The Thirty Years War

Europe's tragedy

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Last edited by MARC Bot
December 31, 2022 | History

The Thirty Years War

Europe's tragedy

  • 13 Want to read
  • 1 Have read

The horrific series of conflicts known as the Thirty Years War (1618-48) tore the heart out of Europe, killing perhaps a quarter of all Germans and laying waste to whole areas of Central Europe to such a degree that many towns and regions never recovered. All the major European powers apart from Russia were heavily involved and, while each country started out with rational war aims, the fighting rapidly spiralled out of control, with great battles giving way to marauding bands of starving soldiers spreading plague and murder. The war was both a religious and a political one and it was this tangle of motives that made it impossible to stop. Whether motivated by idealism or cynicism, everyone drawn into the conflict was destroyed by it. At its end a recognizably modern Europe had been created but at a terrible price.Peter Wilson's book is a major work, the first new history of the war in a generation, and a fascinating, brilliantly written attempt to explain a compelling series of events. Wilson's great strength is in allowing the reader to understand the tragedy of mixed motives that allowed rulers to gamble their countries' future with such horrifying results. The principal actors in the drama (Wallenstein, Ferdinand II, Gustavus Adolphus, Richelieu) are all here, but so is the experience of the ordinary soldiers and civilians, desperately trying to stay alive under impossible circumstances.The extraordinary narrative of the war haunted Europe's leaders into the twentieth century (comparisons with 1939–45 were entirely appropriate) and modern Europe cannot be understood without reference to this dreadful conflict.

Publish Date
Language
English
Pages
1040

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Edition Availability
Cover of: Thirty Years War
Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy
2012, Harvard University Press
in English
Cover of: Thirty Years War
Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy
2011, Harvard University Press
in English
Cover of: The Thirty Years War
The Thirty Years War
June 25, 2009, Allen Lane
Hardcover
Cover of: The Thirty Years War
The Thirty Years War: Europe's tragedy
2009, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
in English
Cover of: Europe's Tragedy
Europe's Tragedy
2009, Penguin Group UK
Electronic resource in English

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Book Details


Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Published in
Cambridge, Mass

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
940.2/4
Library of Congress
D258 .W55 2009, D258.W55 2009

The Physical Object

Pagination
xxii, 996 p., [16] p. of plates
Number of pages
1040

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL23181163M
ISBN 13
9780674036345
LCCN
2009011266
OCLC/WorldCat
316233555
Library Thing
8920721
Goodreads
6640471

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History

Download catalog record: RDF / JSON / OPDS | Wikipedia citation
December 31, 2022 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
December 25, 2022 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
December 7, 2022 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
September 17, 2022 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
May 14, 2009 Created by ImportBot Imported from Library of Congress MARC record