The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy

The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy
Author: Peter H. Wilson 2003 852 pp
My rating: 5/2.5*
Started February 2010, Finished August 3 2010

“Morally subversive, economically destructive, socially degrading, confused in its causes, devious in its course, futile in its result, it is the outstanding example in European history of meaningless conflict.” (751)

This book is not so much a matter of being unable to see the forest for the trees, but of being unable to see the trees for the leaves. While it would be fair to call Wilson’s work a definitive account of the titular war, exhaustive might be the fitting adjective as it is so overwhelmed with detail that reading it seems to take place in real time. The target audience would seem to be field specialist graduate students and above. The author’s mastery of the subject matter must be acknowledged but if his aim was to make it accessible to the lay reader, I fault him for failing to do so. A good 75% of the book is blow by blow accounts of nearly every negotiation, troop movement and skirmish that took place not only during the period from 1618 to 1648 when combat occurred, but also of the decades leading up to that period. I found it next to impossible to keep the virtually endless list of central European people and place names straight. (The book’s index covers 70 pages, 40% more than that for the similarly ambitious Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.) My difficulty with the places and overall geographic confusion was exacerbated by the absence of overview maps in my copy, the table of contents to the contrary. A list of dramatis personae with capsule descriptions of each would have helped quite a bit. For a representative example of the bewildering profusion of confusing names, see the excerpt from page 684 below.


“Morally subversive, economically destructive, socially degrading, confused in its causes, devious in its course, futile in its result, it is the outstanding example in European history of meaningless conflict.” (751)

My take away is that the Thirty Years War is a candidate for the worst war in history, the most pointless and destructive. The reasons for its beginning seem neither well defined nor justified and not long thereafter the combatants’ main reasons for continuing the struggle were either preservation of prestige or hope of gaining a slightly more favorable position at the negotiating table. Other recurrent characteristics include constantly shifting alliances, far more death from disease than battle, unpaid troops, troops living off the land and thus stripping it bare and that from the entire cast of military and political characters, not a single positive model of human conduct emerges; even the legendary Gustavus Adolphos of Sweden though an able general, comes across as a blood thirsty land grabber.

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Sweden’s newest and proudest ship of the line was overloaded with ordnance which “meant that the gun ports were too close to the waterline and it capsized and sank in a light breeze on its maiden voyage in August 1628.” (366)

Three issues stand out from the controversy surrounding restitution. First, the divisions among Catholics indicate the weakness of confessional solidarity and the primacy of politics over religion. (453)

Only 49 per cent of expenditure under Richelieu was submitted to the royal audit office, with the remainder only presented in total The government claimed exemption on ground of national security, but the real reason was to hide the exorbitant rates of interest paid to financiers. (558)

The Treaty of Goslar had recover Hildesheim and reduced his immediate enemies by neutralizing the Guelphs. The start of the Wesphalian congress extend neutrality ot Munster and Osnabruck, removing the latter as a Swedish base. The elector widened this by agreeing in December 1643 to pay 5,500 tlr a month to Sweden in return for their recognition of Hildesheim as neutral.
These moves isolated Hessen-Kassel. Amalie Elisabeth had no interest in wider French objectives and recalled Eberstein’s troops from Guebriant’s army as it returned to the Upper Rhine in 1642. She had 4,000 men poised to attack her Darmstadt rival when news arrived of France’s defeat at Tuttlingen. Units then had to be redirected to East Frisia in 1644 … (684)

The Westphalian town of Werl finally cleared its debt from the Thirty Years War in 1897. (805)