Thirty Years' War

The quarrel between them began about the time that Charles was born, and lasted for more than a hundred years.

It was ended only by the terrible battles of the Thirty Years' War, which came to a close in 1648.

Charles was very anxious to put a stop to the evils which arose from this quarrel.

It seemed to him that the simplest way of doing so was to get rid of the Protestants altogether.

Famous Men of Modern Times by John H. Haaren and A.B. Poland.

Chapter twelve, Wallenstein, fifteen eighty-three to sixteen thirty-four.

A bloody religious war broke out in Germany in sixteen eighteen; and, as it lasted until sixteen forty-eight, it is called the Thirty Years' War.

This war was one of the most dreadful that ever raged in Europe.

Grainger, for the ones who get it done.

THE HISTORY OF THE THIRTY YEARS WAR, VOLUME 1. from the beginning of the religious wars in Germany to the Peace of Munster, scarcely anything great or remarkable occurred in the political world of Europe in which the Reformation had not an important share.

All the events of this period, if they did not originate in, soon became mixed up with the question of religion, and no state was either too great or too little to feel directly or indirectly more or less of its influence.

Against the reform doctrine and its adherents, the House of Austria directed, almost exclusively, the whole of its immense political power.

And as to England, all the evils with which Philip II threatened Elizabeth were mainly intended in revenge for her having taken his Protestant subjects under her protection.

and placing herself at the head of a religious party which it was his aim and endeavour to extirpate in germany the schisms in the church produced also a lasting political schism which made that country for more than a century the theatre of confusion but at the same time threw up a firm barrier against political oppression it was too the reformation principally that first drew the northern powers denmark and sweden into the political system of europe and while on the one hand the protestant league was strengthened by their adhesion it on the other was indispensable to their interests states which hitherto scarcely concerned themselves with one another's existence acquired through the reformation an attractive centre of interest and began to be united by new political sympathies and as through its influence new relations sprang up between citizen and citizen and between rulers and subjects so also entire states were forced by it into new relative positions thus by a strange course of events religious disputes were the means of cementing a closer union among the nations of europe fearful indeed and destructive was the first movement in which this general political sympathy announced itself a desolating war of thirty years, which from the interior of Bohemia to the mouth of the Scheldt, from the banks of the Po to the coasts of the Baltic, devastated whole countries, destroyed harvests, and reduced towns and villages to ashes, which opened a grave for many a thousand combatants, and for half a century smothered the glimmering sparks of civilization in Germany, and threw back the improving manners of the country into their pristine barbarity and wildness.

yet out of this fearful war europe came forth free and independent in it she first learned to recognise herself as a community of nations and this inter-communion of states which originated in the thirty years war may alone be sufficient to reconcile the philosopher to its horrors the hand of industry has slowly but gradually effaced the traces of its ravages while its beneficent influence still survives and this general sympathy among the states of europe which grew out of the troubles in bohemia is our guarantee for the continuance of that peace which was the result of the war as the sparks of destruction found their way from the interior of bohemia moravia and austria to kindle germany france and the half of europe so also will the torch of civilization make a path for itself from the latter to enlighten the former countries All this was affected by religion.

Religion alone could have rendered possible all that was accomplished, but it was far from being the sole motive of the war.

The beginnings of the scientific movement were confined to a minority among the intellectual elite.

In a generation which saw the Thirty Years' War and remembered Alva in the Netherlands, the worst that happened to men of science was that Galileo suffered an honorable detention and a mild reproof before dying peacefully in his bed.

The way in which the persecution of Galileo has been remembered is a tribute to the quiet commencement of the most intimate change in outlook which the human race had yet encountered.

Since a babe was born in a manger, it may be doubted whether so great a thing has happened with so little stir.

This latter defect is partly due to the fact that the lecturer is English and that he is lecturing to an audience which, equally with him, owns this English century.

If he had been Dutch, there would have been too many Dutchmen, if Italian too many Italians, and if French too many Frenchmen.

