The 30 years war was worse than WW1 and WW2 in terms of suffering and human misery

whats the best book on the THIRTY YEARS WAR?

I want to read about atrocities and violent stuff.

>germans
>mattering
If protestnats died I'm happy, shame it stopped the camapigins into the ottoman empire

If you've got a bit, "The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy" is a must read. Be warned pretty long and pretty dense. I've had it for six months and am only a third of way through.

and they say protestantism destroyed Europe...

Very biased protestant history

Proportionally i believe it was indeed worse,
Casualties in the imperial states involved ranged from 25% to 75% of the population

>shame it stopped the camapigins into the ottoman empire
Its the catholics fault for choosing to attack fellow christians rather than muslims

The deluge killed more poles proportionally than occupation during ww2

Bro they were robbing the churches

Protestants BTFO

>This much historical revisionism
Protestants allied with the Sultan against Europe.

The whole reason the reformation started was because of the churches corruption, constantly swindling the peasants of all they have.
Therefor i dont see much problem with starving peasants "robbing" fat bishops

Yep.
Only plebs disagree.
>tfw you will never be a German peasant girl in the 17th century
Thank God.

>An enemy of my enemy is my friend
This was how everyone thought back then which is why catholic France joined the protestant cause even though they were very harsh against the huguenots back home

>Study history in Vienna.
>get acces to some primary sources.
>mfw reading a detailed report by some dohickey who scouted for the Kaiser what Wallenstein and his goonies were doing.
>basically being niggers between battles and making Nanjing look positively mercyful.

There is a bloody reason why the later german classic wrote about the 30 year war the same way people today talk about the Holocaust/ concentration camps.
It was fucking awful, the german states and central Europe in general lost a lot of people in proportion to its time.
The equivalent today would probably a war in China and at the end 30% of all chinks are dead and the whole country is a barren wasteland.

Catholic France influenced by a Catholic cardinal allied with the sultan against Europe.

>against europe

QFT

This is why Germans being a war-like people is a meme thanks to Prussia and the Second/Third Reich. In actuality, the German-speaking lands during the Middle Ages to the Napoleonic Wars was a battleground of Europe.

>Middle Ages to the Napoleonic Wars was a battleground of Europe
Teutonic order, partitions of Poland.
Not a meme. Germans were chimping out on their eastern neighbours every time they were able to. Today it's the neocolonial economy fuckup that alows money flow from post soviet Eastern Europe to western banks and corporations (hugely to Germany). No need for war when economic servitude.

is there another good but shorter read?

I just want to learn a bit and have fun, not become an expert on the subject

I've heard good things about "The Thirty Years War, 1618-1648; by Samuel Gardiner. I haven't read it myself though.

Here's an amazon link: amazon.com/Thirty-Years-War-1618-1648/dp/153022960X/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1494462150&sr=1-3&keywords=thirty years war

Read Simplicius Simplicissimus a historical novel from 1668 that takes place during the war, and catch a glimpse into the minds of people from a long long time ago.

ever heard about this one?

30 years war by Anthony Grafton (Author)

amazon.com/Thirty-Years-Review-Books-Classics/dp/1590171462/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2/136-4409526-1658840?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1590171462&pd_rd_r=KD7MFRZYG6F7SAXNGXRA&pd_rd_w=hIQY0&pd_rd_wg=cbCYd&psc=1&refRID=KD7MFRZYG6F7SAXNGXRA

Historical in the sense it's from the past not in the sense that it's pure history, there's loads of magic, and fantasy elements in it, in fact I'm pretty sure the devil has a guest appearance. Regardless it's a neat read.

Wikipedia

It was a holocaust, all those poor protestants.

Wrong.

