The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1312: The Thirty Years War - Part 4 - w/ Thomas777

Episode Date: January 4, 2026

59 MinutesPG-13Thomas777 is a revisionist historian and a fiction writer.Thomas continues a series on the 30 Years War, which many historians count as the most important European conflict prior to the 20th century. Radio Free Chicago - T777 and J BurdenThomas777 MerchandiseThomas' Buy Me a CoffeeThomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 1"Thomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 2"Thomas' WebsiteThomas on TwitterThomas' CashApp - $7homas777Pete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

You know, If you want to get the show early and ad-free, head on over to the peak canyonez show.com. There you can choose from where you wish to support me. Now listen very carefully. I've had some people ask me about this, even though I think on the last ad I stated it pretty clearly. If you want an RSS feed, you're going to have to subscribe. through Substack or through Patreon. You can also subscribe on my website, which is right there, Gumroad, and what's the other one?

Subscribe Star. And if you do that, you will get access to the audio file. So head on over to the Pekignonez Show.com. You'll see all the ways that you can support me there. And I just want to thank everyone. It's because of you that I can put out the amount of material that I do. I can do what I'm doing with Dr. Johnson on 200 years together and everything else. The things that Thomas and I are doing together on continental philosophy, it's all because of you.

And yeah, I mean, I'll never be able to thank you enough. So thank you, the Pekingona Show.com. Everything's there. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekignano Show. Thomas is back, and we are continuing the series on The 30 Years War. Thomas, take it away. Yeah, I'm pleased that this series has been well received this far because it's an enormous topic

and it's very labor-intensive to present it with adequate thoroughness. I realized that the conclusion of the last episode that it was imperative to discuss the configuration of political power on the continent in the in the epoch all of which flowed from the holy roman empire and the story of modern europe is you know um the story of european power consolidating in the German states, and this reached a zenith in the early modern period, and the reconstitution of that structure across a broad spectrum of human activity, most relevant, obviously, political organization and conceptual reality,

You know, that's, that process continued from 1648th until 1945. And this doesn't really make sense. And unless I describe what the Holy Roman Empire was and how it functioned. And even in a relatively serious university curriculums, this isn't presented properly. and this was one of the proximate causes of the war of hostilities, at least as much as sectarian considerations and confessional loyalties. Obviously, these things are all tied together within a common nucleus of operative fact, but structural political variables

and dynamic changes therein owing the historical processes were at least as significant as religious motivations and conspiring to create a conditions where war became imminent. The Holy Roman Empire was ruled by an actual constitution and the trajectory of politics it was shared between the emperor who was alternatively known as the holy roman emperor the king of the germans the king of the germans and uh the romans but for brevity we'll refer to the rank in the office as the holy roman emperor the emperor he was the overlord and sovereign

and his power derived directly from his title as essentially Caesar more in lieu of possession of any particular fee for collection of feasts so the imperial office was above

the medieval structure that was tethered to the land and rank that accrued owing to lordship over the land and aristocracy of the sword which is fascinating and that's one of the legacy institutions that ties the Roman Empire to the European political order as it developed and how this relationship between the emperor and his vassals was defined. This had profound implications, not just for dynastic elements that were vying for power, or were committed to retaining a privileged position and perpetuity,

first among them the hapsburgs but also in terms of confessional sectarian allegiance this had implications that were structurally coded um you know and there was there's always going to be interstitial and intermediary um elements that are able to to insinuate themselves into the power apparatus even when there is an imperial office with a mandate that is that monolithic um to be clear the haspurgs they didn't they didn't monopolize the imperial title and the role by right um electors decided who was uh you know to be insinuated into the office and uh it was often possible if the electors could be persuaded to accept premogeniture and an emperor could designate a successor but the electors had to accept

that and um assent to it it wasn't axiomatic uh that a son would inherit uh you know his father's title in office he had no claim of right to it um if no uh decision could be reached on who was to be the the emperor the king of the germans and the romans there would be an interregonum that was governed by what's called the golden bowl um we're not talking about an animal The Golden Bowl, it was a 1356 decree that was issued by the Imperial Diet in Nuremberg. The, it fixed really for almost 400 years essential aspects of the Constitution of the Holy Roman Empire. It provided administrative remedies to disagreements between thieves under the dominion of the electors.

