People always say the Thirty Years War was the most destructive war in European history, but what the fuck actually happened?
It seems like a confusing mess. Like watching the battle lines of WWI and WWII tell you mostly what happened but I watched this shit: https://youtu.be/wXndv6LT5jY?si=dKITsONCl3oyrjQJ
Showing the war every week and it just looks like every country in Europe took turns variously allying and fighting Austria for 30 years.
Also, WTF, I thought Austria controlled Hungary since the 1500s? When did they take over that Balkans then?
> Showing the war every week and it just looks like every country in Europe took turns variously allying and fighting Austria for 30 years.
This is because religion was the secondary thing in this war. What it was really about was trying to keep the emperor weak and the Imperial Estates as strong as possible. It really could've been over after the Austrians took Bohemia back early on or in 1635. But that France could not allow since it would mean France would be encircled by the Habsburgs in Spain and a strengthened Empire.
For the small states in the Empire itself it was all about their privileges and for Sweden it was about expanding their baltic posessions while also weakening the Empire internally.
It really is Fr*nce's fault that Europe is no longer a unified Catholic domain.
France's role deserves greater emphasis: they financed rebels for years seeking to keep Germany divided (yeah, I'm using the term Germany since that's what it was really about). Famously, Richelieu, A CARDINAL, financed protestant rebellions. And France also helped the Ottomans more than once, even allying them at once point.
Funny how the "eldest daughter of the Church" financed heretics, allied the Caliphate to attack Catholic countries, hosted anti-popes to defend its own interests and later on even did things like fight other types of Christians far away from its borders such as intervening in favor of the Ottomans in Crimea....
Name a country that is both as influent and never fucked anything up.
Your list is rather short.
At the end of the day that rationale boils down to anything goes in the search of power, even constantly looking for different ways to murder and pillage the people you call brothers when seeking legitimacy. Hypocrisy is disgusting regardless of whether it leads to power.
Yes every nation is guilty I agree.
But enough psy bullshit, leave it to the women.
>germany
HRE anon
repeat after me
HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
what were the emperors of holy roman empire crowned before they were crowned emperors of holy roman empire you retarded kym larper
they were crowned as Israeli chosen one
>HRE anon
>repeat after me
>HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
but it's not holy
or Roman
or an empire
The usual propaganda of an angry frog parroted by the uneducated.
Voltaire was a funny guy but he was too often wrong and a bit petty.
>eldest daughter of the church
that's meant literally, because they converted to Chalcedonian/proto-Catholic Christianity under Clovis at a time when all the other non-Roman states in Europe were pagan or Arian
Doesn't mean they were always loyal, but then again judging by the history of European monarchy that's no different from the actions of actual children
> Also, WTF, I thought Austria controlled Hungary since the 1500s? When did they take over that Balkans then?
They regained control over Hungary after the Great Turkish War in 1683
>Showing the war every week and it just looks like every country in Europe took turns variously allying and fighting Austria for 30 years.
That video makes it seem alot worse than it was, as it includes a number of seperate, but related, conflicts as if they were part of the war. England, for example, was never directly involved in the war, and neither was Poland.
>Also, WTF, I thought Austria controlled Hungary since the 1500s?
They held the title and controlled a fair chunk of northwestern Hungary, as you can see in that video.
>When did they take over that Balkans then?
Mostly in the Great Turkish War at the end of the 17th century.
England actually sent about as many soldiers and as much money in as the Swedes. They just spread it out over way longer and so it wasn't effective in any one instance.
The reason they were so spread out is because they were mercs, not regulars fighting under English flag. The ones in the service of Elizabeth Stuart and her husband could perhaps be considered an exception, but I think it would still be unfair to say that England as a state was involved since they were, to my knowledge, never formally at war with the Emperor.
>they sent mercs and money but it's ok since they didn't formally sign a war declaration or anything heheh
That's a textbook display of anglo values, just like they knighted literal state sanctioned thieves doing piracy against Spain only to paint them as rebellious heroes in future literature.
>It seems like a confusing mess.
Because it was. I remember making a greentext summary of the 30 years' war on LULZ, without going into detail or mentioning specific battles, and it took me 3 posts to character limit.
>czechs rebel against austrian encroachment to their privileges
>czechs get crushed
>austrians get cocky
>german prots rebel
>german prots get crushed
>denmark gets in hoping for gains
>denmark gets crushed
>sweden gets in hoping for gains
>jobs at critical junction
>france decides sitting on the sidelines isn't gonna cut it
>france gets involved directly
>spain gets invovled directly as a counter
>back and forth fighting until everybody is exhausted and the german participants mostly peace out in 1648
>austrians remain nominally in charge but prot statelets get final guarantees in the form of newly defined statehood
You just weren't aggressive enough with your summarizing.
How Prussia was reborn…marvelous event in history.
Prussia is the autistic Germany that fucks up Europe. Austria is the artistic, spiritual Germany. A world where Austria united Germany is a far better place.
Russia dominating half of Europe would never have happened with a strong Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and an Austrian centered Germany.
This. Austrian led Germany is arts, philosophy, science, SOUL
Also they could have made the Balkans an actually decent place by continuing to import Germans there, to this day the places shaped by the Transylvanian Saxons, for example, have better standards
Don't forget during that whole time, Spanish were busy fighting the Dutch during the 80 year war for independence.
And the whole sideshow with Ottomans getting called in to attack Poland to prevent them from getting involved in the 30 years war directly.
