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The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy, by Peter H. Wilson
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A deadly continental struggle, the Thirty Years War devastated seventeenth-century Europe, killing nearly a quarter of all Germans and laying waste to towns and countryside alike. Peter Wilson offers the first new history in a generation of a horrifying conflict that transformed the map of the modern world.
When defiant Bohemians tossed the Habsburg emperor’s envoys from the castle windows in Prague in 1618, the Holy Roman Empire struck back with a vengeance. Bohemia was ravaged by mercenary troops in the first battle of a conflagration that would engulf Europe from Spain to Sweden. The sweeping narrative encompasses dramatic events and unforgettable individuals―the sack of Magdeburg; the Dutch revolt; the Swedish militant king Gustavus Adolphus; the imperial generals, opportunistic Wallenstein and pious Tilly; and crafty diplomat Cardinal Richelieu. In a major reassessment, Wilson argues that religion was not the catalyst, but one element in a lethal stew of political, social, and dynastic forces that fed the conflict.
By war’s end a recognizably modern Europe had been created, but at what price? The Thirty Years War condemned the Germans to two centuries of internal division and international impotence and became a benchmark of brutality for centuries. As late as the 1960s, Germans placed it ahead of both world wars and the Black Death as their country’s greatest disaster.
An understanding of the Thirty Years War is essential to comprehending modern European history. Wilson’s masterful book will stand as the definitive account of this epic conflict.
For a map of Central Europe in 1618, referenced on page XVI, please visit the book feature.
- Sales Rank: #61431 in Books
- Published on: 2011-10-15
- Released on: 2011-09-06
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x 5.25" w x 2.25" l, 2.70 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 1024 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. From the Defenestration of Prague in 1618 until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, brutal warfare swept across Europe. In his monumental study of the causes and the consequences of the Thirty Years War, Wilson, a professor of history at the University of Hull in England, challenges traditional interpretations of the war as primarily religious. He explores instead the political, social, economic as well as religious forces behind the conflict—for example, an Ottoman incursion left the Hapsburg Empire considerably weakened and overshadowed by the Spanish empire. Wilson then provides a meticulous account of the war, introducing some of its great personalities: the crafty General Wallenstein; the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus, who preserved his state through canny political treaties and military operations; and Hapsburg archdukes Rudolf and Matthias, the brothers whose quarrels marked the future of Bohemia, Austria and Hungary. By the war's end, ravaged as all the states were by violence, disease and destruction, Europe was more stable, but with sovereign states rather than empires, and with a secular order. Wilson's scholarship and attention to both the details and the larger picture make his the definitive history of the Thirty Years War. 16 pages of color photos; 22 maps. (Oct.)
Copyright � Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
In his monumental study of the causes and the consequences of the Thirty Years War, Wilson challenges traditional interpretations of the war as primarily religious. He explores instead the political, social, economic as well as religious forces behind the conflict...Wilson then provides a meticulous account of the war, introducing some of its great personalities: the crafty General Wallenstein; the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus, who preserved his state through canny political treaties and military operations; and Hapsburg archdukes Rudolf and Matthias, the brothers whose quarrels marked the future of Bohemia, Austria and Hungary. By the war's end, ravaged as all the states were by violence, disease and destruction, Europe was more stable, but with sovereign states rather than empires, and with a secular order. Wilson's scholarship and attention to both the details and the larger picture make his the definitive history of the Thirty Years War. (Publishers Weekly (starred review) 2009-08-24)
Among continental Europeans, the Thirty Years War is etched in memory...A definitive account has been needed, and now Peter Wilson, one of Britain's leading historians of Germany, has provided it. The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy is a history of prodigious erudition that manages to corral the byzantine complexity of the Thirty Years War into a coherent narrative. It also offers a bracingly novel interpretation. Historians typically portray the Thirty Years War as the last and goriest of Europe's religious wars--a final bonfire of the zealots before the cooler age of enlightened statecraft. Mr. Wilson severely qualifies this conventional wisdom. It turns out that the quintessential war of religion was scarcely one at all...Wilson's masterful account of the Thirty Years War is a reminder that war, and peace, are almost never the offspring of conviction alone. (Jeffrey Collins Wall Street Journal 2009-10-01)
