Capitulation of Franzburg
[4] With the Second Defenestration of Prague in 1618, the Thirty Years' War started as a primarily Catholic-Protestant conflict between Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor, and the Catholic League on the one side and Protestant nobility and states on the other.
Pomerania was a member of the internally divided Protestant Upper Saxon Circle,[5] that most prominently included the electorates of Saxony and Brandenburg, and had declared neutrality in 1620.
[6] Facing a victorious Catholic League, the Saxon electorate switched to the emperor's side in 1624, while Brandenburg and Pomerania kept resisting imperial demands.
[9] As a countermeasure, Danish forces led by Ernst von Mansfeld occupied the Brandenburgian regions Altmark and Prignitz southwest of Pomerania also in 1625, but were defeated by the Imperial troops in the Battle of Dessau Bridge in 1626.
[8] Except for The Electorate of Saxony, which was treated by Wallenstein as a de facto member of the Catholic League, the Upper Saxon states, bare of sufficient military means for self-defence, were subsequently occupied and devastated by the imperial forces after Denmark had been neutralized.
[1] The capitulation also included restrictions on the army, in particular it forbade among others the interference with trade, traffic and crafts; holdups and robberies which would harm towns, burghers, peasants or travellers; looting and extortion; rape of decent women;[nb 2] quartering of soldiers' families and servants; and frivolous use of arms.
[19] Cavalry was stationed primarily in villages due to both the easier handling of the horses and the lower proportion of desertion compared to infantry.
[19] Although not ruled out verbatim in the capitulation's text, the conditions of quartering in Pomerania followed established practice: House and estate owners were to provide the soldier with bed, vinegar and salt, and also share kitchen and heatable living room at no cost.
[19] In addition to noncompliance with the capitulation's provisions by the military, hardship resulted from more frequent epidemics caused by the quartering, and by shrinking natural resources.
[22] Unwilling to surrender the considerable independence it had long enjoyed as a Hanseatic town, Stralsund ignored the duke's order to adhere to the capitulation, instead turned to Denmark and Sweden for support and was aided in her defense by both.
[25] Christian IV, who had already destroyed Wallenstein's naval facilities in Greifswald,[26] had intended to secure another Pomeranian port besides Stralsund there, but was utterly defeated and retreated to Denmark.
[25] The invasion was started when Gustavus Adolphus' troops landed on Usedom island in the spring of 1630, while simultaneous assaults on Rügen and the adjacent mainland by the Stralsund garrison cleared his flank.
The severe plight the capitulation inflicted on the people[22] only foreshadowed the utter devastation of the duchy by the end of the war, when two thirds of the population were left dead.
