The Thirty Years War: A Documentary History

This book was even better than I anticipated. Although it does not always go into great detail about many of the major battles, it gives many other valuable insights into this topic. Many important historical documents are presented in great detail. These documents including letters, diplomatic messages, diaries, etc give a good perspective into the mindset of the leaders, diplomats, soldiers and civilians living in Germany, France, Sweden, Spain, Austria during the Thirty Years War. I believe this book is like a time capsule which allows one to experience what it must have been like living during that time period in Europe. If one is looking more for pure military tactics and strategy about the Thirty Years War, the Osprey publishing company has excellent books on these aspects of the war. However, if one wants to really understand the religious, political and personal motivations of the many important figures of this time period, this is a great book. Anybody with a strong interest in the Thirty Years War would likely gain a great deal of knowledge from this book. I highly recommend this book.

I found this book to be a wonderful look at the mindset and ways of doing things in the mid 17th century. The ways rulers attempt to justify actions, report events and most interesting to me, the legalistic wrangling of all parties was a marvelous insight into the mindset of the ruling and educated classes of the time. Read it alone or with a history of the Thirty Year's War. I read it along with Peter Wilson's excllent book and found it useful. As I said before, it is readable by itself, but a general knowledge of the context is almost a requiremnt. Two thumbs up.

An excellent read. Lots of hard and focused work went into this project.

the condition of the book was just terrible

Great book with primary sources from the thirty years war!

An interesting work that gives you a flavor of how life, politics and war were like four hundred years ago in Europe. The approach of the book is to present excerpts of original documents preceded by illuminating introductions. However, some of the excerpts chosen are a bit too extense, which makes it hard to read. That made me longing to finish the book at some points. But still a good read for amateur historians like me.

Can be difficult to follow if you aren't super familiar with historical writings. However, is very informative, and factually accurate.

Not a' holiday read' but an absorbing background to the 30 years war. Here are printed the pivotal documents of the conflict necessary for our understanding.

What comes as a bonus, and for this reviewer the best part, are two personal accounts, one by a soldier the other by a peasant with which the book ends. Any idea that war is 'romantic' is quickly dispelled. The soldier is busy knocking peasants on the head for not parting with their food and thinks nothing of it while the peasants are driven to distraction and starvation - seeking time and time again safety in the walled city only to return to, well, nothing ...

It is interesting that their lives crossed twice though neither of them, of course, could have been aware of it. An attack on the peasant's village is narrated both by the soldier and the peasant - and there is no doubt who was at the receiving end.

Life is cheap. Forget the 'Lion of the North' approach to the Thirty Years War and take a look at what it really meant to those at the blunt end. Our peasant, an Evangelical, having been pillaged by the Imperialist Pappenheim Regiment looks forwards to the arrival of the Swedes only to find that they do the exact same - rape, pillage and starvation is the lot of the peasant. Now and then they take a stand. Our Pappenheimer (who by the way fought on both sides) was part of a raiding party of 1,000 foot and 1,500 horse which attacked a village for provisions. One thousand peasants fortified themselves in the church graveyard and gave such a good account of themselves that the attackers (mourning their lack of cannon) fell back and burned the village in spite.

Both our 'heroes' survived (otherwise no accounts!) the soldier (no remorse) to rejoin his wife and child and our peasant to rebuilt his life.

This is one the books that once you start reading you can't stop until you are finished.

It is written chronologically with good context description and insight into the various political ramifications that the princes and generals faced. It is not as detailed oriented on the tactics and numbers used in the different battles, but it makes up for it with it details about the different scenarious and events that occurred as a pretext for the wars and the events during the wars. It is also an excellent book for understanding and detailing the different actors central to the wars, who they were and what their agendas were.

I read this book through a perspective of power maximization theory for nation building which this book helped substantiate to a large degree.

Recommended to anyone interested in european history.