Electors of Saxony - Thirty Years' War

Thirty Years' War

The Thirty Years' War (1618–48) occurred during the reign of Elector John George (1611–56). In this struggle, the Elector was at first neutral, and for a long time he would not listen to the overtures of King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. Not until the Imperial General Johann Tserclaes of Tilly advanced into Saxony did the Elector join the forces of the Swedish Empire. However, after the 1634 Battle of Nördlingen, the Elector in 1635 concluded the Peace of Prague with Emperor Ferdinand II. By this treaty, Saxony received the Margraviates of Upper and Lower Lusatia as a Bohemian fief, and the condition of the Church lands that had been secularized was not altered. The Swedes, however, revenged themselves by ten years of plundering.

By the 1648 Peace of Westphalia Saxony retained the Lusatian possessions as an Imperial fief. However, it lost forever the possibility of extending its territory along the lower course of the Elbe into the lands of the Archbishopric of Magdeburg, though under the administration of the Wettin Duke Augustus of Saxe-Weissenfels. Upon his death in 1680, the secularised Duchy of Magdeburg fell to the "Great Elector" Frederick William of Brandenburg, which confirmed the preponderance of Brandenburg-Prussia under the Protestant Hohenzollern dynasty. In 1653, the Saxon elector became the head of the Corpus Evangelicorum, the union of the Protestant Imperial Estates. Under the following Electors, religious questions were not so prominent; a rigid Lutheranism remained the prevailing faith, and the practice of any other was strictly prohibited. About the middle of the 17th century, Italian merchants, the first Catholics to reappear in the country, settled at Dresden, the capital, and at Leipzig, the most important commercial city; the exercise of the Catholic religion, however, was not permitted to them.