Wrong

>Reading about how Prussia suffered from the Swedes during the Thirty Years War
>Some guys were roasted over a fire or tortured for days by Swiss soldiers trying to get their money
>Entire villages were wiped out from the slaughter
>When Frederick The Great Elector beat the Swedes at Fehrbellin, apparently the peasants who still remembered the shit the Swedes put them through fucking murdered the Swedish nobility who had fled the battle and ignored bribes and gold rewards that the Swedes promised for not being harmed
Swedes were apparently some brutal guys back then.

It was the European version of the Second Congo War

Wrong.

You're lucky photography doesn't exist of hundreds of people hanged from trees.

I have a pet theory that all the violent and barbaric whites were mostly killed off in all the wars

Leaving only cucks to breed

>cucks
Get out with your genetic determinism and retardation.

Where did you read that??

"First came the Greycoats to eat all my swine,

Next came the Bluecoats to make my sons fight,

Next came the Greencoats to make my wife whore,

Next came the Browncoats to burn down my home.

I have naught but my life, now come the Blackcoats to rob me of that."

—Anonymous Poem from the Thirty Years War

Mad redditor is mad

...

What makes you think they didn't have children before the war or didn't sire some during the war through rape?

Both sides were pretty brutal for example the Sack of Magdeburg which is considered the worst massacre in the war was carried out by imperial troops

Get this hothead out of here!

Can some one explain the conflict to me? It's awfully confusing. Are there definitive non-meme badguys?

I'm pretty sure that some of the stories regarding it are just propaganda lies, like roasting and eating Protestant children. Turning your opponents into devils by making shit up was standard practice back then.

Regardless of who was at fault, we can all agree on how good this song about the tragedies of the Thirty Years' War is: youtu.be/tkBXrenRhPQ

yeah but it wasnt recorded digitally so it didnt happen (im being sarcastic)

Shut the fuck up the protestants suffered the most

>Sabaton
Cringy and cheesy, like most of power metal.

Christopher Clarks Iron Kingdom: the Rise and Downfall of Prussia. A good book to read if you're a prussiaboo, but Clark is definitely biased toward Prussia and paints it as this enlightened progressive state so you should remain skeptic when reading it. Probably one of the better books regarding Prussian history too, Heres the section regarding the Peasants murdering those Swedes
>There was now a great fleeing of Swedes across the Mark Brandenburg. Considerable numbers of them, more perhaps than fell on the field of battle, were hacked to death in opportunist attacks by peasants as they made their way northwards. A contemporary report noted that peasants in the area around the town of Wittstock, not far from the border with Pomerania, had slain 300 Swedes, including a number of officers: ‘although several of the latter offered 2000 thalers for their lives, they were decapitated by the vengeful peasants.’21 Memories of the ‘Swedish terror’ still vivid in the older generation played a role here.

>he doesn't listen to historical Swedish power metal

Meant for

what was "21 memories of the Swedish terror"?

21 was just a citation. Can't do the tiny citation thing here though. Also, here is another excerpt about some messed up things the Imperial and Swedes did
>In 1638, the imperial and Saxon armies passed through the little town of Lenzen in the Prignitz to the north-west of Berlin, where they tore all the wood and equipment from the houses before putting them to the torch. Whatever householders rescued from the flames, the soldiers took from them by force. Hardly had the imperials departed, but the Swedes attacked and plundered the town, treating the ‘citizens, women and children so gruesomely that such things were never told of the Turks’. An official report compiled by the Lenzen authorities in January 1640 sketched a grim picture: ‘They tied our honest burgher Hans Betke to a wooden pole and roasted him at the fire from seven in the morning until four in the afternoon, so that he gave up the spirit amidst much shrieking and pains.’ The Swedes cut the calves of an elderly man to stop him from walking, scalded a matron to death with boiling water, hanged children naked in the cold and forced people into the freezing water.

Swedish version is better
youtube.com/watch?v=mo3cd1Rjsz4

>he doesn't listen to historical Swedish power metal
No, because I'm not a faggot. You do realize it's possible to make music about historical things that isn't uninspired cookie-cutter music, right? If you're going to circlejerk over "cultured" metal, at least pick something actually good like Iron Maiden.