Only in retrospect did the strife acquire coherence as the Thirty Years' War, and Wilson incisively cuts through its several phases to recount the objectives and options of the warring parties...Confidently argued, clearly written, Wilson's history is superb coverage of this pivotal period in European history. (Gilbert Taylor Booklist 2009-10-01)
Peter Wilson's book is a major work, the first new history of the Thirty Years' War in a generation. It is a fascinating, brilliantly written attempt to explain a compelling series of events, which tore the heart out of Europe. (The Times 2009-08-01)
[It] succeeds brilliantly. It is huge both in its scene-setting and its unfolding narrative detail...It is to Wilson's credit that he can both offer the reader a detailed account of this terrible and complicated war and step back to give due summaries. His scholarship seems to me remarkable, his prose light and lovely, his judgments fair. This is a heavyweight book, no doubt. Sometimes, though, the very best of them have to be. (Paul Kennedy Sunday Times 2009-07-19)
Wilson's monumental study captures both the complexities of the political and military transformations and the level of brutality that the endemic struggles unleashed...This will be the defining study of the Thirty Years War for the next generation. (P. G. Wallace Choice 2010-04-01)
About the Author
Peter H. Wilson is Chichele Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford.
Most helpful customer reviews
275 of 284 people found the following review helpful.
Not as Dry As I'd Feared it Would Be.
By Arch Stanton
When I saw this book for sale I was afraid that it would be another REALLY long, dry history book written by somebody who doesn't know how to cut things out. Fortunately I was wrong. This book is pretty much the definitive history of the Thirty Years War. At 851 pages of text it is certainly a long book, but given the complexity of the source material I don't see how it could be otherwise. It has to make up for years with little printed research (At least in English) as well as include all the recent papers printed in other languages. As he points out in the introduction, any comprehensive book on the Thirty Years War requires knowledge of at least 14 different languages. For some reason the English speaking countries don't have much interest in the Thirty Years War. There is a very short list of books that cover it.
A lot has changed since the greatest previous book on the war came out in 1938. There has been a copious amount of new research that just wasn't available then. Also, having been written after World War I the perspective is rather different. In some ways that helped of course, since both wars were so tragically pointless. This book is rather different from that one. While Wedgwood's book relied almost entirely on the chroniclers of the time, this book includes a better look at the war's causes. In fact, the war itself doesn't start until page 269. Wedgwood's book kind of reminded me of Gibbons, at least in the way she arranges her information quite clearly to add force to her thesis. Basically her thesis is that the war was a stupid waste that was caused by naivety and greed for power. Even though I think her thesis works better that Gibbons', it still left a lot out that wasn't essential to her main point. In her defense, her book was only about half the size of this one. This book includes everything. I'm sure that even at this length it left many things but it feels complete. While most other books on this period are focused on the more exciting events, this book is evenly spread through time. The main focus of Thirty Years War books tends to be on the first part with the detail ending after the death of Gustavus Adolphus. Wedgwood is pretty blunt about this, saying that most of the rest of the war was just further mindless violence with few major battles. Obviously ignoring the second half of the war leads to a mistaken impression of the entire conflict.
I really appreciate the layout of this book. The chapters are long but they are divided into subsections every few pages which makes it easier to find a point to put it down. That's something that I wish more books would do. The divisions aren't forced either, so if you're on a boring topic a new one will come along shortly. The battles have pretty clear maps which show the layout of the opposing armies. They say a picture is worth a thousand words and in this case they're right. Even though the battle descriptions are fairly brief, I feel that I understand them better than I did reading Wedgwood's book. There are also full-color pictures of all the major players in the war and several of the more important events. If you have any interest in this war I would strongly recommend this book. It might be a difficult read because of it's length, but it's worth the trouble.
