The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy

About the Book

A deadly continental struggle, the Thirty Years War devastated seventeenth-century Europe, killing nearly a quarter of all Germans and laying waste to towns and countryside alike. Peter Wilson offers the first new history in a generation of a horrifying conflict that transformed the map of the modern world.

When defiant Bohemians tossed the Habsburg emperor’s envoys from the castle windows in Prague in 1618, the Holy Roman Empire struck back with a vengeance. Bohemia was ravaged by mercenary troops in the first battle of a conflagration that would engulf Europe from Spain to Sweden. The sweeping narrative encompasses dramatic events and unforgettable individuals—the sack of Magdeburg; the Dutch revolt; the Swedish militant king Gustavus Adolphus; the imperial generals, opportunistic Wallenstein and pious Tilly; and crafty diplomat Cardinal Richelieu. In a major reassessment, Wilson argues that religion was not the catalyst, but one element in a lethal stew of political, social, and dynastic forces that fed the conflict.

By war’s end a recognizably modern Europe had been created, but at what price? The Thirty Years War condemned the Germans to two centuries of internal division and international impotence and became a benchmark of brutality for centuries. As late as the 1960s, Germans placed it ahead of both world wars and the Black Death as their country’s greatest disaster.

An understanding of the Thirty Years War is essential to comprehending modern European history. Wilson’s masterful book will stand as the definitive account of this epic conflict.

For a map of Central Europe in 1618, referenced on page XVI, please visit this book’s page on the Harvard University Press website.

Table of Contents:
* List of Illustrations * List of Maps and Battle Plans * List of Tables * Note on Form * The Habsburg Family Tree 1500--1665 * Map of Central Europe, 1618 * Note on Currencies * Preface * Part I: Beginnings *1. Introduction * Three Men and a Window * Interpretations * The Argument *2. Trouble in the Heart of Christendom * The Empire * Confessionalization * Religion and Imperial Law *3. Casa d'Austria * Lands and Dynasty * Estates and Confession * The Catholic Revival *4. The Turkish War and Its Consequences * The Turkish Menace * The Ways of War * The Long Turkish War * The Brothers' Quarrel *5. Pax Hispanica * The Spanish Monarchy * The Dutch Revolt 1568--1609 * The Spanish Road * Spanish Peace-making *6. Dominium Maris Baltici * Denmark * The Divided House of Vasa * Poland-Lithuania *7. From Rudolf to Matthias 1582--1612 * Religion and the German Princes * Confession and Imperial Politics to 1608 * Union and Liga 1608--9 * The Ju¨ lich-Cleves Crisis 1609--10 *8. On the Brink? * Emperor Matthias * The Uskok War and the Habsburg Succession 1615--17 * Palatine Brinkmanship * Part Two: Conflict *9. The Bohemian Revolt 1618--20 * For Liberty and Privilege * A King for a Crown * Ferdinand Gathers His Forces * White Mountain * Accounting for Failure *10. Ferdinand Triumphant 1621--4 * The Palatine Cause * Protestant Paladins * The Catholic Ascendancy 1621--9 *11. Olivares and Richelieu * Olivares * Richelieu * The Valtellina *12. Denmark's War against the Emperor 1625--9 * Trouble in Lower Saxony * Wallenstein * Denmark's Defeat 1626--9 *13. The Threat of European War 1628--30 * The Baltic * The Netherlands * Mantua and La Rochelle * The Edict of Restitution * The Regensburg Electoral Congress 1630 *14. The Lion of the North 1630--2 * Swedish Intervention * Between the Lion and the Eagle * The Swedish Empire * Calls for Assistance * Zenith *15. Without Gustavus 1633--4 * The Heilbronn League * Tension along the Rhine * Spain Intervenes * Wallenstein: the Final Act * The Two Ferdinands *16. For the Liberty of Germany 1635--6 * Richelieu Resolves on War * The War in the West 1635--6 * The Peace of Prague 1635 * Appeals to Patriotism * Renewed Efforts for Peace *17. Habsburg High Tide 1637--40 * Stalemate * Resolution on the Rhine * Peace for North Germany? *18. In the Balance 1641--3 * The Franco-Swedish Alliance 1641 * The War in the Empire 1642--3 * Spain's Growing Crisis 1635--43 * From Breda to Rocroi 1637--43 *19. Pressure to Negotiate 1644--5 * The Westphalian Congress * France in Germany 1644 * The Baltic Becomes Swedish 1643--5 *1645: Annus horribilis et mirabilis *20. War or Peace 1646--8 * A Crisis of Confidence 1646 * Towards Consensus * Spain's Peace with the Dutch * The Final Round 1648 * Part Three: Aftermath *21. The Westphalian Settlement * The International Dimension * A Christian Peace * Demobilization * The Imperial Recovery *22. The Human and Material Cost * An All-destructive Fury? * The Demographic Impact * The Economic Impact * The Crisis of the Territorial State * Cultural Impact *23. Experiencing War * The Nature of Experience * Military--Civil Relations * Perceptions * Commemoration * Abbreviations * Notes * Index