It set about protocols for, you know, management of hostilities within imperial lands. it clarified processes which technically renounced their precluded people involvement in the selection of the Holy Roman Emperor. I mean, obviously, in reality, that wasn't the case. But, you know, and most importantly, it set out that there'd be seven electors. prince electors who were to vote by majority consensus and determine who would be the holy Roman emperor and to be clear it was a majority consensus was it was explicitly stated that four to the seven votes would always suffice to elect a new emperor

and a minority consensus could have no power to veto or block the election. And finally, and this is the most important, these principalities that constituted the electorate, they were indivisible, which meant that they were always passed down to primogeniture. they couldn't be divided up per stirpies they they couldn't be seated as feasts they you know they could only be handed down to the firstborn son and in the absence of an appropriate male heir you know a designate and they they couldn't be divided so it very much fixed the a power and imperial succession in a way that was basically insurmountable until the Westphalian peace. You know, so, and to be clear, it's, um, the growth of the Habsburg dynasty. and their domination of the Holy Roman Empire, it wasn't just on grounds of wealth

and the capture of essential fiefdoms that in turn conferred military power and the allegiance of essential elements. The Haspergs were universally respected and the understanding was that the man who selected to be the Holerman Emperor

he's supposed to abide a certain aristocratic sensibility and he's supposed to have a certain pedigree that is above that even of his peers and generally the Habsburgs qualified at least in the early modern period you know they were they were in a

lineage. Despite this cliche that aristocrats are always these inbred morons or they're always kind of second rate or they lack merit, that's really not true. Dynasties aren't built out of nothing or based on, you know, the reputation of centuries past. You know, they're a mixed bag, but the most dominant noble houses and lineage is they practice their own sort of eugenics. and at some point this breaks down and in the case of the Spanish hasburgs it led to catastrophic outcomes over time but you know again that that's uh that's the you know there's always decrepitude that precedes um you know the end of dynastic rain um it's not the whole story but uh this was the seed european power you know and to be clear um as we'll get into a lot of this uh a lot of these institutions that uh were enshrined in the golden bull they derived from things they were emergent um in truly ancient heritage you know the eighth and ninth centuries a d you know the the time of charlemagne

when the franks were the dominant element in central europe and it was what's now western germany and France that was the imperial seat you know rather than Europe Central which is really fascinating and this is where the political culture emerged from now the status of these imperial feats that constituted the several territories of the Holy Roman Empire There was two primary statuses that they represented. There was imperial estates, and there was what was called Crease estates, both of which were represented in the Reichstag and their regional assembly, and the vassals of which were represented in the Reichstag and their regional assembly,

and the vassals of which, had de jure comparable rights although circumstances sort of dictated the relative power

that they wielded the emperor was the personal overlord over both of them but imperial estates increased estates so designated

there was no one above them other than the holy roman emperor okay so uh they couldn't be subordinate uh to any intermediate lord regardless of his wealth or his title or uh his proximity to the emperor by way of his bloodline or anything else um and uh and uh This was actually highly sophisticated, you know, and that's really where mixed, the concept that makes the government originates from on the continent, you know, and that's one of the reasons I object to this canard. that modern Germany was characterized by this kind of overlord ship of Bismarckian figures and, you know, later, of course, the furor and things. Because that makes hash with the historical record.

And it also selectively invokes examples of existential emergencies these whereby, you know, competing elements within the sovereign apparatus are subdued in favor of a unitary executive who needs to act with splendid power decisionism amidst, you know, a paradigm that calls for it. Now, Creece estates, they had certain obligations relating to collective defense, and this became a very critical function during the entirety of the conflict paradigm against the Ottomans. you know, that culminated in the long war against the Turks, you know, immediately prior to the onset of hostilities in 1618. It made it a very concrete mobilization paradigm, you know, not just a set of legal strictures that, were allegedly incumbent

based on the letter of the law or ancient custom or something you know and that also deriving from the ancient concept of the aristocracy of the sword although although disabused from the person of the Lord

and you know his discrete characteristics or that of his title, it imposed a structural framework on, you know, whatever man held the, the thief in question, you know, by virtue of structural necessity relating to military imperatives. You know, and as the Ottomans were, for all practical purposes, a military superpower today, if we can speak in such terms, and even the largest aggregation of allied principalities or common electorates, they lacked the military might to stand. alone against the Ottoman threat. And even in times of comparative peace,

they lacked the resources for any kind of independent political and economic existence. Now admittedly, economics of the early modern period weren't nearly as complex as today. That it was, you know, production was, localized in the household for the most part and everything revolved around commodities and the whims of the harvest and acts of God and things but there was a rudimentary interdependence that was essential particularly in central Europe

