the thirty years war

"The victim got de-windowed"

I prefer exfenestrate, really

"The victim was given a dose of pane"

I read Wedgewood's book in May after falling in love with the NYROB edition – a marvelous read.

― a 'catch-all', almost humorous, 'Jeez' quality (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, August 17, 2011 10:10 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah this is the one i read--great cover with a detail from this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/The_Hanging_by_Jacques_Callot.jpg

"The victim was given a dose of pane"

lol

Killed more ppl as a percentage of population than any other war in German history.

Also, "defenestration"!

― returning the native population to its violent 18th-century high (Michael White), Wednesday, August 17, 2011 10:14 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wikipedia sez "the male population of the German states was reduced by almost half"

staying local, voting Buckingham – incarnates early Stuart court mix of power-politics-sex-aesthetics - set up to catch James I's fancy, becoming astonishingly powerful as favourite, failed and farcical endeavours, public hatred, an assassination.

Frederick V in second place. There is a weird romantic charge to him & Elizabeth ( I mean deliberately constructed, yes, but it endures), the Winter King and Queen in exile.

DOn't really know a lot of the continental names. I keep meaning to have a serious reading session about the 30yw, but it's pretty miserable even to casually think about.

"Franz von Mercy" ftw IMO.

ive been reading about the war for acouple weeks now and i can recognize maybe 1/2 the names

Alsace-Lorraine

alsace-lorraine newman

Wallenstein, because he has a good social wargame named after him.

I read this last year and hated it- so dry and confusing. I heard good things about Wedgwood but never got around to it.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51DcVhOBfVL._SS500_.jpg

I'm voting for Christian of Denmark because the world loves a loser.

yeah, that's what I keep promising myself I'll read. I am a bit wary - modern historical prose can be a quagmire. Maybe I'll line up the Wedgwood instead.

wedgwood can be confusing--i mean the war is confusing, so--but shes anything but dry. i expected this to take me a couple months of drawn-out "when im in the mood" reading, but it flew by in a couple weeks

RIYL game of thrones

lol i wondered if this was why you were reading this!

lol i mean it isnt, really, but it is, kind of

ill tell you one thing, there are about 40x as many things going on in the 30 years war as i ASoIaF, and wedgwood manages to get it all done in 1 book

yes but how much do we know about frederick the fifth's incestuous relationship w/ his sister???

Been meaning to read this version of the Wedgwood book that's been sitting on my shelf for a while:

http://www.foliosociety.com/bookcat/9042/TYW/thirty-years-war

So maybe I will soon! The whole story really is headspinning and sad.

More even than the other wars of religion, this is a conflict I always bring up w/ppl who are sketchy about separation of church and state.

Pictures may help some people choose their favourite. Here is Gustavus Adolphus:

http://www.waylandgames.co.uk/images/uploads/warlord/wgp-tyw-01.jpg

and here's the Count of Tilly:

http://www.waylandgames.co.uk/images/uploads/warlord/wgp-tyw-03.jpg

I'm voting for Christian of Denmark because the world loves a loser.

his invasion of Germany is great. One of my friends always imagined the Danes riding in on Shetland ponies.

this list is from wikipedia btw, so it doesnt include people that wedgwood probably would have included, like axel oxenstierna

but surely he is in the book? I only know about the 30 years war from reading it, and I have heard of this guy.

As a kid studying the 30 yrs war, I learned that bayonets are the synthesis of pikes and muskets.

The Peace of Westphalia marks the beginning of the "modern" states system, according to trad IR theory, interestingly. Also, 30 Years' War can be thought of in terms of the playing out of the reformation and counter-reformation, and in the broader context of other 17th century conflicts, e.g. English Civil War, Glorious Revolution.

The Peace of Westphalia marks the beginning of the "modern" states system, according to trad IR theory

man, I remember writing an essay for AP European History in which this was the topic sentence. Good times.

