Table of Contents

* List of Illustrations * List of Maps and Battle Plans * List of Tables * Note on Form * The Habsburg Family Tree 1500-1665 * Note on Currencies * Preface Part one: Beginnings * Introduction Three Men and a Window Interpretations The Argument * Trouble in the Heart of Christendom The Empire Confessionalization Religion and Imperial Law * Casa d'Austria Lands and Dynasty Estates and Confession The Catholic Revival * The Turkish War and its Consequences The Turkish Menace The Ways of War The Long Turkish War The Brothers' Quarrel * Pax Hispanica The Spanish Monarchy The Dutch Revolt 1568-1609 The Spanish Road Spanish Peace-making 161 * Dominium Maris Baltici Denmark The Divided House of Vasa Poland-Lithuania * From Rudolf to Matthias 1582-1612 Religion and the German Princes Confession and Imperial Politics to 1608 Union and Liga 1608-9 The Ju lich-Cleves Crisis 1609-10 * On the Brink? Emperor Matthias The Uskok War and the Habsburg Succession 1615-17 255 Palatine Brinkmanship Part Two: Conflict * The Bohemian Revolt 1618-20 For Liberty and Privilege A King for a Crown Ferdinand Gathers his Forces White Mountain Accounting for Failure * Ferdinand Triumphant 1621-4 The Palatine Cause Protestant Paladins The Catholic Ascendancy 1621-9 * Olivares and Richelieu Olivares Richelieu The Valtellina * Denmark's War against the Emperor 1625-9 Trouble in Lower Saxony Wallenstein Denmark's Defeat 1626-9 * The Threat of European War 1628-30 The Baltic The Netherlands Mantua and La Rochelle The Edict of Restitution The Regensburg Electoral Congress 1630 * The Lion of the North 1630-2 Swedish Intervention Between the Lion and the Eagle The Swedish Empire Calls for Assistance Zenith * Without Gustavus 1633-4 The Heilbronn League Tension along the Rhine Spain Intervenes Wallenstein: the Final Act The Two Ferdinands * For the Liberty of Germany 1635-6 Richelieu Resolves on War The War in the West 1635-6 The Peace of Prague 1635 Appeals to Patriotism Renewed Efforts for Peace * Habsburg High Tide 1637-40 Stalemate Resolution on the Rhine Peace for North Germany? * In the Balance 1641-3 The Franco-Swedish Alliance 1641 The War in the Empire 1642-3 Spain's Growing Crisis 1635-43 From Breda to Rocroi 1637-43 * Pressure to Negotiate 1644-5 The Westphalian Congress France in Germany 1644 The Baltic Becomes Swedish 1643-5 1645: Annus horribilis et mirabilis * War or Peace 1646-8 A Crisis of Confidence 1646 Towards Consensus Spain's Peace with the Dutch The Final Round 1648 Part Three: Aftermath * The Westphalian Settlement The International Dimension A Christian Peace Demobilization The Imperial Recovery * The Human and Material Cost An All-destructive Fury? The Demographic Impact The Economic Impact The Crisis of the Territorial State Cultural Impact * Experiencing War The Nature of Experience Military-Civil Relations Perceptions Commemoration * Abbreviations * Notes * Index

About the Author

Peter H. Wilson is G. F. Grant Professor of History at the University of Hull.

Reviews

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) 20090824 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 20091001 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 20091001 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 20090801 [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 20090719