DLC
Only becomes relevant several installments later
>Like watching the battle lines
There were no battle lines in most wars you utter retard. It was only around the late 1800s that you started to see armies with frontages taking up appreciable distances on the map. Even then, not every war devolves into a positional slugfest. "Battle lines" would tell you very little about the Iraq Wars, for example, because so many units were free to maneuver past each other.
It has been the norm throughout most of history for armies to be able to march circles around each other, strike deep into enemy territory without forming any kind of front line, etc. Typically you'd see some fortified positions change hands in a more gradual fashion along routes of communication but armies could and did routinely range far afield. Furthermore, in a feudal clusterfuck like 1600s Germany it wasn't atypical for various statelets to flip sides like weathervanes.
>but what the fuck actually happened?
Swedes lost. Prots lost. Get over Chuds etc.
0/10 bait
Fuck you, I deserve 3/10 minimum.
If you say that the winners of the war lost the war without elaborating further you deserve a 0/10
>Kills your previous Adolphus
Not so tough now Swede Products.
Basically the War is glorious Austria and her allies stomping rebellious heretics who lose over and over but finally win by having all of Europe gang up on the Hapschads at once.
I hate it when anglos dont translate reich to empire or kingdom.
Pure kino war
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All you need to know is France is despicable and they deserved having all their palaces, chatêaus and whatnot doused in napalm.
German protestants attacked the imperial election scheme.
one of the leading protestant figures at the deflagi-whatever, was the king or duke of the palatinate, his office i presume gave him authority over calling for the election of a new emperor, like they've done before during interregnum.
probably why Spanish-Habsburgs were incestial in the end, they never had the approval of the HRE electorates.
Think Avignon, except this time its the Germans geting uppity with the Vatican over Spain and the "new" imperial court in Madrid.
i wonder how far fetched would something like the Habsburgs improving relations with Catholic electors via allowing them to expand their influence in the Spanish colonies as a Catholic Commonwealth of sorts be. After all Latin America was very sparsely populated and some German colonists did come later on, but what about something like "serfs from X duchy settle an area, are under Spanish jurisdiction but half their taxes go to their duchy of origin". Might sound crazy but everybody wins: Spain settles empty lands, duchy gets more money from people who can breed a bunch in empty lands to generate the kind of revenue they wouldn't be able to generate in Europe. Only downside would be that duchy losing manpower of course but it's not like they had to send half the country, something like an initial 10 families could quickly become 500 extra tax paying families in the colonies plus the chance to expand markets, even if under the auspices of Spain
oh sort of like how Charles VII did in England by allowing Puritans to venture in the new world up and signed a new charter as the Massachusetts bay colony.
also wasnt there ottomans in constantinople n'shit your plan sounds sus
Those aren't in any way comparable, England sent its own subjects and Constantinople doesn't have anything to do with this at all. The idea was Habsburg Spain allowing German princes to build colonies under Spanish viceroys
>kino
alllll imsaying is why does "spain" get to maintain the throne of the western Empire, it doesn't make sense.
the 30 years war happened in light of the 80 years war. only by the danish swedes etc intervening in what was nominally a civil war yielded Westphalia.
I get that Spain seemed like a good kingdom to stage a counter for a Capet rivalry with Venna but still, why not put a premium on "The Roman Empire" places like Greece, Tunisia, Egypt.
isnt this the war where the swedes killed people by force feeding them poop water
It was a war over HRE princedoms converting to protestantism, which was a kind of seizure of property by the princes and a rejection of the authority of the holy roman emperor
it was part of coordinated slavic culling and destruction
>times of trouble
>30 years war
>deluge
>when Germans genocide themselves more effectively in frenzied religious warfare than when they actually planned for an industrial scale genocide.
>Germans
mostly slavs died
Where can I learn more about this based reinterpretation of the 30 years war?
Imagine the 2nd Congo War but with white people instead of black people
What greatly contributed to the destruction of the war, was the fact that armies had to be largely supplied locally. While the saying of "Bellum se ipsum alet" (The war will feed itself) is often wrongfully attributed to Wallenstein (it was created by Schiller for a tragedy of his) it still demonstrates the fact that a war will have a heavy toll on the lands it is waged on.
Wallenstein was actually one of the first who wanted to prohibit the wanton looting and raiding of his armies as a way to stabalize the regions he operated in, to maintain its economic potential and to show that imperial authority is not associated with violence and destruction. Instead he advocated for a regulated contribution system by which each region was evaluated and had to take part in the maintenance of the armies - this was later also extended to the imperial estates as a dedicated "war tax".
The reality of war was of course far from this: looting and raiding were still ad hoc methods to pay for troops - or the mercenaries and soldiers just did it on their own volition. And the economic potential of a region, so the farmlands, mills, manufactories, the people, etc., were also viable military targets. Their destruction would deny the enemy resources and thus weaken him.
The basic circle of violence would look like this:
>Army A marches through land and raises contributions - peacefully or forcefully
>Army B does the same
>Both armies meet and fight
>Many men desert and become bandits
>Both armies still want contributions; the land is unable to statisfy their needs
>Ressources are comandeered violently
>Added banditry
>The people in the land are now deprived of their resources and livelihoods
>They follow the armies in search for employment or flee to different territories - either way, many people are displaced
>New lands now have to cope with armies, their demands for contributions, bandits, and displaced people; adding additional stress to their resource base
>repeat
"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 peasant
What about the redcoats?