It was evil vs evil

Noice.

Thanks, man.

hold onto your butts this is going to take a while to explain.

So in the early 1600s, the Hapsburgs - particularly, Ferdinand, Count of Styria and soon-to-be Holy Roman Emperor - were set to inherit the throne. Unfortunately, Ferdinand was zealously Catholic, while Bohemia had a fairly large Protestant population, and it very much looked like Ferdinand would undo all the protections put in place for Protestants up to that point. Instead, many nobles preferred Protestant Frederick V, Elector Palatinate. When Ferdinand sent officials to Prague to facilitate the transition in 1618, tensions boiled over and dissenting nobles threw the officials out the third floor window of the Bohemian Chancellery. Somehow, everyone survived, and when the news made it back to Austria, everyone started gearing up for war.

As the Emperor geared up for war, the Bohemians started reaching out for allies. Offers were made to Savoy, Saxony, Transylvania, and the Palatinate, each being offered the throne in return for protection. Ultimately, only the Palatinate joined the Bohemians, while the Spanish sent a force from Brussels under General Spinola to support the Emperor and even managed to convince Protestant Saxony to join the Catholic side. Meanwhile, the Catholic League was mobilized under the banner of Bavaria, who was promised Frederick V's electorate.

The Bohemian revolt ended up being fairly brief and uneventful. Revolts in Upper Austria were pacified by the Count of Tilly (leader of the Imperial forces), and in 1620 the combined forces of Tilly, the Spanish, and the Catholic League decisively routed the Bohemians at White Mountain, effectively ending the Bohemian revolt.

>cont

With Bohemia pacified, the Palatinate was now alone in the war and surrounded by enemies. While Spinola ravaged the Rhenish Palatinate, Frederick V was outlawed and his Electorate (as well as the Upper Palatinate) was passed to Duke Maximillian of Bavaria. However, Spinola's campaigning was far less decisive - the Rhenish Palatinate held on until 1622, and, although Tilly would turn his attentions West to aid Spinola, even decisively defeating the Protestant forces under Mansfeld at Stahtlohn, the Imperials couldn't secure a complete victory. What was left of the Protestant forces fled northwards, ultimately being absorbed into Dutch forces. There, Frederick V ended his involvement in the war, effectively ending that phase of the conflict.

However, the now-Emperor Ferdinand enacted sweeping measures to penalize the rebels. The Palatinate was absorbed into various Catholic states, and land confiscations ended up affecting nearly all major noble families in Bohemia. Moravia ended up with majority German nobles, and overall, Ferdinand had enacted the largest land redistribution in Europe prior to WW2. Just as important, an aggressive Catholicisation program was kicked off, further alienating the Protestants. Although the smashing Imperial victories thus far had led to the dissolution of the Protestant Union, the heavy-handed measures of Ferdinand ensured that war would continue.

Unfortunately for Ferdinand, his heavy-handed policies attracted the attention of foreign Protestants, namely Denmark. With financial backing from Cardinal Richelieu in France, Denmark had already been projecting power south for some time. The Danish King also conveniently held the Duchy of Holstein, providing a casus belli. Thanks to Baltic tolls, money from France and Sweden, and support from areas as far flung as Scotland, the Danes were well poised to project power into Northern Germany.

Christian, king of Denmark and Duke of Holstein, invaded Germany in 1625 with an army mostly made of mercenaries. To counter this, Emperor Ferdinand hired a Bohemian noble who had become rich off the recent land grabs - Albrecht von Wallenstein. Wallenstein was given free reign to plunder captured territories, setting the stage for one of the biggest factors that made the war so devastating. Wallenstein managed to reduce the financial burden of his forces and field significantly larger forces than before through a somewhat brutal means. By having his troops plunder their resources for survival from the surrounding land, he could field an army that was estimated to be as big as 100,000 men.

