Description

The Thirty Years War was written in London under the advancing shadow of the Second Word War (it was first published in 1938), and its author later admitted that “the apprehensions of those years can be felt vibrating from time to time in its pages.” It would be more surprising if that were not the case, since the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) was probably the most destructive European conflict prior to the twentieth century, and in many ways it can be seen as a precursor to the international upheavals of our own time.

Originally cast as a war of religion – Protestant princedoms against the Catholic Holy Roman Empire – it became a vast bloody stage upon which the political aspirations of leaders throughout the continent played themselves out for decades. The cast of characters is legendary – from Frederick the Winter King of Bohemia to Augustus the Strong of Saxony; Sweden’s heroic King Gustavus Adolphus and France’s wily Cardinal Richelieu; the somber general Count Wallenstein and the brash young Prince Louis of Conde.

The results of their triumphs and defeats were the devastation of the German states, the virtual destruction of the Empire as a political force, and a saga that has echoed down the centuries. It has been truly said that, once having read C.V. Wedgwood’s enthralling account of these events, it is impossible to contemplate the Thirty Years War in any other light. Its leading figures seem, in her portrayal, as alive as characters in a novel, and the geopolitical realities of the war, fundamental as they are to an understanding of our own era, emerge in the context of a profoundly resonant human drama.