Also crucial in forging a sense of pan-German identity, and facilitating the slow but inexorable rise of Prussia IIRC. In fact, arguably the whole German question, which has overshadowed European history up until 1945/ 1992/ to date can be traced back to the 30 Years' War.

iirc the thirty years war was also the last major european war to be fought with mercenaries and your mixed hired goons instead of standing national armies

xpost - I don't think they (bayonets) had been invented by the end of the 30 Years War.

One other great thing about the 30 Years War was that it was itself kind of part of the 90 Years War between the United Provinces and Spain.

xps to myself

although it is of course possible to characterise European history as essentially French up until 1814(?), then German from then onwards (to the present day?).

Where's a rolling historiography thread when you need one?

holy roman empire germanic

Psycho-somatic addict insane

william guthrie wrote two volumes about the battles of this war that go a long way clearing up some of the military confusion, giving background on who, what and why. they are really expensive, luckily my library has both volumes.

recommended

NDV OTM

I don't think they (bayonets) had been invented by the end of the 30 Years War

I mean that having pikemen protecting musketeers from cavalry charges was phased out when infantry units could defend themselves by fixing bayonets and, yes, it definitely postdates the Thirty Years War.

Magdeburgization

Famous mezzotinter, Ruprecht Pfalzgraf bei Rhein, Herzog von Bayern, Duke of Cumberland.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_-HE1lR1mlb8/SsrdsCkos7I/AAAAAAAABFg/-T7mzvFeDk4/s320/3818049701_57e2da7f71_o.jpg

here is a thing that has long perplexed me about the 30 Years War - why did those big unwieldy Tercio formations the Spanish liked ever seem like a good idea?

Didn't Philip K Dick pick up a 30 Years' War fixation at some point? Why was he into it?

although it is of course possible to characterise European history as essentially French up until 1814(?), then German from then onwards (to the present day?).

That doesn't sound right to me - feel like most of the action is Spain + Hapsburgs in the 15th-16th century.

I am really intrigued by the idea of a PKD 30 Years War novel.

Has anyone read the not-PKD book about a load of West Virginian coal miners who are transported back in time to the 30 Year War (with all their blue collar trade union leftism and modern fire arms)? 1639 or something I think it is called. It is maybe a bit of a roffle, but I haven't read it myself.

those big unwieldy Tercio formations

Because they worked until the advent of better musketry and artillery, they were a better combo of pikes (and swords) and muskets against cavalry, especially, than any other formation. The linear formations that Gustavus Adolphus used and later 18th century military doctrine preferred gave a better rate of fire (as successive lines of men rolled past each other shooting and loading) nonetheless adopted the bayonet as a form of pike and the square was used up until the 19th century, famously at Waterloo.

That doesn't sound right to me - feel like most of the action is Spain + Hapsburgs in the 15th-16th century.

― you don't exist in the database (woof), den 17 augusti 2011 18:00 (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yes, didn't really turn french until the 17th century really, mostly thanks to the thirty years war.

Tercios - I am thinking not just the pike squares, which seem quite handy, but those odd formations that look like little miniature man made castles with little turrets on the corners. They seem so unwieldy that it's hard to imagine them doing anything but sit there.

I also find it fascinating that it took Gustavus Adolphus to turn cavalry back into shock troops (rather than the somewhat rubbish pistoleers they had been up to then).

Tercios are also non-linear and supposedly self-contained; you can swarm around them and ride around them and they'll kill more of you than you of them regardless of their liaison with other tercios.

but surely he is in the book? I only know about the 30 years war from reading it, and I have heard of this guy.

― The New Dirty Vicar, Wednesday, August 17, 2011 11:33 AM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yes--axel o. is a huge player, which is why its odd he's not on wikipedia's like (i guess because he wasn't technically a commander of any armies?)

wedgwood, btw, specifically casts the 30YW as the end of spain as a "great power" (and more broadly as the beginning of the end of hapsburg domination) and the rise of france/the bourbons

yes, didn't really turn french until the 17th century really, mostly thanks to the thirty years war.

