The Thirty Years' War   

   The Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia, Matthias, died without a biological heir in 1617, but had named his cousin Ferdinand of Styria as his heir. Ferdinand, who became King of Bohemia and Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor, was a staunch Catholic who had been educated by the Jesuits and who wanted to restore Catholicism. He was therefore unpopular in mainly Calvinist Bohemia, whose rejection of Ferdinand launched the Thirty Years' War. Since the King of Bohemia was an elected office, the Bohemians chose as their preferred leader the heir of Frederick IV, named Frederick V, elector of the Palatinate.

Elector Palatinate Frederick V (by Gerrit von Honthorst, 1634)

   Frederick V (August 16, 1596 - November 29, 1632) had begun his reign over the Palatinate in 1610 and was an influential member of the Evangelical Union.
   Frederick V's wife, named Elizabeth, would play an extremely important role in the story of our family. (In fact if you believe family legend, we're related to her.) She was the daughter of King James I of England, and part of the Stuart dynasty. She was said to be incredibly beautiful, and had attracted most of the royal suitors of Europe (she was nicknamed the “Queen of Hearts”). But she was finally married in 1613 to Frederick V, in order to cement an alliance between English and German Protestantism (detailed here).
   Needless to say, Frederick had some impressive credentials. So the Protestant estates of Bohemia offered the crown to Frederick, instead of Ferdinand.
   When Ferdinand II heard this, he sent two Catholic councilors (Martinitz and Slavata) as his representatives to Hradcany castle in Prague in May 1618 to make way for his arrival and kingship. The Bohemian Calvinists seized them and threw them out of a palace window. The Catholic version of the story claims that angels appeared and carried them to safety. The Protestant version says that they landed in manure.
   This event, known as the second defenestration of Prague, began the Bohemian Revolt. Soon the Bohemian conflict erupted in the entirety of Greater Bohemia, effectively Bohemia, Silesia, Lusatia and Moravia, which was already riven by conflict between Catholics and Protestants. Ferdinand was compelled to call on his cousin, King Philip IV of Spain for assistance. Philip coveted the lands of the Palatinate, and was eager to help. Worse yet for Frederick, King James was supporting the Spanish, instead of his daughter, Frederick's wife!
   Frederick's allies in the Union abandoned him, and his brief reign as the King of Bohemia ended with his defeat at the Battle of White Mountain (8 November 1620)—only two months after his coronation—and earned him the derisive nickname of 'the Winter King'.
   After the battle, Imperial forces invaded Frederick's Palatinate lands, and he was forced to flee to Holland in 1622. Then an Imperial edict formally deprived him of the Palatinate in 1623. He was outlawed from the Holy Roman Empire and his territories, the Rhenish Palatinate, were given to Catholic nobles, while his title of elector of the Palatinate was given to his distant cousin Duke Maximilian of Bavaria.
   Frederick V, although landless, made himself a prominent exile abroad, and tried to curry support for his cause in the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden. He lived the rest of his life in exile with his wife and family at the Hague.

Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of England's James I, mourning for her husband, Elector Palatine Frederick V. (By Gerard Honthorst, @1634.)

   The catastrophic defeat of the Protestant army at White Mountain meant the pacification of eastern Germany. The Spanish, seeking to outflank the Dutch in preparation for the soon-to-be-renewed Eighty Years' War, took the Rhine Palatinate. Before the end of this war, France, several German states, Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands all had become involved. The area was looted, pillaged, remade, and looted and pillaged again, over and over by different invaders for many years. By the end, this horrible religious war cost Germany as much as one-third of its male population.
   Upon Frederick V's death in 1632, his son Karl I Ludwig, Elector Palatine (1610-1680) inherited his exiled father's pretensions to the Palatinate, and was, in fact, restored to his patrimony as part of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 at the conclusion of the Thirty Years' War. He gained a new title of Elector Count Palatine of the Rhine, Archtreasurer of the Empire, as well as most of his father's lands. But he was not restored to the imperial electorate of which his father had been deprived in 1623—instead he received a new Electoral title, while the original one remained in the possession of the Electors of Bavaria. Karl Ludwig reigned over a largely devastated country, but more wars would follow.