the thirty years war

rereading right now: seems all too grimly apt suddenly :(

i actually think she does touch on the element tracer was missing, abt the cultural dimension, in the first chapter -- if only to say that its salience was small relatively small (i'll go back and have a closer look)

Can't believe Wallenstein got only one vote.

fans of both the 30 years war and The Sot Weed Factor (and indeed Don Quixote) may want to dip into this. Written in 1669 about a naif who wanders about the horrors of the 30YW.

http://rbsche.people.wm.edu/teaching/grimmelshausen/

The officer bade them dig on stoutly. And presently they came to a cask, which they burst open, and therein found a fellow that had neither nose nor ears, and yet still lived. He, when he was somewhat revived, and had recognized some of the troop, told them how on the day before, as some of his regiment were a-foraging, the peasants had caught six of them. And of these they first of all, about an hour before, had shot five dead at once, making them stand one behind another; and because the bullet, having already passed through five bodies, did not reach him, who stood sixth and last, they had cut off his nose and ears, yet before that had forced him to render to five of them the filthiest service in the world* . But when he saw himself thus degraded by these rogues without shame or knowledge of God, he had heaped upon them the vilest reproaches, though they were willing now to let him go. Yet in the hope one of them would from annoyance send a ball through his head, he called them all by their right names: yet in vain. Only this, that when he had thus chafed them they had clapped him in the cask here present and buried him alive, saying, since he so desired death they would not cheat him of his amusement. ...

george smiley reads grimmelshausen!! (i think his academic studies were in medieval german)

rereading

p certain he comes up in wolfgang kayser’s v good the grotesque in art and literature, which is v strong on the “german” 17th century groteske.

see ask adam tooze’s powerpoint for the thirty year’s war, a lecture in his current series on germany and war

battle of the white mountain not how i imagined it from wedgwood

Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria

He banned dancing and anyone under the age of 55 from using a horse and carriage, paid his servants a pittance, "his meanness a byword in Europe". lol, I couldn't vote for this one in good conscience.

that PowerPoint is fabulous but ironically I'm too wrapped up in China this year to have time for Wedgwood or Wilson

I like Tooze's books on the Nazi economy and the tumultuous "Deluge" of the interwar period. His twitter is always good value as well.

i didn't vote bcz polls are bad and you should feel bad: however i have a fondness for johann tserclaes count of tilly as he shares a name w/my niece

In 1619 the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was truly massive! https://t.co/5Nc4669zIm pic.twitter.com/QShLEhFH2P

— Adam Tooze (@adam_tooze) January 30, 2018

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