150 of 154 people found the following review helpful.
Probably the Definitive Book in English
By David M. Dougherty
I purchased this book on September 15th, and it has taken me this long to digest the contents (while reading other books.) Make no mistake, the Thirty Years War was extremely complex, and reading about it will be necessarily slow to allow the reader to fully comprehend the subject. This work is extraordinary in that it starts well before 1618 to address the causes of the war, and ends well after 1648 with three chapters addressing the impact of the two treaties ending the war (Osnabrueck and Muenster, together called the Treaty of Westphalia,) the costs of the war, and the general population's experiences and adaptations.
This is only the third general book on the war I have read in English, the other two being Wedgwood, "The Thirty Years War" and Parker, "The Thirty Years War", although I have read a number of books in German on the subject including Schiller and Jessen. There are also books more limited in scope that I could recommend like "Wallenstein" by Golo Mann. But so far, this work seems to me to be the gold standard.
It is impossible today to depict the utter devastation visited on the German population during this war, and the author frankly doesn't try. The book is primarily concerned with the political and military maneuvering that allowed the war to break out and continue for so long. Even in Chapter 22, "The Human and Material Cost", the focus is on the macro level. The discussion of populations deaths in Germany have ranged from fifteen to eighty-three (5/6ths) percent, although the author, after much discussion, adopts twenty percent in one place and thirty in another. Certainly the populations of many towns were extirpated, and killings by soldiers of civilians and vice-versa was endemic outside of the formal battles. Regardless of the true percentage which most authorities agree was around 40%, the effect on the civilian population was unbelievable, and a country with a promising middle class was reduced to desolation and want. Only in the last chapter does the author touch upon the subject, and then only lightly. As late as 1980, Germans rated the Thirty Years War as the most devastating event in their country's history, World Wars I and II notwithstanding. Throughout the conflict foreign armies or armies of a competing religion passed through communities and regions looting, murdering, raping, and burning at every opportunity.
I found the author's attempt to downplay religion most interesting although it was impossible for me to agree with his analysis. Many writers have cast the war as Protestant versus Roman Catholic, and indeed, armies were generally made up almost exclusively of adherents of one religion or the other. Certainly religious issues were paramount when soldiers murdered civilians, and it must be remembered that this was an age in which people died over the number of sacrements or the reality of transubstantiation. As the author points out, princes (most notably a number of Protestant princes) converted from one religion to the other for political purposes (politicians are always venal and opportunistic), but the general population tended to fight for their religion to the last extremity. I don't mean to argue the point with the author, but this was essentially the only point where I felt he was in error.
The maps of the various battles are useful, but my volume lacked an overall map of the area of conflict. Actually, several are needed to reflect the situation at various times (consider a single map showing World War II.) Supposedly there was to be a map of Europe in 1618 in the end papers, but it was not present -- instead there was s chart of the Habsburg Family Tree. This deficiency of area maps seems to be common in works on the Thirty Years War, but perhaps the next edition will add them.
This book is split into three parts, "Beginnings," "Conflict" and "Aftermath." The "Beginnings" contains eight chapters of the evolution towards the war and spans 268 pages. I found this part to be the best, not the least since it is usually skated over in other works. The "Conflict" part is somewhat mind-numbing (480 pages with 12 chapters) and most recommended for those interested in the military campaigns of Ferdinand, Wallenstein, Tilly, Gustavus Adolphus and the lesser lights. This is where one can become bogged down with the constant campaigning, shifting alliances, and ever-changing conditions. The analysis in the third part, "Aftermath" (90 pages) must be read carefully to understand the impact of the war of subsequent history. All parts are valuable but may appeal to different readers.
This is a very scholarly work, and the notes (73 pages) are extremely valuable. There is no bibliography or list of references, and the reader must use the notes for guidance.