up where there's a basic dearth of arable land, which was one of the major catalysts for the, you know, movement eastward of Germanic peoples over a millennia, really. you know and to be clear uh the imperial estates they dated from the carolingian era the um the crease estates the rikes which quite literally means imperial circles you know the metaphor suggesting a cooperative unity um and a defensive parameter you know they really became most relevant a few centuries preceding the onset of hostilities in 1618 but the imperial estates um the Reichestand they uh they dated to the Carolingian era you know this is the 800s AD you know around the time of Charlemagne approximately you know that's

six and seven years prior to the um prior to the epoch in question you know that is truly ancient obviously um now what these conditions began to in favor of was the rise of uh the impersonal absolute state um you know office is divorced from any discrete lineage or man or uh the person of the monarch and again although there were trappings of you know traditional succession and primogeniture was the norm oftentimes that was customary it wasn't fixed by law and after a while it was no longer particularly customary um the electors uh by the turn of the 17th century they often didn't even personally know the emperor maximilian the second in 1562 his coronation was the

last coronation of a Holy Roman Emperor to be attended by all the electors, plus all these minor counts and prelates and dukes, where there was this full personal recognition of the man himself by electors and vassals who personally presented themselves. You know, increasingly the process of selecting the emperor that kind of early modern version of shuttle diplomacy decided how the electors voted there was guys

to the equivalent of lobbyists at court you know all the features of what we'd think of as a modern political culture were emergent you know and to be clear this is a big deal there's a reason why

old school Paul's even you know even well in living memory like LBJ they were all about glad handing because that's important and if you're an elector from Heidelberg or wherever you meet other electors or you get to know the king himself

you find out that you've got common interest in hunting or art or in painting or maybe you just like to drink a lot and chase skirt you know that that makes a difference these personal affinities make a big difference you know particularly when you're talking about power political affairs and political structures that are very much co- towards war and peace questions where people are expected to truly sacrifice this makes a big difference especially where sectarian hostilities are a very real phenomenon you know personal relationships taking on outside significance and the diminution of these things very much made hostilities possible in a way they wouldn't have been in the past i believe um that's a constant in political cultures ancient uh and um extant alike um the piece of augsburg in 1555 um is essential too because technically it guaranteed religious freedom what was laid down in augsburg and one of the reasons why you know to this day there's lutheran churches that identify

as augsburg confessional churches this is why you know it was a settlement that attended wider constitutional reforms that, you know, gave relief to poorer fiefdoms in terms of tax obligations and quotas and it tried to create some kind of uniformity and currency and elements of public order and like a rudimentary kind of policing and things like this but most importantly Emperor Ferdinand

pushed through as an aspect of the empire's fundamental legal regimen that there was there had to be a basic tolerance for the confessional orientation of um

of a fiefdoms under a common lordship, you know, and this is essentially would establish the rule of, you know, the land belongs to the confession of the prince, with the qualifier that the minority element, you know, be it Catholic or one of the Protestant sects. enjoys a basic equality before the law and that essentially held but for about 50 years but what it did was it created it created difficulties because in bringing together opposing confessions within and people who zealously abided opposing and competing sectarian commitments under a common legal and political framework. It created certain conspiratorial tendencies, or at least encourage them. What it did was it detonated the traditional unity of law and faith. that was essential to the medieval order but also it led to intrigues where in some fiefdoms lutherans began demanding that lutherans be allowed to become bishops which uh obviously

rome considered this unacceptable because you know and to be clear too many lutherans they didn't object to the existence of the Roman church. It was, you know, doctrinally corrupted in their view. But the Holy See was very cognizant of the fact that, you know, there were cadres of Lutheran clergy and laymen who, had strong sway within their respective congregations who had devised a strategy of, you know, conquering clerical offices with their own people

and, you know, essentially making the Roman church Lutheran. You know, obviously the Calvinists, they didn't have any, they wanted to burn it down. you know um but you you can't have uh this kind of confessional equality de jure where in the absence of moral consensus you know it doesn't work and all you're left with is that every uh venue of public administration and clerical and judicial life becomes a battleground for sectarian and thus political challenges and that's exactly what happened so by the time of the defenestration of Prague and when the killing started it was a foregone

conclusion in my opinion you know this pressure cooker environment had been created by the the piece of Augsburg that not only left the fundamental controversies unresolved but it arguably nourish these divisions and allowed them to grow fat on those tensions that were feeding them. Until it culminated in a disaster owing to confidence brought by conditions relative parity between the parties that. you know became combatants you know and it also once identitarian aspects of public life and political identity or are out it creates ambiguities that

they have a tendency to institutionalize controversies and allow what would ordinarily be minor disagreements within consensus it allows these things to become monumental and you know that's why these sorts of half measures

amid historically untenable conditions they often make things worse when formal hostilities do arrive you know it doesn't require one does they need to be an auger to recognize that?

