the thirty years war

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