ABSTRACT
It is appropriate that any account of international relations in Europe between those two traditional historical signposts, the French invasion of Italy in 1494 and the beginning of the Thirty Years War in 1618, should begin with a consideration of war and its implications. Throughout this period armed struggle, potential or actual, was the most important and enduring influence on the relationships between the European states. Personal rivalries between monarchs, conflicting dynastic claims, the workings of a still embryonic balance of power, generated conflicts to which religious antagonisms, between Christians and Muslims, later between Catholics and Protestants, added a more emotional dimension. War to men of that age was a natural condition, as natural as peace and perhaps more so. Martin Luther’s often-quoted remark that it was ‘as necessary as eating, drinking, or any other business’ expressed a viewpoint from which few would have seriously dissented; and the voice of these few was a weak and ineffective one which rulers and their ministers could safely ignore. Erasmus might attack the aggressiveness and territorial ambitions of rulers. 1 Anabaptists might put forward their own brand of Christian pacifism. None of this made any practical difference. War, it seemed, had always existed and always would.
