Despite his attempts to avoid becoming embroiled in the Thirty Years' War, Bogislaw in the Capitulation of Franzburg was forced to allow imperial troops commanded by Albrecht von Wallenstein to use his territories as a base in 1627. In turn, his lands became embroiled in the war, with all its disastrous consequences. In the 1630s, many of the local nobility tried to lessen his power, and this problem occupied Bogislaw in the early 1630s, causing[citation needed] a stroke which left him partially paralyzed. In 1634 he abdicated without clear succession resulting in a constitutional power struggle between his relatives and the governing council. With the constitutional issues unresolved, no recognized male issue, and virtually all of Pomerania occupied by Swedish and imperial troops, Bogislaw died in 1637. The conflicts and issues surrounding the personal and constitutional succession and general future of Pomerania as a dukedom were of such gravity and complexity that they resulted in the postponement of the burial of Bogislaw's body for almost 20 years.
The succession to his lands was mainly between George William, Elector of Brandenburg, the heir under a pact between the two families in 1464, and his brother-in-law Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, who had occupied much of Pomerania on entering the Thirty Years' War in 1629. According to Bogislaw' last will, in case of no succession with the House of Pomerania, his lands were to pass to Sweden, not to Brandenburg-Prussia. Both, Sweden and Brandenburg, exploited not only their position as superior military and occupying powers but also the succession conflicts within the House of Pomerania itself. Therefore, when the allocation of territory was decided at the Peace of Westphalia which concluded the war in 1648, Pomerania was carved up and the territories were split between Sweden and Brandenburg. This meant that the Peace of Westphalia marked the end of Pomerania as an autonomous, political entity.
On 25 May 1654, almost seven years after Pomerania had lost her independence and only after Bogislaw's wife Elisabeth of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg had died, could Bogislaw's body finally be put to rest in Stettin.
References
State Archive (Geheimes Staatsarchiv) Stettin Rep.4 P. 1 Tit.49, No.50-114.
Wehrmann, Genealogy of Ducal House of Pomerania, 1937 Stettin, p. 127.