The unhappy Thirty Years' War was devastating Germany, but every other country looks back to this century as an epoch which witnessed some culmination of its genius.

Certainly this was a great period of English thought, as at a later time Voltaire impressed upon France.

But the forests are beautiful, in their lofty pink-stemmed fastness, far overhead the crowns of softest grey-green, and underfoot a bright green waterberry carpet, and everywhere the breathless silence and the bare heaths are beautiful too for one can see across them into eternity almost and to go out on to them with one's face towards the setting sun is like going into the very presence of god in the middle of this plain in the oasis of bird-charrows and greenery where i spend my happy days and in the middle of the oasis in the grey stone house with many gables where i pass my reluctant nights the house is very old and has been added to at various times.

It was a convent before the Thirty Years' War, and the vaulted chapel, with its brick floor worn by pious peasant needs, is now used as a hall.

Gustavus Adolphus and his Swedes pass through more than once, as is duly recorded in archives still preserved, for we are on what was then the high road between Sweden and Brandenburg the Unfortunate.

the lion of the north was no doubt an estimable person and acted wholly up to his convictions but he must have sadly upset the peaceful nuns who were not without convictions of their own sending them out on to the wide empty plain to piteously seek some life to replace the life of silence here from nearly all the windows of the house i can look out across the plain with no obstacle in the shape of a hill, right away to a blue line of distant forest, and on the west side uninterruptedly to the setting sun, nothing but a green rolling plain with a sharp edge against the sunset.

Europe was now repeatedly devastated by religious wars.

The revolt of the Netherlands, the wars of the League in France, the Thirty Years' War, the Civil War in England.

Learning was still mainly classical and scholastic.

Nearly every writer whom we shall have occasion to name had been educated at a university and was able to read and write Latin.

Witness the beautiful and well-known verses by Sir Henry Wootton to Elizabeth of Bohemia.

Witness the enthusiasm with which, wearing her glove, Christian of Brunswick, in the spirit of a crusading knight, engaged in that most unchivalrous of wars called, for its weary length, the Thirty Years' War, in which he won for himself the title God's Friend and Parson's Foe.

Her husband, Frederick the Elector Palatine, was elected by the Protestants of Bohemia to be their king.

The House of Austria claimed that the right of election was merely nominal, and that the Bohemians were bound, as of course, to elect the head of that house.

But the parliaments elected under the triennial act had not been especially good parliaments, not less corrupt than others nor more zealous for popular rights.

And now with a rebellion just quelled and with a sovereign personally unpopular, it was felt that there would be no little danger in holding a general election.

The centennial bill, increasing the length of life of a parliament to seven years, was brought into the House of Lords and carried through all its stages in both houses in a little over a fortnight.

In each house there was opposition to the measure, especially on the very fair ground that this particular parliament had no right to extend its own duration, to which argument there was no reply except the unanswerable plea of the public good.

On a personal level, eschatology was related to sanctification, assurance of salvation, and the conversion experience.

On a larger level, eschatology was the lens through which events such as the English Civil War and the Thirty Years' War were interpreted.

There was also an optimistic aspect to Puritan Millenianism.

Puritans anticipated a future worldwide religious revival before the second coming of Jesus.

Whenever the Church of England changed, Spurr argues the definition of a Puritan also changed.

The analysis of mainstream puritanism in terms of the evolution from it of separatist and antinomian groups that did not flourish and others that continue to this day, such as Baptists and Quakers, can suffer in this way.

The national context, England and Wales, as well as the kingdoms of Scotland and Ireland, frames the definition of Puritans, but was not a self-identification for those Protestants who saw the progress of the Thirty Years' War from 1620 as directly bearing on their denomination.

And as a continuation of the religious wars of the previous century, carried on by the English Civil Wars, the English historian Christopher Hill writes of the 1630s, old church lands, and the accusations that William Lord was a crypto-Catholic.