What stays with me from reading The Thirty Years War is the utter devastation wrought on what was later to become Germany. The Civil War gave us Sherman's march to the sea and the intentional trail of devastation meant to shatter the south's will to fight. The military leaders Tilly, Wallenstein, Arnim and Gustavus Adolphus subjected the civilian population to 30 years of continuous plunder and pillaging as they struggled to feed and pay their armies. Hundreds of marches, sieges, burned homes and destruction of crops. Years and years of famine. Cities in which 90% of the population was killed or driven away. Wedgwood describes the extent of the plague and hunger:
Meanwhile the rulers of Hapsburg Austria, Bavaria, Bohemia, France, Spain, Sweden the Palatinate, Saxony, and the rest of the aristocracy played a grand game with their mercenary armies.
Yet, despite the weight of the subject matter, The Thirty Years War is an amazingly absorbing, readable, riveting book. It will help you understand what was, at its time, the first world war, and the foundation for subsequent battles between Germany, France, Spain, Austria, Poland, etc. At the same time the book will sweep you along with its tale of heroes and villains; a King who fought at the front of his army and avaricious generals who schemed only after personal wealth; rulers who, in the name of their Christianity, declined peace; ministers who wage war and at the same time arrange royal marriages to further their countries interests. Great stuff!
At Calw the pastor saw a woman gnawing on the raw flesh of a dead horse on which a hungry dog and some ravens were also feeding. In Alsace the bodies of criminals were torn from the gallows and devoured; in the whole Rhineland they watched the graveyards against marauders who sold the flesh of the newly buried for food; at Zweibrucken a woman confessed to having eater her child. Acorns, goats' skins, grass, were all cooked in Alsace; cats, dogs, and rats were sold in the market at Worms. In Fulda and Coburg and near Frankfort and the great refugee camp, men went in terror of being killed and eaten by those maddened by hunger...
Meanwhile the rulers of Hapsburg Austria, Bavaria, Bohemia, France, Spain, Sweden the Palatinate, Saxony, and the rest of the aristocracy played a grand game with their mercenary armies.
Yet, despite the weight of the subject matter, The Thirty Years War is an amazingly absorbing, readable, riveting book. It will help you understand what was, at its time, the first world war, and the foundation for subsequent battles between Germany, France, Spain, Austria, Poland, etc. At the same time the book will sweep you along with its tale of heroes and villains; a King who fought at the front of his army and avaricious generals who schemed only after personal wealth; rulers who, in the name of their Christianity, declined peace; ministers who wage war and at the same time arrange royal marriages to further their countries interests. Great stuff!
