Peace of Westphalia (1648): Treaties That Ended Two Wars

The Peace of Westphalia is the name for the treaties signed in 1648 in the cities of Münster and Osnabrück, in Westphalia in north-western Germany. They ended the Thirty Years’ War in the Holy Roman Empire and the Eighty Years’ War between Spain and the Dutch Republic. Negotiated over five years by dozens of delegations, the settlement redrew borders, recognised Dutch and Swiss independence and created a lasting religious peace in Germany.

Background: a war no one could win

By the early 1640s the Thirty Years’ War, which had begun with the Defenestration of Prague in 1618, had become a contest of exhausted powers. The Habsburg emperor and his Catholic allies fought Sweden and France, while Spain fought both the Dutch Republic and France. Large parts of Germany had been devastated by armies, plague and famine.

Attempts at peace had failed before. The Peace of Prague of 1635 reconciled the emperor with most German Protestant princes but excluded Sweden and France. In December 1641 the Preliminary Treaty of Hamburg agreed that a general peace congress would meet in two Westphalian towns, Münster and Osnabrück.

The two venues reflected the divisions of Europe. Catholic Münster hosted the emperor’s talks with France and the negotiations between Spain and the Dutch, with the papal nuncio and Venice acting as mediators. Protestant Osnabrück, about 50 kilometres away, hosted the talks between the emperor, Sweden and the German Protestant estates. Both towns were declared neutral.

The congress

Delegates began arriving in 1643, and the formal negotiations started in 1644 and 1645. Fighting continued throughout, and each side tried to improve its position on the battlefield, so news of victories and defeats regularly changed the terms on the table.

The congress was the largest diplomatic gathering Europe had yet seen. More than 100 delegations attended at various times, representing the emperor, the kings of France, Spain and Sweden, the Dutch Republic, the Pope, Venice, and many of the princes, cities and estates of the Empire. Questions of rank and ceremony, such as who should enter a room first or what titles should be used, consumed months.

Key figures included the imperial chief negotiator Count Maximilian von Trauttmansdorff, a skilful diplomat trusted by Emperor Ferdinand III; the French envoys the Duke of Longueville, the Count d’Avaux and Abel Servien, guided from Paris by Cardinal Mazarin; the Swedish envoys Johan Oxenstierna, son of the chancellor, and Johan Adler Salvius; and the papal nuncio Fabio Chigi, later Pope Alexander VII.

The Peace of Münster: Spain and the Dutch Republic

The first agreement concluded was between Spain and the Dutch Republic. Spain, fighting France and facing revolts in Catalonia and Portugal, wanted to end the long war in the Netherlands that had begun with the Dutch Revolt.

The treaty was signed on 30 January 1648 and solemnly ratified in Münster’s town hall on 15 May 1648, a ceremony painted by the Dutch artist Gerard ter Borch, who was present. Spain recognised the United Provinces as a free and sovereign state, ending eighty years of conflict. The Dutch kept their conquests in the southern Netherlands and overseas, and the River Scheldt remained closed to shipping, to the lasting disadvantage of Antwerp.

The treaties of 24 October 1648

The main settlement for the Empire was signed on 24 October 1648 in two related treaties. The Treaty of Osnabrück was concluded between the emperor, Sweden and their allies, and the Treaty of Münster between the emperor and France. They are often referred to by their Latin abbreviations, IPO (Instrumentum Pacis Osnabrugense) and IPM (Instrumentum Pacis Monasteriense).

Territorial terms

• France received the Habsburg lands and rights in Alsace, in a complicated and ambiguous form, together with the fortress of Breisach. Its possession of the bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun, held since 1552, was confirmed.
• Sweden gained western Pomerania, including Stettin, the port of Wismar and the secularised bishoprics of Bremen and Verden. It became a member of the Imperial Diet and received 5 million thalers to pay off its armies.
• Brandenburg received eastern Pomerania and several secularised bishoprics, including Halberstadt and Minden, and the expectancy of the archbishopric of Magdeburg.
• Bavaria kept the Upper Palatinate and the electoral title it had won in the 1620s, while a new, eighth electorate was created for Charles Louis, son of the Winter King, who recovered the Lower (Rhine) Palatinate.
• The Swiss Confederation was recognised as exempt from the jurisdiction of the Empire, confirming its de facto independence.

