the states. The territorial strength of the Habsburgs may have brought them a
monopoly of the imperial title from 1438 onward, but they could do no more: the other princes, when threatened,
were able to form alliances whose military strength was equal to that of the emperor himself. However, the third
weakness--the religious upheaval of the 16th century--changed all that: princes who had formerly stood together were
now divided by religion. Swabia, for example, more or less equal in area to modern Switzerland, included 68 secular
and 40 spiritual princes and also 32 imperial free cities. By 1618 more than half of these rulers and almost exactly
half of the population were Catholic; the rest were Protestant. Neither bloc was prepared to let the other mobilize an
army. Similar paralysis was to be found in most other regions: the Reformation and Counter-Reformation had
separated Germany into hostile but evenly balanced confessional camps.
The Religious Peace of Augsburg in 1555 had put an end to 30 years of sporadic confessional warfare in Germany
between Catholics and Lutherans by creating a layered structure of legal securities for the people of the empire. At
the top was the right (known as cuius regio, eius religio) of every secular ruler, from the seven electors down to the
imperial knights, to dictate whether their subjects'' religion was to be Lutheran or Catholic (the only officially
permitted creeds). The only exceptions to this rule were the imperial free cities, where both Lutherans and Catholics
were to enjoy freedom of worship, and the Catholic ecclesiastical states, where bishops and abbots who wished to
become Lutherans were obliged to resign first. The latter provision, known as the reservatum ecclesiasticum, gave
rise to a war in 1583-88 when the archbishop of Cologne declared himself a Protestant but refused to resign: in the
end a coalition of Catholic princes, led by the duke of Bavaria, forced him out.
This "War of Cologne" was a turning point in the religious history of Germany. Until then, the Catholics had been
on the defensive, losing ground steadily to the Protestants. Even the decrees of the Council of Trent, which animated
Catholics elsewhere, failed to strengthen the position of the Roman church in Germany. After the successful struggle
to retain Cologne, however, Catholic princes began to enforce the cuius regio principle with rigour. In Bavaria, as
well as in Würzburg, Bamberg, and other ecclesiastical states, Protestants were given the choice of either conversion
or exile. Most of those affected were adherents of the Lutheran church, already weakened by defections to Calvinism,
a new creed that had scarcely a German adherent at the time of the Religious Peace of Augsburg. The rulers of the
Palatinate (1560), Nassau (1578), Hesse-Kassel (1603), and Brandenburg (1613) all abandoned Lutheranism for the
new confession, as did many lesser rulers and several towns. Small wonder that the Lutherans came to detest the
Calvinists even more than they loathed the Catholics.
These religious divisions created a complex confessional pattern in Germany. By the first decade of the 17th century,
the Catholics were firmly entrenched south of the Danube and the Lutherans northeast of the Elbe; but the areas in
between were a patchwork quilt of Calvinist, Lutheran, and Catholic, and in some places one could find all three. One
such was Donauwörth, an independent city just across the Danube from Bavaria, obliged (by the Peace of Augsburg)
to tolerate both Catholics and Protestants. But for years the Catholic minority had not been permitted full rights of
public worship. When in 1606 the priests tried to hold a procession through the streets, they were beaten and their
relics and banners were desecrated. Shortly afterward, an Italian Capuchin, Fray Lorenzo da Brindisi, later canonized,
arrived in the city and was himself mobbed by a Lutheran crowd chanting "Capuchin, Capuchin, scum, scum." He
heard from the local clergy of their plight and promised to find redress. Within a year, Fray Lorenzo had secured
promises of aid from Duke Maximilian of Bavaria and Emperor Rudolf II. When the Lutheran magistrates of
Donauwörth flatly refused to permit their Catholic subjects freedom of worship, the Bavarians marched into the city
and restored Catholic worship by force (December 1607). Maximilian''s men also banned Protestant worship and set
up an occupation government that eventually transferred the city to direct Bavarian rule.