It's, you know, and to be clear, too, the Lutherans played a very savvy game. I mean, I think part of this was that there wasn't some of, even where Lutherans constantly the majority, they didn't do things like appropriating and looting

property, the Roman church or something. There wasn't a comparable situation to what happened in England. You know, so there was this odd

circumstance. We had Lutheran clergy and their counterparts in the Roman church who basically enjoyed good offices if not a basic a basically civilized

consensus at least there's a local administration and there wasn't the threat of uh at this point you know the the Lutherans weren't under threat of being of being programmed

nor were uh the Catholics where they were They were the minority at risk of having church property appropriated and looted. So there was this forum that allowed for intriguing, whereby tensions were intractable, but they weren't so critical that they were going to resolve in active hostility, really until matters became totally untenable and scaled to the point where conflict was inevitable.

But at that point, once the conflict died was triggered, it was catastrophic and binary. You know, and that was my point about half measures is they've got a tendency to curate scope and severity in ways that. is self-defeating um the uh the augsburg confessions to one of the big progressive aspects of it as it was viewed and this was legitimately a good thing it precluded uh it precluded the the use of heresy laws against Lutherans, you know, by the inquisition. And it provided mechanisms of arbitration to manage disputes across the sectarian divide.

You know, and it created a secular framework. for maintaining public peace within the imperial domain while at the same time affording a basic respect and reverence for confessional identity and things but um you know that The fact, too, of the relative peace within Central Europe internally, brought a kind of complacency, I think, too. After the cessation of hostilities in 1648, there's odd parallels with the First World War, you know, otherwise learned men.

opposing the rhetorical query how could this have possibly happened it's like well how could this have not happened I mean I mean it was a perfect storm of circumstances you know I'm sure someone suggests that that's Monday morning quarterbacking but I don't think so it's a big issue two became the right to emigrate and Ferdinand kind of tried to strike a middle path on that

I mean that's I could devote a whole hour to talking about that but there was this didn't become as much of an issue as it might have because I'll get into why this wasn't a minute in Protestant territories because the Protestant diaspora, both Lutherans and reformed, they tended to be more widely dispersed. They were generally the minority on the ground with a hand of exceptions but also the Protestant cause both Lutheran and Calvinist it was

disproportionately led by nobles which is interesting so you obviously nobles aren't gonna emigrate even if they're leading a minority element you know it's it's not like you had entire blocks of Calvinists and you know, who were a substantial minority within a Catholic fiefdom who were just up and, you know, moving to beef up their numbers and some adjacent principality, you know, the demographics just didn't facilitate that. But it was at the same time an issue. And, you know, people were, people were tied to the land in ways then that they aren't today, just going to the reality of production schema, like even free men who weren't surfs or anything, I mean.

And even guys who were fairly wealthy, either going to land in title or to success in business. it was a lot more complicated to emigrate than in the later modern period um you know but this also uh this did uh there was a series of uncertainties too that came to be called the three dubia dubia obviously being the root of dubious, it translates loosely to uncertainties. That led to kind of a collapse of consensus among the imperial estates, one of which concerned

ecclesiastical lands and holdings of the Imperial Church. because again I mean within Lutheran lands you know again the Osberg Peace declared that you know the

the prince's confession is what reigns and the incorporation of a Lutheran territorial church property that become Lutheran owing to an absence of Catholic parishioners, but that had, you know, for centuries been territorial Roman church property, there was a mechanism by which there was compensation for, you know, takings. But obviously this became politically coded because it had a negatively geostrategic

implication aside from the principled attachments you know people develop owing the sectarian allegiance whereby they come to evaluate such controversies a zero sum regardless of what the the stakes are You know, and even though the relative losses, even in overwhelmingly Lutheran territories, was fairly paltry, but this became a major issue of contention within the public mind. And the Catholic view was that, you know, ecclesiastical reservation. of church lands was not just sacred and holy but it was also protecting you know the the one true faith you know and um people viewed uh ferdinand as making a cynical compromise you know and um this in turn also led to more and more Lutherans penetrating

uh chapter cathedrals and bishop ricks to trying to see with themselves sometimes in an occulted way you know into the church hierarchy um and obviously this wouldn't have been possible before um these liberalizing half measures is what made it possible and i don't intend to cast ferdinand to some irredeemable villain or something. I mean, I, that's a caricature of the circumstance that existed, but also I believe the conflict paradigm as it developed was inevitable.

