ABSTRACT
for half a century from the 1550s onwards Germany and German affairs had played only a secondary role in international relations. After the achievement in 1552 of French control of the three bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun, and the Cateau-Cambrésis peace of 1559, the preoccupations of the west European powers lay elsewhere, in the Netherlands, France and Portugal. After the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 religious antagonisms in the German world, though far from appeased and indeed becoming more acute, did not threaten international stability like those in France, the Netherlands provinces or perhaps even Scotland. It was only in 1609, as Spain’s struggle to subdue her rebel Dutch provinces was temporarily suspended, that Germany emerged as the arena in which the rivalries of the powers were now most likely to find expression. But from then on the progression to the disasters of the Thirty Years War, which began in 1618, was rapid.