These dramatic events thoroughly alarmed Protestants elsewhere in Germany. Was this, they wondered, the first step
in a new Catholic offensive against heresy? Elector Frederick IV of the Palatinate took the lead. On May 14, 1608, he
formed the Evangelical, or Protestant, Union, an association to last for 10 years, for self-defense. At first, membership
remained restricted to Germany, although the elector''s leading adviser, Christian of Anhalt, wished to extend it, but
before long a new crisis rocked the empire and turned the German union into a Protestant International.
The new crisis began with the death of John William, the childless duke of Cleves-Jülich, in March 1609. His
duchies, occupying a strategic position in the Lower Rhineland, had both Protestant and Catholic subjects, but both of
the main claimants to the inheritance were Protestants; under the cuius regio principle, their succession would lead
to the expulsion of the Catholics. The emperor therefore refused to recognize the Protestant princes'' claim. Since
both were members of the Union, they solicited, and received, promises of military aid from their colleagues; they
also received, via Christian of Anhalt, similar promises from the kings of France and England. This sudden accretion
in Protestant strength caused the German Catholics to take countermeasures: a Catholic League was formed between
Duke Maximilian of Bavaria and his neighbours on July 10, 1609, soon to be joined by the ecclesiastical rulers of the
Rhineland and receiving support from Spain and the Papacy. Again, reinforcement for one side provoked
countermeasures. The Union leaders signed a defensive treaty with England in 1612 (cemented by the marriage of
the Union''s director, the young Frederick V of the Palatine, to the king of England''s daughter) and with the Dutch
Republic in 1613.
At first sight, this resembles the pyramid of alliances, patiently constructed by the statesmen of Europe 300 years
later, which plunged the continent into World War I. But whereas the motive of diplomats before 1914 was fear of
political domination, before 1618 it was fear of religious extirpation. The Union members were convinced of the
existence of a Catholic conspiracy aimed at rooting out all traces of Protestantism from the empire. This view was
shared by the Union''s foreign supporters. At the time of the Cleves-Jülich succession crisis, Sir Ralph Winwood, an
English diplomat at the heart of affairs, wrote to his masters that, although "the issue of this whole business, if
slightly considered, may seem trivial and ordinary," in reality its outcome would "uphold or cast down the greatness
of the house of Austria and the church of Rome in these quarters." Such fears were probably unjustified at this time.
In 1609 the unity of purpose between pope and emperor was in fact far from perfect, and the last thing Maximilian of
Bavaria wished to see was Habsburg participation in the League: rather than suffer it, in 1614 he formed a separate
association of his own and in 1616 he resigned from the League altogether. This reduction in the Catholic threat was
enough to produce reciprocal moves among the Protestants. Although there was renewed fighting in 1614 over
Cleves-Jülich, the members of the Protestant Union had abandoned their militant stance by 1618, when the treaty of
alliance came up for renewal. They declared that they would no longer become involved in the territorial wrangles of
individual members, and they resolved to prolong their association for only three years more.
Although, to some extent, war came to Germany after 1618 because of the existence of these militant confessional
alliances, the continuity must not be exaggerated. Both Union and League were the products of fear; but the grounds
for fear seemed to be receding. The English ambassador in Turin, Isaac Wake, was sanguine: "The gates of Janus
have been shut," he exulted in late 1617, promising "calm and Halcyonian days not only unto the inhabitants of this
province of Italye, but to the greatest part of Christendome." That Wake was so soon proved wrong was due largely
to events in the lands of the Austrian Habsburgs over the winter of 1617-18.
The crisis in the Habsburg lands
While the Cleves-Jülich crisis held the attention of western Europe in 1609, the eyes of observers farther east were on
Prague, the capital of Bohemia. That elective kingdom (which also included Silesia, Lusatia, and Moravia), together
with Hungary, had come to the Habsburg family in 1526. At first they were ruled jointly with Austria by Ferdinand I
(brother of Emperor Charles V), but after his death in 1564 the inheritance was divided into three portions: Alsace
and Tyrol (known as "Further Austria") went to one of his younger sons; Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola (known as
"Inner Austria") went to a second; only the remainder was left for his successor as emperor, Maximilian II.
By 1609 fragmentation had advanced even further: Maximilian''s eldest son, Rudolf II (emperor, 1576-1611), ruled
only Bohemia; all the rest of his father''s territories had been acquired, the previous year, by a younger son, Matthias.
