Congress of Westphalia. Participants in the negotiations, main provisions and consequences of decisions taken
Congress of Westphalia. Participants in the negotiations, main provisions and consequences of decisions taken

Summary/Abstract: The congress of Westphalia ending the Thirty Years’ War was attended by representatives of 178 political entities from the German Reich and 16 European countries. Only representatives of England, Russia and Turkey did not show up. The participation of European countries and German territorial authorities in diplomatic negotiations in Osnabrück and Münster was not the same. The first was the Emperor, France, Sweden and Spain. Westphalia’s peace agreements have regulated the political, constitutional and religious affairs of the German Reich. The territorial achievements of France, made at the expense of the Empire and the independence of the Netherlands and Switzerland were sanctioned. The electors of Saxony, Brandenburg and Bavaria were given an advantage and the hegemony of Sweden in the Baltic Sea and the northern part of Germany was established, giving it the western part of the Pomeranian Principality, parts of Mecklenburgas well as the Archbishopric of Bremen and the Bishopric of Verden in Lower Saxony. A general amnesty was declared for all German princes; the guilt settlement, as a threat of additional argument, was simply abandoned and the property was returned to the representatives of the ruling families. Provisions were introduced to consolidate German political particularism and put an end to religious wars in Germany. Calvinism was recognised as the third legal confession in the German Reich, alongside Catholicism and Lutheranism. The weakened Habsburgs, focused on building a centralised absolute state and fighting the Reformation in Austria, the Czech Republic and Hungary, quickly returning to the role of a European power and a dangerous rival of France.

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