WhapXI t1_itvrep6 wrote on October 26, 2022 at 5:43 PM

Reply to comment by FollowingSome3237 in TIL The European 30 Years' War 1618 - 1648 began with Czech nobles throwing two Habsburg governors out of Prague castle window onto a huge dungheap. The corresponding carnage - fought over the issue of religious freedom following the Protestant Reformation - left millions dead. by Royal_Bumblebee_

I don't really think they could have, in the grand scale of historical inevitability. Within a few centuries, united Germany and modernised Russia would have been as issue for them, and at that point it's just an issue of sheer demographics. They didn't have an open frontier to expand into, and instead would have to rely on conquest of their direct neighbours, which isn't really terribly effective. And their position in the Baltic means they couldn't really have leveraged their naval strength into a colonial empire since a single blockade of the straits between Denmark and Sweden would have completely dismembered them.