Unfortunately for Christian of Denmark, his financial support wasn't backed by manpower. France had its own civil war to worry about, and Sweden was busy fighting Poland. Mansfeld's forces did come out of hiding in the Netherlands, but they were soundly defeated by Wallenstein, while later that year Christian himself was defeated by Tilly. Mansfeld's army dissolved and he died late in 1626 of illness, allowing Wallenstein to focus on Denmark. Wallenstein ended up taking most of Christian's continental possessions, even occupying Jutland. However, without a fleet, Copenhagen remained safe. So he besieged Stralsund in hopes of capturing a port from which to launch an invasion.

Ultimately Danish involvement ended with the Treaty of Lubeck in 1629, which let Christian retain his territories in return for abandoning the war. Unfortunately, that same year, Ferdinand took his measures to the extreme again with the Edict of Restitution. This took back many Lutheran Church holdings, further escalating the sense of persecution for the Protestants. Not much later, Wallenstein was dismissed, the result of pressure from people like Duke Maximillian, who disliked the devastation Wallenstein's armies brought to the lands they crossed through. The power he held also brought distrust, so he was fired.

That's where Sweden comes in. Sweden had similar aims as Denmark. Being bankrolled by Richelieu, the Swedes hoped to gain a foothold in Germany as their war with Poland winded down. Under the command of Gustavus Adolphus, the Swedes swept through Germany after landing in Pomerania in 1630. Though the Catholics secured some brief victories, including the controversial sack of Magdeburg in 1631, their fortunes were now changing. At Brietenfeld in 1631, he decisively defeated Tilly and Pappenheim - one of the new Imperial commanders - swinging the German protestants onto Sweden's side. Of note was Saxony, who had once fought against the Protestants but had joined Adolphus at Breitenfeld. By 1632, Sweden's army had ballooned from 42,000 men to nearly 150,000. Meanwhile, Russia opened a war with Poland, allowing the Swedes to end their war with the Poles. By the end of 1632, Tilly was dead, the Catholic League had been defeated, and the Swedes now controlled much of Germany. Oddly enough, there were surprisingly few Swedes in the Swedish army. The bulk were actually local Germans.

With the Swedes now sweeping across Germany, the Emperor turned to the only proven general he had left - Wallenstein. Wallenstein took a different approach than Tilly - rather than face Adolphus directly, he marched on his supply lines, forcing the Swedes to meet him on his own terms. At Lutzen at the end of 1632, the Swedes fought Wallenstein. Despite fighting a defensive battle from a fortified position, Wallenstein was forced to withdraw after a day of hard fighting and the death of an Allied commander, Pappenheim. However, Gustavus Adolphus also lay dead on the field, throwing a wrench into the Swedish plans.

With Adolphus dead, Wallenstein began working to arbitrate between the Catholics and Protestants. However, Ferdinand feared that he was fomenting rebellion, and, with the backing of Duke Maximillian and much of the Catholic league, he was assassinated in 1634. Even without Wallenstein, however, the Swedish hegemony began to unravel. At Nordlingen, a joint Spanish-Imperial force smashed the Swedish forces in Swabia, and by early 1635, Swedish control over southern Germany had ended. Soon after, the Imperials and Protestant Germans came together for the Peace of Prague, which delayed the Edict of Restitution by 40 years and allowed Protestant rulers to retain lands held by them in 1627. The treaty also officially folded the Catholic League's army into the Imperial Army and forbade the princes from forging alliances with foreign powers - effectively cementing the power of the Emperor. Combined with an amnesty for those who joined Sweden after 1630, the peace stripped Sweden of her allies in the region. For all intents and purposes, the war seemed very close to being over.

Unfortunately for Ferdinand, Richelieu wasn't about to let Germany be at peace. The Peace of Prague left powerful Hapsburg domains along all of France's borders, and France couldn't have that. France declared war on Spain in 1635, and the Holy Roman Empire a year later. Offensives were launched into Germany and the Low Countries, and a treaty was signed with Count Oxenstierna - Gustavus Adolphus's right hand man and current commander of Swedish forces in Germany to coordinate the war effort.

