This article attempts to reformulate the classic question of whether the Thirty Years War was political or religious by examining the career of the Count d’Avaux, one of Cardinal Richelieu’s principal agents in Germany and, in the time of Mazarin, one of France’s plenipotentiaries at the Congress of Westphalia. All three men made a distinction between a political and religious war, but where they differed, and where D’Avaux was closer to Richelieu than to Mazarin, was in the relative weight each gave to considerations of legality, necessity, and conscience.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.