About the Author :
Peter H. Wilson is the author of Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire, an Economist and Sunday Times Best Book, and The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy, winner of the Distinguished Book Award from the Society of Military History. He has appeared on BBC Radio and has written for Prospect, the Los Angeles Times, and the Financial Times. President of the Society for the History of War and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Wilson is Chichele Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford. His work has been translated into Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, and Spanish.

Review :
In his monumental study of the causes and the consequences of the Thirty Years War, Wilson challenges traditional interpretations of the war as primarily religious. He explores instead the political, social, economic as well as religious forces behind the conflict...Wilson then provides a meticulous account of the war, introducing some of its great personalities: the crafty General Wallenstein; the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus, who preserved his state through canny political treaties and military operations; and Hapsburg archdukes Rudolf and Matthias, the brothers whose quarrels marked the future of Bohemia, Austria and Hungary. By the war's end, ravaged as all the states were by violence, disease and destruction, Europe was more stable, but with sovereign states rather than empires, and with a secular order. Wilson's scholarship and attention to both the details and the larger picture make his the definitive history of the Thirty Years War. Among continental Europeans, the Thirty Years War is etched in memory...A definitive account has been needed, and now Peter Wilson, one of Britain's leading historians of Germany, has provided it. The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy is a history of prodigious erudition that manages to corral the byzantine complexity of the Thirty Years War into a coherent narrative. It also offers a bracingly novel interpretation. Historians typically portray the Thirty Years War as the last and goriest of Europe's religious wars--a final bonfire of the zealots before the cooler age of enlightened statecraft. Mr. Wilson severely qualifies this conventional wisdom. It turns out that the quintessential war of religion was scarcely one at all...Wilson's masterful account of the Thirty Years War is a reminder that war, and peace, are almost never the offspring of conviction alone. Only in retrospect did the strife acquire coherence as the Thirty Years' War, and Wilson incisively cuts through its several phases to recount the objectives and options of the warring parties...Confidently argued, clearly written, Wilson's history is superb coverage of this pivotal period in European history. Peter Wilson's book is a major work, the first new history of the Thirty Years' War in a generation. It is a fascinating, brilliantly written attempt to explain a compelling series of events, which tore the heart out of Europe. [It] succeeds brilliantly. It is huge both in its scene-setting and its unfolding narrative detail...It is to Wilson's credit that he can both offer the reader a detailed account of this terrible and complicated war and step back to give due summaries. His scholarship seems to me remarkable, his prose light and lovely, his judgments fair. This is a heavyweight book, no doubt. Sometimes, though, the very best of them have to be. Wilson's monumental study captures both the complexities of the political and military transformations and the level of brutality that the endemic struggles unleashed...This will be the defining study of the Thirty Years War for the next generation.