ABSTRACT
Given the length of the war, as well as the tangle of issues and interests which had become involved in it, it cannot be surprising that the making of peace was a long and complicated process and that the final treaty signed on 24 October 1648 incorporated assurances, promises and the substance of both formal and informal agreements made by the various parties over several previous years. The Regensburg diet of 1640–41 had already demonstrated a warweariness among the German participants so great as to move Ferdinand III towards major concessions on German issues which were aimed at creating the imperial unity necessary for negotiation with the foreign belligerents. That such negotiation would indeed occur was virtually guaranteed in December 1641 by the emperor’s acceptance of a Franco-Swedish proposal calling for imperial representatives to talk separately with the French at Münster and with the Swedes at Osnabrück, beginning sometime in 1642. The latter date proved over optimistic: the German princes were not yet finished ironing out either their substantive differences over purely German issues or the very important procedural issue of whether the emperor would be permitted to negotiate with the foreign powers in the name of the whole Empire, as he wished, or whether some or all of the imperial estates could represent their own interests. That the latter alternative finally prevailed was due partly to the combined stubbornness of the elector of Brandenburg and of Landgravine Amalia, the widow of the outlawed Wilhelm V of Hesse-Kassel, but even more to the support of Sweden and France, who saw advantage in it through separating the interests of emperor and Empire.