I know that puts me at odds with most contemporary historians, even guys were a bit outside of the court historian consensus. They tend to view these things as accidental, particularly truly catastrophic constellations of circumstances that lead to the most destructive wars. They view it as a breakdown of processes that is almost like a machine breaking down or something. It's, you know, the wrong remedies were invoked or they weren't. timely enough. I mean, obviously, I don't, I don't accept that type of thinking. But, you know, it also, even very radical Protestants, even those radical Calvinists, they were politically savvy enough to not stake any claim to that, you know, they had a right to

appropriate Roman Catholic lands outright. You know, so generally not always there's an escalation of hostilities from intriguing and you know,

acts of political hostility, short of violence that become normative in terms of relationships between party combatants and once the potentialities of within that paradigm sort of runs its course there's escalation by necessity and, you know, everything that was resulting from the piece of Augsburg and power political terms tended to facilitate momentum in that direction.

And again, I think this is clear from the historical record of, you know, one diligently researches the relevant variables. It also made it easier for rulers to formally convert because it allowed them to effectively suspend. the jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic Church in basic capacities and to purge clergy from positions of local authority within the clerical apparatus, you know, which obviously prior to the Augsburg piece, would have led the direct action against them you know and that's another factor tending towards aggravating potentialities within the burgeoning conflict dyed um you know and these things were openly discussed um the set of problems called the dubia of the uncertainties you know it

um but uh there's not it was more rumination on you know the interactibility of result involving schismatic phenomena that you know translates directly to political hostility you know and it's not as if it's not as if there was some legal remedy or some edict of a high court even one that was like for example you know even one that was confessionally mixed or even some sort of counsel of the imperialist states, you know, that wouldn't have, um, this was a situation that was very much developing locally and impacting regular people's lives in a very immediate and existential capacity, which in turn translated to power political struggles at scale, you know, there, and on top of that,

there had been a shattering of the unity of, you know, confessional authority and what people viewed as legitimate sources of law you know and if the law is coded as some neutral

product of reason that refuses to take a position on confessional morality like why should any man pay it any mind he shouldn't you know um and that's one of the reasons why this is relevant to the present day our friend andrew isker text me before christmas he's an interesting dude i mean he's our friend

i mean you know that i i like andrew but you know he's also a learned guy i mean he's he's one of the comparatively a few pastors I really respect and he made the point that there's a lot of relevant precedent to the period we're discussing

to the present day and I agree with that it's not just a matter of needing to understand this in a deep capacity to understand the political development of Europe and thus the entire civilized world. And the paradigm that was set in motion in 1618 didn't truly resolve until 1945, but also, you know, there are strong parallels. relating to the fracturing of moral consensus

and a resurgence of confessional life concomitant with that, both of which are characteristic of the final decades of the Cold War through the 21st century into our present. so this is important um i'm gonna stop here because i'm i'm still not feeling great and i've i've got dinner plans and stuff so i need to pull myself together here man um forgive me for if that's

abrupt i know people make fun of me about being abrupt my energy level is very man i don't mean to sound like a a bitch or something but that's the reality no i mean if that's where the if that's where the subject ends we pick it up in the next episode that's it no fair enough i didn't i um i felt like i might have been leaving something out but i i um yeah i that's fine thank you if you leave something out you always figure out you did and then you insert it into the beginning of the next episode so no thanks i appreciate that thank you for the vote of confidence i think that very seriously of course uh everybody go over to thomas's substack it's real thomas seven seven seven dot substack.com and you can connect to him there and um links to

everything and go support him too and uh get the um get his episodes there so you can hear the uh he's been uh hitting up uh with andrew edwards the last couple episodes and his uh his new you know we don't have a lot of guys that write fiction and uh andrew Andrew Andrew does and he's quite unique in his fiction yeah he's great yeah so go support Thomas all right thank you Thomas see on the next episode yeah happy new year happy new year man Thank you.