The new ruler had come to power not through strength or talent, however, but by the exploitation of the religious
divisions of his subjects. During the 1570s the Protestants of Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary had used their strength
of numbers and control of local representative assemblies to force the Habsburgs to grant freedom of worship to
their Protestant subjects. This was clearly against the cuius regio principle, and everyone knew it. In 1599 the ruler
of Inner Austria, Archduke Ferdinand, began a campaign of forcible re-Catholicization among his subjects, which
proved entirely successful. But, when Rudolf II launched the same policy in Hungary shortly afterward, there was a
revolt, and the rebels offered the Hungarian crown to Matthias in return for guarantees of toleration. The Bohemians
decided to exploit Rudolf''s temporary embarrassment by pressing him to grant similarly far-reaching concessions to
the non-Catholic majority of that kingdom. The "Letter of Majesty" (Majestätsbrief) signed by Rudolf on July 9,
1609, granted full toleration to Protestants and created a standing committee of the Estates, known as "the
Defensors," to ensure that the settlement would be respected.
Rudolf II--a recluse who hid in a world of fantasy and alchemy in his Hradcany palace above Prague, a manic
depressive who tried to take his own life on at least one occasion--proved to be incapable of keeping to the same
policy for long. In 1611 he tried to revoke the Letter of Majesty and to depose the Defensors by sending a small
Habsburg army into Prague, but a force of superior strength was mobilized against the invaders and the Estates
resolved to depose Rudolf and offer their crown to Matthias. The emperor, broken in mind and body, died in January
1612. All his territories were then ruled by his brother, who also succeeded him as Holy Roman emperor later in the
year. The alliance with the Protestant Estates that brought about Matthias''s elevation, however, did not long continue
once he was in power. The new ruler sought to undo the concessions he had made, and he looked for support to his
closest Habsburg relatives: his brother Albert, ruler of the Spanish Netherlands; his cousin Ferdinand, ruler of Inner
Austria; and his nephew Philip III, king of Spain. All three, however, turned him down.
Albert had in 1609 succeeded in bringing the war between Spain and the Dutch Republic to a temporary close with
the Twelve Years'' Truce. The last thing he wanted was to involve his ravaged country in supplying men and money to
Vienna, perhaps provoking countermeasures from Protestants nearer home. Archduke Ferdinand, although willing to
aid Matthias to uphold his authority (not least because he regarded himself as heir presumptive to the childless
Matthias), was prevented from doing so by the outbreak of war between his Croatian subjects and the neighbouring
republic of Venice (the Uskok War, 1615-18). Philip of Spain was also involved in war: in 1613-15 and 1616-17,
Spanish forces in Lombardy fought the troops of the duke of Savoy over the succession to the childless duke of
Mantua. Spain could therefore aid neither Matthias nor Ferdinand.
In 1617, however, papal diplomats secured a temporary settlement of the Mantuan question, and Spanish troops
hastened to the aid of Ferdinand. Before long, Venice made overtures for peace, and the archduke was able to leave
his capital at Graz in order to join Matthias. The emperor, old and infirm, was anxious to establish Ferdinand as his
heir, and, in the autumn of 1617, the Estates of both Bohemia and Hungary were persuaded to recognize the archduke
unconditionally as king-designate. On the strength of this, Ferdinand proceeded over the winter of 1617-18 to halt
the concessions being made to Protestants. He created a council of regency for Bohemia that was overwhelmingly
Catholic, and it soon began to censor works printed in Prague and to prevent non-Catholics from holding government
office. More inflammatory still, the regents ordered Protestant worship to stop in towns on church lands (which they
claimed were not included in the Letter of Majesty).
The Defensors created by the Letter of Majesty expressed strong objection to these measures and summoned the
Estates of the realm to meet in May 1618. When the regents declared the meeting illegal, the Estates invaded the
council chamber and threw two Catholic regents, together with their secretary, from the window. Next, a provisional
government (known as the Directors) was created and a small army was raised.
