UNION (PROTESTANT). - A defensive league concluded in Bavarian Swabia on 16 May 1608 between the representative of the Elector Palatine Christian of Anhalt, the Duke of Württemberg, the Margraves of Ansbach, Kulmbach, Baden-Durlach and Neuburg, initially for 10 years, then extended in 1617 for a further 3. It was later joined, in 1609, by the free cities of Strasbourg, Ulm and Nuremberg; in 1610 by the Elector of Brandenburg, the Margrave of Hesse-Kassel and numerous other cities.
The U., under the presidency of the Elector Palatine Frederick IV, immediately sought to conclude secret agreements with foreign princes, enemies of the House of Habsburg, who were interested in preventing the strengthening of the unitary principle in Germany, that is, supporters of the Protestant cause; it thus succeeded in concluding negotiations with France, which however suffered a crisis because of the death of Henry IV; it established formal agreements with England (1612) and with Holland (1613); it won at least the benevolent support of Sweden and Denmark. The occasion that gave rise to the U., to which the Catholic side opposed, from as early as 1609, the Catholic League, was a controversy that arose at Donauwörth over the interpretation of the Peace of Augsburg of 1555; in reality the Protestants intended to form a united front against the Catholic religious and political recovery, which threatened the more or less regular possession of secularized territories and goods, and which sought to take advantage also of the doctrinal and political-territorial divergences between Calvinists and Lutherans. It thus became the center of all anti-Catholic and anti-Habsburg intrigues and as such intervened in the question of the succession in the Duchy of Jülich in favor of the Protestant claimant (1609-10) and created the atmosphere for the uprising of the Bohemians, which began the politico-religious Thirty Years' War. Following the defeat of the insurgents in the battle of the White Mountain, after having at first made peace with the Catholic League, in May 1621 it dissolved, only to be reborn later under another form, at the urging of Richelieu's anti-Habsburg policy.
Bibliography2 works
Mario Bendiscioli