Near the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War in 1625, King Christian IV of Denmark saw an opportunity to gain valuable territory in Germany to balance his earlier loss of Baltic provinces to Sweden. But Christian was defeated, and the Peace of Lübeck in 1629 finished Denmark as a European power.
What led to the end of Denmark as a European power?
When did the Thirty Years’ War begin?
Though the struggles of the Thirty Years War erupted some years earlier, the war is conventionally held to have begun in 1618, when the future Holy Roman emperor Ferdinand II attempted to impose Roman Catholic absolutism on his domains, and the Protestant nobles of both Bohemia and Austria rose up in rebellion.
