30YearsWar #42: The Silver Domino

When Diplomacy Fails Podcast

Zack Twamley

Phd, International Relations, Korean War, European History, 17th Century, 18th Century, Politics, 20th Century, Thirty Years' War, History, 19th Century, War, First World War

4.8 • 773 Ratings

🗓️ 7 September 2021

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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1629 was THE year of the Thirty Years War, when all the tributaries seemed to join the main river, and flow as one. The Swedish and Poles made their peace, under French sponsorship. The French expelled the Huguenots from La Rochelle. The Spanish continued their siege of Casale, in North Italy. The Danes made their peace with Wallenstein and the Emperor, and the Emperor let the ink dry on his Edict of Restitution, before releasing it to the world. But that wasn't all.

Across the Dutch border, something incredible was happening...

It's up for debate when the tide truly turned in the Thirty Years War, and the Habsburgs lost the initiative. However, I would make a strong case for the winds of change blowing in the Spanish Dutch War first, when a daring naval assault by Admiral Piet Hein seized 11 million florins worth of silver just off the Cuban coast. Though he couldn't have known it, Admiral Hein had just knocked over the first in what would be a series of dominoes, that would lead all the way to the peace of Westphalia twenty years later.

Not only did the Dutch seize the money, thus ruining Spain's precarious financial situation - they also spent that money on several armies, and invested the town of S'hertogenbosch, the capital of Catholic propaganda in the Spanish Netherlands. As if to tie it all together, who should stand side by side Frederick Henry, but Frederick V, Elector Palatine. Although his Austrian enemy was supreme, Frederick had ensured that the Habsburgs could not rest.

The Spanish were crumbling, and it remained for the Lion of the North to roar the whole place down in Germany....

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Last minute party, what will I bring them something unexpected?
0:06.2	Let's play scratch cards.
0:09.3	Trying to find something a bit different.
0:11.4	Why not add some play to Christmas with scratch cards from the National Lottery?
0:15.4	Pick them up in store now.
0:16.6	Please gift responsibly. Rules and procedures apply.
0:18.5	Players and gifters must be 18 or over.
0:22.0	Hello there, history, friends.
0:23.7	This latest episode of When Diplomacy Fails is brought to you by Matchlock and the Embassy,
0:29.4	which you can access absolutely free, simply by clicking on the link in the description below.
0:35.2	Everything is handled by this wonderful service called
0:37.6	Book Funnel, which basically ensures that the e-book will be delivered to your e-reader of choice,
0:43.2	whether that be a Kindle or your phone or what have you, just in case you thought that you'd just
0:47.6	be stuck with this 500-page PDF and not know what to do with it. And having seen other people go
0:52.8	through this process and receive their feedback, I know for a fact that it works. So don't let technology put you off.
0:58.9	We'll talk more about Matchlock on the Embassy later on in the episode. So for now, enjoy the show. Hello and welcome history friends patrons all to episode 42 of the 30 Years' War.
1:20.2	In the last episode, we saw the Spanish and the Dutch fight it out in the mid to late 1620s.
1:25.6	We learned that even while the Austrian Habsburgs enjoyed great
1:29.1	successes against the Danes and Emperor Ferdinand consolidated his position, the toll which the conflict
1:34.6	had taken on the Spanish undermined the total Habsburg supremacy over Europe, which might
1:40.2	otherwise have been possible. The Spanish system was long overdue an upgrade or proper reform,
1:46.0	but these improvements were never attempted because Spain was almost constantly in a state of war.
	...

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