The Swedes created two new army groups and secured an alliance with Hesse-Kassel, defeating the Imperials at Wittstock in 1636 and undoing much of the damage of Nordlingen. Unfortunately, the French were met with failure. Their initial offensives faltered, and the Spanish/Imperial counteroffensives saw the Hapsburgs going as far as threatening Paris. However, Ferdinand II died in 1637, and his successor, Ferdinand III, was now focused on ending the war.

As preparations for peace talks began, the war slowly shifted in favor of the French/Swedes. The Swedes decisively defeated the Imperials once more at Brietenfeld in 1642, the Spanish were decisively defeated by the French at Rocroi in 1643, and revolts were springing up across Spain. French advances severed the line of Hapsburg possessions that connected Hapsburg Spain with the Netherlands, and the Spanish were forced to divert their war effort to the domestic front.

>hopefully just one more

By the last few years of the war, all the major players present at the start were out. Richelieu died in 1642, followed by the French king the next year. Oxenstierna was still alive, but he had withdrawn to Sweden to manage court politics, leaving marshal Tortenson in his place. Denmark attempted to rejoin the war to gain a place at the negotiating table, but the Swedes defeated them in 1644, keeping them out of the war once and for all. Though things generally seemed to be going the way of the Franco-Swedes, everyone was getting worn out. Despite advancing across Southern Germany, the French failed to make any decisive victories, and the Swedes had to abort a siege of Vienna and Brunn due to Hapsburg resistance. A truce was signed in 1647, but sporadic fighting continued until the Battle of Prague in 1648, in which the Swedes captured Prague Castle - the very building in which the war began - but failed to subdue the whole city.

The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 is it's own clusterfuck that would take several posts to explain, but the general idea was that the rights of the princely states would be respected. The Peace of Augsburg was reaffirmed (each prince could determine his state's religion), the rights of those not practicing the state religion were to be respected, and most importantly, the recognition of the sovereignty of the participating parties was achieved.

You also had Switzerland and the Netherlands formally gain independence, and large areas in the West of the HRE fell under French control. Sweden also gained a foothold in the Baltic, with Mecklenberg coming into their sphere of influence.

/autism

>tl;dr
>a couple of guys get thrown out of a window
>8 million people die

You give us a detailed summary of that report right the fuck now

Power metal is the ICP of metal.

It's not bait. In the 1960s there was a newspaper poll in West Germany asking people what was the worst tragedy in German history, and most of them said the 30 years war. Not WW1 and not even WW2 despite the fact a lot of people back then actually lived through or fought in WW2.

Apostatism was the worse crime.

Good posts

Apostasy, not apostatism. Learn English nigger.

it was fucking bad. really bad. anywhere from 30-40% of ALL OF EUROPE WAS DEAD AT THE END.

read up on the sack of Magdeburg. babies on the ends of pikes, the entire city slaughtered. it traumatized the people that were doing the shit it was so bad. Count Tilly was shocked to his bones from that, and he was the general of the army doing it. him and his guard including some of Pappenheim black Cuirassiers rode through the hell on earth trying to stop the worst of it, and saw things that broke even them, and they were some hard motherfuckers even for the early gunpowder and pike days.

now imagine that lasting for closer to 40 years than 30.

it really started with the defenestration of Prague.

I cant really bitch too much about it, since i have an ancestor who was involved and made his bones and got rich from being a mercenary in those days.

>anywhere from 30-40% of ALL OF EUROPE WAS DEAD AT THE END.
The population of central Europe dropped ~30% in the span of 30 years. Doesn't mean that the third of the continent was just murdered.

I imagine agriculture, trade, and citi jobs were all interrupted during this period, resulting in other problems leading to death?

yes it does. they had no brakes on the rape train then. it was pillage loot and murder all day every day. its how they were paid.

t. Crypto-Mudslime

And plagues - when the Austrians brought forces up north from Italy, they brought a plague with them.