French from Pippin until Spanish Empire, really, then French again from the 1650's until 1815 at least. Look at the American uniforms from the Civil War; kepis and epaulettes and whatnot.

she also warns against thinking of european politics in national terms in the era(s) leading up to the 30 years war, preferring instead to talk dynastically i.e., its not france and spain but bourbon and hapsburg

right, that's how i've understood it - spent many happy hours in a-level history with Lockyer's Hapsburg and Bourbon Europe

its not france and spain but bourbon and hapsburg

Considering that most of their subjects didn't speak French and Spanish and their realms were distinctly divisible (hence the indivisible mantra of republicanism), this makes good sense. It's slightly less salient in the British tradition since the monarchy ended up uniting the various kingdoms and territories of the Brit.., er, western Isles.

The Hapsburg architectural influence in Madrid and Toledo was really odd to me.

(Btw, Otto just died)

also i realised i have a residual fondness for gustavus adolphus bcz purely he was mentioned in passing in an erich kästner book i enjoyed as a kid

(i think he appears in a dream, the book is in storage so i can't check)

just reached the part where gustavus adolphus dies and was overcome with unexpected sadness, this despite the the fact that

a) he probably wasn't that great of a guy, given that he was a king invading several other countries uninvited, razing crops and towns to the ground etc
b) given that he is not around today aged 424 i kind of suspected he had to have died at some point
c) i have read the book before
d) CVWedgwood foreshadows his death some pages before

also lol he is at the head of the poll with max's † by his name

he had to destroy Germany to save it, you see

Wedgwood has written an account of the life and times of Cardinal Richlieu, which i have bought, yet it sits forlorn and unread on the shelf above my desk

Started reading this last year but didn't get very far and I've resolved not to read any history this year, it's too depressing.

I found myself chuckling out loud at some audio-book Wedgewood the other day. It probably wasn't actually very funny, but it tickled me at the time. It was some quote from a diplomat reporting that Johann Georg had become very heated with the consumption of much wine, or words to that effect.

attention 30yw fans! i recently discovered that cv wedgwood wrote a biography of CARDINAL RICHELIEU, and it covers much of the same territory but from the french/bourbon angle, which was sort of a sideline in the og text

and i am happy to report that her Authority and Tone is present and correct throughout

for those in need of regular additional info on the territories central to this history, this twitter account is liveblogging the many regions that made up the holy roman empire. this particular episode involves an aristocratic family that named all its male children heinrich for 700 years:

Fear not, vassals, I have not forgotten you! I bring you news of the Vogtei of Greiz and Reichenbach! pic.twitter.com/OqnoQnnsLB

— Empire Roman Holy (@EmpireRomanHoly) February 25, 2019

https://dzwonsemrish7.cloudfront.net/items/0R1m2i0C172V1j0F1t1F/Closed%20burgonet%20(1620).jpg

https://i.imgur.com/AxTjQj0.jpg

can anyone tell me what these windmills are doing on the battlefield? they look mobile.

https://i.imgur.com/0sVgi1Q.png

https://i.imgur.com/291EucF.png

both of these are from drawings of the battle of lutzen

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/pvzcc/images/2/26/Windmill_Zombie.png/revision/latest?cb=20131022024322

Battles happen in spaces occupied by whatever was there before it became a battle field. The odds are pretty good those windmills were put there to grind grain into flour. The armies just happened to converge in battle around them.

they look mobile.

how so?

i thought that too aimless and you could be right. as drawn they just don't look like permanent structures to me, and it seems odd to have several of them in a row? but i dunno

googling windmills of lutzen seems to confirm that the battle happened to take place near a miller's house and some windmills -- they do look impermanent yes but i think that may just be that the artists aren't there for photorealist reproduction of structures that are incidental to th action except as obstacles? the ones in the second pic do look to be on little stands so you can move them easily around a board -- but the entire drawing looks more like a wargaming table than an actual snapshot… and maybe it is? i mean, maybe that's what the artist set up to have something to draw?