Religious and constitutional terms

The treaties confirmed the Peace of Augsburg of 1555, which allowed rulers to determine the religion of their territories, and extended it to Calvinists alongside Lutherans and Catholics. The ownership of church property was fixed according to the situation on 1 January 1624, the so-called normative year, which largely reversed the emperor’s Edict of Restitution of 1629.

Minorities whose worship had been tolerated in 1624 were guaranteed the right to continue it, and dissenters gained the right to emigrate. In the imperial institutions, religious questions could no longer be decided by a simple majority; Catholic and Protestant bodies would negotiate separately and seek agreement.

The German princes had their rights confirmed, including the right to make alliances with each other and with foreign powers, as long as these were not directed against the emperor or the Empire. France and Sweden became guarantors of the settlement.

What the peace did not settle

The peace was not universal. France and Spain could not agree and their war continued until the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659. In the meantime France itself was shaken by the civil wars of the Fronde, which began in 1648.

Ending the fighting in Germany also took time. The armies had to be paid and withdrawn, and the details were worked out at the Nuremberg Execution Congress of 1649–1650. The last Swedish garrisons did not leave until 1654.

Pope Innocent X condemned the religious clauses in the bull Zelo domus Dei, dated 26 November 1648. The negotiators had foreseen this and inserted a clause declaring all objections to the peace void, and the papal protest had little effect.

The human cost of the war

The Thirty Years’ War was among the most destructive conflicts in European history before the 20th century. Historians estimate that the population of the Holy Roman Empire fell by around 20–40 per cent, with some regions, such as parts of Pomerania, Württemberg and Brandenburg, losing half or more of their people. Most deaths came from disease, hunger and displacement rather than battle.

The figures are uncertain because records are patchy and many people fled rather than died, returning later. Some areas, especially in the north-west, escaped lightly, while regions crossed repeatedly by armies, such as the routes through Thuringia, Hesse and the south-west, suffered most. Recovery took decades, and in some places population levels did not return to their pre-war size until the early 18th century.

Westphalia and the myth of sovereignty

In political science the Peace of Westphalia is often presented as the birth of the modern international system: a world of sovereign, territorial states, equal in law and free from outside interference in their internal affairs. “Westphalian sovereignty” has become shorthand for this idea.

Many historians and some international relations scholars regard this as largely a myth. The treaties did not mention sovereignty as a general principle, kept the Holy Roman Empire and the emperor’s authority in place, and allowed France and Sweden to intervene in imperial affairs as guarantors. Scholars such as Andreas Osiander have argued that the “Westphalian system” was a 19th- and 20th-century construction projected back onto 1648.

What the peace did establish was a durable framework for the Empire, which survived until 1806, and a model of large multilateral peace congresses later followed at Utrecht, Vienna and elsewhere.

Legacy

The settlement ended the era of the great religious wars in Europe. Religion did not disappear from politics, but after 1648 wars were increasingly fought over dynastic and strategic interests rather than confession.

Sweden emerged as a great power around the Baltic, France as the leading power on the continent, and the Dutch Republic as an independent maritime and commercial state at the height of its golden age. Münster and Osnabrück still commemorate the peace, and their town halls, where the treaties were negotiated and celebrated, are part of the European Heritage Label.

Timeline

• 1635, May: Peace of Prague between the emperor and most German Protestants; Sweden and France fight on.
• 1641, December: Preliminary Treaty of Hamburg sets Münster and Osnabrück as venues.
• 1643–1645: Delegations arrive; formal negotiations begin.
• 1648, 30 January: Spain and the Dutch Republic sign the Peace of Münster.
• 1648, 15 May: Ratification of the Peace of Münster in Münster’s town hall.
• 1648, 24 October: Treaties of Osnabrück and Münster end the Thirty Years’ War.
• 1648, 26 November: Date of Pope Innocent X’s bull condemning the religious terms.
• 1649–1650: Nuremberg Execution Congress arranges demobilisation.
• 1659, 7 November: Treaty of the Pyrenees ends the Franco-Spanish war.

Why it matters

The Peace of Westphalia ended thirty years of devastation in Germany and eighty years of war in the Netherlands. Its religious compromise and its model of negotiated settlement shaped Europe for generations, even if its later fame as the founding moment of state sovereignty owes more to modern theory than to the treaties themselves.