>genetic determinism
>bad
Nigger detected

Is there any source for that 30 percent to 40 percent claim? I'm interested in looking into that.

*tips fedora*

I don't have it at hand anymore. I found it by accident because the State Archive in Vienna is a clusterfuck. They have two guys taking care of boatloads documents and other shit.

The whole thing was hard as fuck to read because back then written accounts had no punctuation, the clerks/ people who could write never stopped their writing instrument and on top of that, old parchment smells like hell.

I'll write what I still remember and what I can decipher from my notes.

>The author was an unnamed guy, my prof. guessed that it was most likely a courtier of Ferdinand II.
>He followed Wallenstein North somewhere in the 1620ies. After Dessau Bridge and before the peace negotiations.
>The author mostly travelled by foot or Horse and never even saw Wallenstein. the great general didn't bother with the guy but gave him an escort of 3 guards to make sure he didn't die.
>There was never a real mention of seen warcrimes but a boatload of accounts of survivors and a detailed description of the wasteland that Wallenstein's army left behind.
>one gruesome account was crucified and burnt family next to their farm.
>Apparently they were not willingor able to give the Soldiers supplies so they simply killed them.

>When the author asked one his guards why they would to something, the guard replied:"They (the farmers) got lucky, sometimes when the boys didn't get what they wanted, they decided to play games."
>Those 'games' were mostly a version of 'Spießrutenlauf'.
>Like the punishment for deserters, the Soldiers would stand in Square, their pikes turned inward.
>The victims would be stabbed contiously until they died.
>What entertained to Soldiers about it was the fact, that there seemed to be a little spot in the middle where no pike could reach you and most of the time, there was only enough space for one person to get to that spot.
>A wild scramble would ensue for this 'safe' spot while the Soldiers laughed and sang bawdy songs.
>even though the author did never witnsess such 'games' he neverthenless wrote that he heard four accounts about these 'games' and they alle pretty much went the same.

>The latter part of the report describes the huge baggage train that followed the army around.
>Along the way, many Soldiers either took their families from home with them or just married a girl they fancied or could get their hands on.
>The 'camp mothers', as they were called, mostly stayed true to their husbands, except thos of lower ranked soldiers. They had to whore themselves out to make a little bit of money.
>The richer ones would even have one two serfs who helped them take care of their cart/ tent and especially the loot.
>While stealing from another Soldier was punished severly, this did not affect the camp followers. They stole from each other like gypsies, if the author is to be believed.
>In the final paragraph the author advises the emperor to distrust Wallensteins intentions as he 'behaves like a robber baron and his soldiers are a worse blight than Attila's kin.'

That's all I have. I think there is also a diary of a Soldier during the 30 years war, published somewhere. I don't know if it is available in english.

the camp followers is where my one traceable ancestor from the late 1500's one wife came from.

he won her, 2 chickens, a hat, and a "good scabbard" at a game of dice in 1635. he was some shitty ass captain or something. I'll try to get up with the cousin of mine that is the family historian, he tells the stories like some seedy as fuck murderhobo porno, but when he writes this shit out, its horribly dry and boring.

>I think there is also a diary of a Soldier during the 30 years war
Peter Hagendorf

The Thirty Years War: A Documentary History

>Teutonic order
Isn't exclusivly German though. A lot of Dutch, English, French and Scandinavian dudes fought with them.

said no one ever

Friends,

is there any difference between Peter Wilson's

"Europe's Tragedy: a New History of the Thirty Years War"

and

"The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy"

As I've said, both are from the exact same author, but the latter was published more recently according to amazon.

Great thread

Edgy.

it certainly was a horrible war

>genetic determinism
you mean' evolution'?

Yes, the Vatican is the most evil institution on earth. Congratulations for finally figuring that out.

Thanks user!