I think the stands are just the bases, the bit that you can't turn to face the wind. a lot of old windmills had a v temporary look

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Meindert_Hobbema._Landscape_with_a_windmill_%2817th_century%29.jpg/800px-Meindert_Hobbema._Landscape_with_a_windmill_%2817th_century%29.jpg

https://c8.alamy.com/comp/ADC2GG/exploded-view-of-windmill-for-milling-grain-17th-century-engraving-ADC2GG.jpg

ok I'm gonna reluctantly stand down on this "war windmill" idea :(

I did wonder if they could be some sort of battlefield semaphore tower but looks like they don't arrive til the early C19th

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e7/Chappe_semaphore.jpg/441px-Chappe_semaphore.jpg

https://media.sciencephoto.com/image/v4000066/800wm/V4000066-Chappe_s_semaphore_station.jpg

wedgwood fans will probably like the biography of elizabeth stuart written by carola oman - it's got that same tart authority and vivid flashes of reality that swim up suddenly like a fish. i.e. this description of Marie de Medici:

"Queen Mother," as Elizabeth invariably called her, had proved a terrifying old dame with a towering coiffure of metallic gold curls and sharp features, strongly marked by rage and chagrin

the next sentence:

She had stayed in London until her son-in-law's subjects began to break her windows.

The Habsburgs offer a vision of European unity even the hardest of Brexiteers could get behind, says @RCCoulombe https://t.co/9GD2aGdnDd

— Catholic Herald (@CatholicHerald) May 30, 2019

there will never be a cool pope until a pope excommunicates the trad caths

wallenstein.

funny: i had the opposite goofy experience from tracer hand re “the windmills of lutzen”. i walk thru the battles as best i can on google earth as I read; the lutzen section describes a ditch set back from the eastern road and beyond that a line of windmills, so hovering around the area and zooming in on a possible road i was excited to indeed find a parallel ditch and some ways back a line of obviously modern 20/21c wind turbines. there they are!!! i failed to keep myself from thinking.

At the beginning of the pandemic I ran through the 'Ring of Fire' series where an American town is transported back to southern Germany in 1632. Boy do they fuck up the Thirty Years War!

Madness and idealism flickered up among the oppressed in occasional tongues of flame. A dispossessed Protestant farmer in Austria, Martin Leimbauer, collected a band of followers by preaching and prophesying against the government. The third time his own people betrayed him, his headquarters was surrounded and he himself was dragged ignominiously from his hiding-place under the outspread skirts of two old women and carried with his young wife prisoner to Linz. Here, after declaring that God had made him his deputy on earth, he broke down under sentence of death and went to the block penitent and a Catholic. His wife, sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, escaped with the hangman’s assistant on the eve of her husband’s execution. With its gross humour, its cynical morality and its touch of spiritual grandeur, the story is typical of its time.

still living in the looooong 17th century

elector frederick, whatta dope!

― goole, Tuesday, November 11, 2014 9:29 AM bookmarkflaglink

this guy makes ned stark look like lenin

CVW is never cruel but she comes the closest when noting “the last known resting place of his coffin was a wine-merchant’s cellar at Metz”

D’jall read Tyll? I liked it!

no that looks cool tho! haven’t read grimmelhausen either. was gonna take a look at schiller’s wallenstein trilogy to see if it would be suited for my ongoing community-focused project of proposing plays absolutely no one wants to see.

grimmelshausen. i was working without a net there.

"based" !!

As today is the day everybody and their aunt will quote the famous St. Francis quote
"Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary"
to you, it is almost painful to be THAT spoilsport and tell you... it is NOT by St. Francis.
Sorry folks.
As based as it sounds. pic.twitter.com/UF0pUE5ARp

— Eduard Habsburg (@EduardHabsburg) October 4, 2022