ABSTRACT
Martin Luther emerged as a shrewd inter-imperial politician from the moment he published
his critiques of the Holy Roman Empire while the Ottoman Army marched on Vienna.
Knowing that the Catholic empire depended on Hapsburg military personnel for their campaigns
against the Ottomans, he openly refused to endorse such support, since ‘the Roman Curia is more
tyrannical than any Turk’ (quoted in Foley, 2009, p. 377). Luther’s tactic of calling out the
Catholic empire and threatening to cripple its anti-Ottoman campaign at this most vulnerable
moment paved the way for a subsequent pattern of inter-imperial leveraging strategies by Pro-
testants. Thereafter, as Sean Foley notes, ‘when[ever] Ottoman armies appeared to threaten
Europe-Protestant states in Germany refused to contribute soldiers or discuss funding wars
against the Ottomans with Catholic Habsburg officials before all internal religious issues had
been resolved’ (p. 386). Foley concludes that ‘For all of their power and wealth, Catholic
leaders-Charles V of Spain and Ferdinand I of Austria-had little choice but to negotiate
directly with smaller German states and respect their religious views’ (p. 386). Even more
clearly indicating the extra-European and inter-imperial conditions of post-Westphalian
Europe’s emergence, some Protestant princes later drew direct Ottoman military support
during the Thirty Years’ War. Foley concludes that ‘Ottoman power drove important political
change in Europe’ (p. 385).