Apart from the famous "defenestration," the events in Prague in May 1618 were, superficially, little different from
those in 1609 and 1611. Yet no 30-year struggle arose from those earlier crises. The crucial difference lay in the
involvement of foreign powers: in 1609 and 1611 the Habsburgs, represented by Rudolf and Matthias, had given in
to their subjects'' demands; in 1618, led by Ferdinand, they did not. At first his defiant stance achieved nothing, for the
army of the rebels expelled loyal troops from almost every part of the kingdom while their diplomats secured
declarations of support from Silesia, Lusatia, and Upper Austria almost at once and from Moravia and Lower Austria
shortly afterward. In May 1619 the rebel army even laid siege to Ferdinand in Vienna. Within weeks, however, they
were forced to withdraw because a major Spanish army, partly financed by the pope, invaded Bohemia.
The appearance of Spanish troops and papal gold in eastern Europe immediately reawakened the fears of the
Protestant rulers of the empire. To the government of Philip III, led by the former ambassador in Vienna, Don
Balthasar de Zúñiga, the choice had seemed clear: "Your Majesty should consider," wrote one minister, "which will
be of the greater service to you: the loss of these provinces [to the house of Habsburg], or the dispatch of an army of
15 to 20 thousand men to settle the matter." Seen in these terms, Spain could scarcely avoid military intervention in
favour of Ferdinand; but to Protestant observers the logic of Spanish intervention seemed aggressive rather than
defensive. Dudley Carleton, the English ambassador to the Dutch Republic, observed that the new emperor "flatters
himself with prophesies of extirpating the Reformed religion and restoring the Roman church to the ancient
greatness" and accurately predicted that, if the Protestant cause were to be "neglected and by consequence
suppressed, the Protestant princes adjoining [Bohemia] are like to bear the burden of a victorious army."
This same argument carried weight with the director of the Protestant Union, Frederick V of the Palatinate, parts of
whose territories adjoined Bohemia. So, when in the summer of 1619 the Bohemians deposed Ferdinand and offered
the crown to Frederick, he was favourably disposed. Some of the elector''s advisers favoured rejecting this offer, since
"acceptance would surely begin a general religious war"; but others pointed out that such a war was inevitable
anyway when the Twelve Years'' Truce between Spain and the Dutch Republic expired in April 1621 and argued that
allowing the Bohemian cause to fail would merely ensure that the conflict in the Netherlands would be resolved in
Spain''s favour later, making a concerted Habsburg attack on the Protestants of the empire both ineluctable and
irresistible.
Frederick accepted the Bohemian crown and in so doing rekindled the worst fears of the German Catholics. The
Catholic League was re-created, and in December 1619 its leaders authorized the levy of an army of 25,000 men to be
used as Maximilian of Bavaria thought fit. At the same time, Philip III and Archduke Albert each promised to send a
new army into Germany to assist Ferdinand (who had succeeded the late Matthias as Holy Roman emperor). The
crisis was now apparent, and, as the Palatine diplomat Count John Albert Solms warned his master,
If it is true that the Bohemians are about to depose Ferdinand and elect another king, let everyone
prepare at once for a war lasting twenty, thirty or forty years. The Spaniards and the House of
Austria will deploy all their worldly goods to recover Bohemia.
The underlying cause for the outbreak of a war that would last 30 years was thus the pathological fear of a Catholic
conspiracy among the Protestants and the equally entrenched suspicion of a Protestant conspiracy among the
Catholics. As a Bohemian noblewoman, Polyxena Lobkovic, perceptively observed from the vantage point of Prague:
"Things are now swiftly coming to the pass where either the papists will settle their score with the Protestants, or the
Protestants with the papists."
En nu even opnieuw tellen Flamez.
) maar denk niet dat ik anders met emoties om ga dan de gemiddelde theïst.
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Dat hij zelf kwaad over werd kan ik nog wel een beetje begrijpen. Maar dat hij voor zijn wraak goddelijke hulp aanriep en ook nog kreeg vind ik wat ver gaan. Slechts 42 kinderen afgemaakt maar hij heeft ze niet zelf gedood):strip_exif()/u/6356/eliza.gif?f=community)
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Je geen tijd van leven had om het te doen met een zwaard, een brandstapel of een pijnbank./u/1493/crop6810c8733548d_cropped.png?f=community)
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Dit topic is gesloten.