Thirty Years’ War: A Visual History

The Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) began as a revolt of Protestant Bohemian nobles against Habsburg rule, symbolised by the Defenestration of Prague, and grew into a European war fought mainly on German soil among the Habsburg emperor and Catholic League, the Protestant princes, Denmark, Sweden and, from 1635, Catholic France against the Habsburgs. Mercenary armies under Tilly, Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus lived off the land; plague, famine and massacre (Magdeburg, 1631) killed perhaps 8 million, up to a third of Germany's people. The Peace of Westphalia (1648) confirmed the sovereignty of the German states, tolerated Calvinism, gave Sweden and France territory and made the Dutch and Swiss formally independent.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

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Population loss in German territories

Losses varied enormously by region.

Timeline of the Thirty Years' War

1. 1618
   Defenestration of Prague
2. 1620
   White Mountain
3. 1625
   Denmark enters
4. 1629
   Edict of Restitution
5. 1630
   Sweden enters
6. 1631
   Magdeburg; Breitenfeld
7. 1632
   LutzenGustavus Adolphus killed.
8. 1634
   Wallenstein assassinated; Nordlingen
9. 1635
   France enters
10. 1648
    Peace of Westphalia

Bohemia and Denmark, 1618-1629

On 23 May 1618 Bohemian Protestants threw two imperial governors from a window of Prague Castle (they survived, landing in a dung heap or by the Virgin's aid). They offered the crown to the Calvinist Frederick of the Palatinate; the Catholic League under Tilly crushed him at White Mountain in November 1620, and the Palatinate was overrun by Spanish troops. Christian IV of Denmark intervened for the Protestants in 1625 and was beaten by Tilly and the emperor's new general Wallenstein, whose vast private army reached the Baltic. The Edict of Restitution (1629) demanded the return of church lands, alarming even Catholic princes.

Sweden, 1630-1635

Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden landed in Pomerania in 1630, subsidised by France. Tilly's sack of Magdeburg in May 1631, killing 20,000, rallied Protestants; Gustavus destroyed Tilly at Breitenfeld in September and swept through Germany. Wallenstein was recalled; the two met at Lutzen in November 1632, where the Swedes won and Gustavus was killed. Wallenstein, negotiating on his own account, was assassinated on the emperor's orders in 1634; the Swedes lost at Nordlingen and the Peace of Prague (1635) nearly ended the war.

France and Westphalia, 1635-1648

Cardinal Richelieu brought France openly into the war against both Habsburg branches. Thirteen more years of campaigning by Swedish, French, imperial and Spanish armies devastated Germany; the French won at Rocroi (1643) and the Swedes were besieging Prague when peace came. Negotiations at Munster and Osnabruck from 1644 produced the Peace of Westphalia on 24 October 1648: territorial gains for France and Sweden, religious settlement on the basis of 1624, near-sovereignty for the German princes, and recognition of the Dutch Republic and Swiss Confederation. Spain and France fought on until 1659.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Holy Roman Empire (800 to 1806)
• Swedish Empire (1611 to 1721)
• Spanish Empire (1492 to 1976)
• Danish colonial empire (1536 to 1953)
• Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569 to 1795)
• Kingdom of France (Middle Ages) (987 to 1498)

Wars of the same era and region

• Eighty Years' War (Dutch Revolt) (1568 to 1648)
• French Wars of Religion (1562 to 1598)
• Franco-Dutch War (1672 to 1678)
• Northern Wars (1554 to 1721)
• Polish-Ottoman wars (1485 to 1699)
• Nine Years' War (1688 to 1697)

8 surprising things about the Thirty Years' War

1. The two governors thrown from the window in 1618 fell 21 metres and survived; Catholics said angels caught them, Protestants said they landed on a dung heap.
2. Wallenstein's army numbered up to 100,000 and was financed by 'contributions' extorted from friend and foe alike.
3. Gustavus Adolphus was so short-sighted he rode into the enemy in fog at Lutzen and was shot.
4. The 'Swedish drink', forcing liquid manure down a victim's throat, was one of the tortures soldiers used to extract hidden valuables.
5. The war's peace conference took four years partly because envoys argued about who should enter rooms first.
6. The Peace of Westphalia is conventionally, if controversially, credited with founding the modern system of sovereign states.
7. Germany's population did not recover to its 1618 level until about 1710.
8. Grimmelshausen's novel Simplicissimus, based on the author's experience, is the classic literary account of the war.

Sources

• Thirty Years' War Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Thirty Years' War Wikipedia
• Thirty Years' War World History Encyclopedia
• Peter H. Wilson, Europe's Tragedy: A History of the Thirty Years War (2009) Allen Lane

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