The Thirty Years War



Abstract

The Thirty Years War, a multifaceted and multinational political and military conflict that raged over central Europe between 1618 and 1648 has often been considered, at least in the scope of misery and destruction it brought to those experiencing it, as a disaster comparable to, if not greater than, the two world wars and the Black Death. The suffering and heroism of both the combatants and the hapless victims of the fighting has burned itself into the national literatures and historical consciousness of that age and those ages that follow. While information on the extent of the material losses is sketchy, recent scholarship estimates human casualties to be in excess of millions, or about 15 to 20 percent of the prewar population of the region. Added to the sheer human dimension of the conflict are its social and political consequences—its beginning is usually associated with the start of perhaps the last religious war of the Reformation, and its end is often considered to be the first stepping stone in the development of the modern nation-state. As such, what began as a revolt of one constituent element of that burdensome and overcomplicated quasi-state called the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, and soon engulfed many of the premier European Houses and nations, has been pegged by many historians to be an event standing at the crossroads of modernity; an extremely violent outburst of pre-modern political and religious sentiment staring down the precipice of a political and diplomatic paradigm shift that altered the face of Europe and, by extension, of the world. Over the course of three and a half centuries following the conclusion of the conflict, the war has inspired a myriad of historical viewpoints and interpretations, with its causes and consequences, personalities, phases, and military actions analyzed and reanalyzed from a variety of political, national, and social standpoints. In this paper we try focus on the thirty Years of War.

The Thirty Years War

General Overviews

The general accounts of the Thirty Years War have collectively followed several established historiographical trends and traditions. The earliest 18th-century German Sturm und Drang movement, best represented by Schiller in The Thirty Years War—Complete, accentuated the almost Gothic surge of tragedy, pain, and suffering of the German nation, while also stressing the confessional nature of the conflict (mostly with a pro-Protestant slant) and the role of individuals involved.

The British production of the early 20th century, exemplified by Wedgewood 2005 (originally published in 1938), picked up on that tradition and followed it. It was only in the second half of the 20th century that more nuanced accounts began to dominate, with the “international school,” here represented by Parker 1997, attempting to portray the Thirty Years War in the light of the additional European and colonial events, while Asch 1997 and Wilson 2009 attempted to ground the conflict more in its central European context and reimaging its dimensions away from a religious and into a more politics-oriented struggle. Also emphasizing politics and political structures, ...