I highly recommend this work to everyone interested in early modern times or the seventeenth century in Europe. In addition, this is an awesome reference work for one to be able to refer back to some incident or issue in the Thirty Years War. This conflict did not become fully resolved until Bismarck's consolidation of Germany late in the 19th century, so its impact was far-reaching and important.
83 of 91 people found the following review helpful.
First Printing Flawed by Missing Map - Publisher Fix is Planned
By Severian
I may amend this review later, but after waiting forever to get a copy of this (publisher is backordered), I've discovered that Harvard University Press has cleverly excluded a key feature from the first edition, mainly a "theater level" map of Central Europe in the period covered. If you happen to know where Westphalia. the River Weser, and Julich are, no problem, but the rest of us would appreciate being able to sort out the complex political and military events being described in the book by looking at an included map.
This is definitely a publishing screw-up; the general map is mentioned in the List of Maps in the contents, but is not present in the book. The publisher has the map available on its website, but the file is monstrously large and will not print correctly on either of my two printers. I guess you could use an atlas or keep walking back and forth between your computer monitor and reading chair, but considering the not insubstantial cost of this book, I do not find this state of affairs satisfactory.
Moreover, even if we did have the theater level map mentioned, the absence of smaller operational scale maps is a pretty grave omission. The gold standard in epic narrative history, Foote's Civil War, has various scales of maps every few pages so the armchair general can see exactly what is at stake and what each side was trying to accomplish in a given area. Wilson gives us numerous battle maps but that's it. Some intermediate scale maps (along with the large scale map that was supposed to have been included) would have been very welcome.
I've emailed the publisher and will amend this review if they provide any sort of meaningful customer service to resolve the issue. I am not sure if all copies have been affected by this glitch, but at least one other reviewer mentions the problem, so caveat emptor!
Update: The publisher has gratefully agreed to forward me a free copy of the updated printing of the book which will feature the missing map. The publisher stated that the missing map was the fault of the original UK publisher who failed to provide the relevant proof file. This is excellent customer service and is much appreciated.
I am upgrading my star rating to 5 of 5, after finishing the book. Wilson is an excellent writer who focuses on many aspects surrounding the 30 Years War that the earlier standard history of the period (by C.V. Wedgwood written in 1938) glossed over or ignored, i.e. the Hapsburg war with the Ottomans that was a sort of training ground for military leaders on both sides, military tactics and weapons features, etc. The result is a fuller and, for a modern reader, more understandable picture of the context and narrative of an immensely complex chain of events.
Wilson infers that Wedgwood was harsher on the Hapsburgs than history warranted because of her context (with 30s style appeasement and rise of Hitler making fear of autocrats a trait of the period she was writing) but in truth I did not feel Wedgwood was all that anti-Hapsburg. I guess though that ultimately Wilson is to be credited for his unbiased and fair-minded coverage of most parties in the war, even the more controversial ones like Sweden and Spain ... and of course, the Hapsburgs!
Compared to Wedgwood's study, Wilson combines a more "modern" style of analysis and narrative interspersed. His coverage of military events is more expert, complete with many battle maps and quite detailed and lively discussion of the battles. Wilson translates all his quotes (assuming less of his readers than CVW did back in 1938!) and also covers more background in greater detail making his work (somewhat) friendlier to those unfamiliar with the 17th Century as compared to Wedgwood. I would still not call this an introductory text, but it is easier going in terms of authorial assumption of reader knowledge.
Wilson's writing lacks a bit of the grace of Wedgwood, but his narratives are well done and the book is not dull. My only complaint is that even with properly updated endmap version, the text could have used many more "theatre maps" like in Foote's "Civil War" series. It is sometimes very hard to figure out why General A was trying to take City B, and a few more intermediate scale campaign maps may have made the theater maneuvers a bit more clear.
All in all, if you must own only one book on the 30 Years War, I would say this is the way to go, assuming you don't mind the length. But I am happy to own both this book and Wedgwood, as the two are complimentary to a large extent.
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