The Hapsburg Dilema

6 Pages 1537 Words

The European Political arena in 1500s to 1650 was full of religious, political and domination wars. At the beginning of the 1500’s Spain was one of the most powerful, influential nations in Europe. The Spanish had colonies in South America ( Mexico) and they supplied the Hapsburg Empire with gold and silver. The Hapsburg Empire was situated in Spain, Austria, parts of Netherlands and held a lot of influence in MittleEuropa . The Hapsburg’s had the largest, most technologically advanced , well equipped standing army in all of Europe. The Spanish were economically powerful and most importantly they were hard-core Catholics.

At the beginning of the 1500’s France was a Protestant nation, which had a mediocre army and medium economy. The French Protestants were called Huguenots. France was military and economically weaker than Catholic Spain. The French resented being under Spanish influence and this resentment led to a series of wars and confrontations between the two countries.

The English were largely an isolated community who were busy consolidating their power while the French and Spanish fought for control of northern Italy. The English were Anglican and would be sympathetic towards their fellow Protestants in Europe when the drums of war would begin to beat.

MittleEuropa was a piece of land where the north was Protestant and the south was Catholic. This land was at a constant state of ‘civil war’ and it would be this place, which would draw the central European powers into a serious of bloody wars.

The Catholic Church in that time had a lot of influence in Catholic nations. The Pope was the head of the Church and he was suppose to be ‘ advisor’ to the Holy Roman Emperor.
The Pope was very well skilled at ‘flaming the fires of Catholic intolerance’ towards
The Holy Roman Emperor who in turn would lead religious and political wars against Protestants.


The Netherlands were under the rule of t...