History UsefulNotes / ThirtyYearsWar

* The ''Literature/SixteenThirtyTwo'' series by Creator/EricFlint has a 20th century West Virginia coal mining town dropped into the middle of the conflict, in the middle of [[AllTheLittleGermanies the Germanies]].

Indeed, 'sovereignty' is the real meaning of ''cuius regio, eius religio'': while religious affairs were in themselves important, they also served as a stand-in for the more general displeasure of the German princes at the constant interference of the Emperor and of rulers across Europe at the constant interference of UsefulNotes/ThePope (it's no coincidence that the Pope tends to drop out of European history textbooks sometime in the 17th century). The Westphalian system continued unchallenged among Western powers until the 20th century, when a few theoreticians attempted to make modifications in response to the atrocities of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII and the nasty business after TheGreatPoliticsMessUp (particularly UsefulNotes/TheYugoslavWars). Nevertheless, the modern system of states is more or less Westphalian, and several states (particularly [[RedChina China]] and to a lesser extent [[TheNewRussia Russia]]) still insist on it.

* While it's primarily an XMeetsY crossover between [[Literature/TheThreeMusketeers Musketeers]] and [[OurMonstersAreDifferent various supernatural elements]], ''All For One: Regime Diabolique'' has the war as a major backdrop and it is entirely possible for characters to be caught up in it.

* German 1910 historical novel ''Der Wehrwolf'' (''The Warwolf'') by Hermann Löns, a revenge-fantasy about North-German peasants who, after having been plundered and brutalized repeatedly by occupying troops, become guerrillas who routinely ambush and massacre foraging soldiers. The book is notorious for being a favorite of the Nazis; it directly inspired the terrorist ''Werwolf'' guerrillas at the end of WorldWarII. From the other wiki:

The war itself had ''extremely'' long-lasting effects, the most notable of which was the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_sovereignty Westphalian theory of sovereignty]], which is to say the idea that a state has territory, population, a government, and that foreigners do not (directly) interfere in its affairs, leading directly to the modern concept of the nation-state. Some present-day Mainland Chinese scholars have tried to tout [[UsefulNotes/DynastiesFromShangToQing the contemporary Ming Empire's]] model of vassal/client-state relations with the outside world as the 'true precedent of the concept of national sovereignty' instead. However, it should be noted that while this model did deny the right of any Barbarian power to interfere with Ming domestic affairs, it explicitly endorsed the Ming's right to intervene in those of its client-states - [[CriticalResearchFailure i.e. the exact opposite of the whole point of Westphalia]].[[note]] On the other hand, this is kind of the point about Mainland China's idea of sovereignty and the proper relationship between China and not-China. [[/note]]

* The first half of the {{Music/Sabaton}} album ''Carolus Rex'' covers this, emphasizing the horrors of the war.

* There is a [[http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3307/wallenstein board game]] ''Wallenstein'', set in the Thirty Years War.

* There is also a [[http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3307/wallenstein board game]] called ''Wallenstein'', set in the Thirty Years War.

It didn't matter whose side the army was on, to the common peasant, they were the enemy, as a farmer who found an army spending the winter on his lands would find he didn't have enough to feed his family. There were also large groups of civilians (mostly women and children) that were kidnapped from looted towns, and forced to live as servants and prostitutes for the army. Many children were born in the army and never knew anything else when the war ended decades later. Many mercenaries would just desert the army and strike it out on their own as "Freebooters" which more often than not was just a nicer way of saying bandits and highwaymen, thus furthering the plight of the common peasant just trying to live their lives. Add to that the religious dimension of the conflict. A particularly fanatical lord would often decide he didn't like that his neighboring lord was Catholic, or Protestant, [[WeAreStrugglingTogether or the wrong kind of Protestant]], and order his mercenaries to go and slaughter his neighbor's peasants even if the majority of said peasants were the same religion as him, as this would destroy that lord's income. Sadly, that's just scratching the surface. Unsurprisingly, many of the greatest works of art depicting the horrors of war have their origin in this conflict, most famously ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Grandes_Mis%C3%A8res_de_la_guerre The Miseries and Misfortunes of War]]'' by Jacques Callot.

It didn't matter whose side the army was on, to the common peasant, they were the enemy, as a farmer who found an army spending the winter on his lands would find he didn't have enough to feed his family. There were also large groups of civilians (mostly women and children) that were kidnapped from looted towns, and forced to live as servants and prostitutes for the army. Many children were born in the army and never knew anything else when the war ended decades later. Many mercenaries would just desert the army and strike it out on their own as "Freebooters" which more often than not was just a nicer way of saying bandits and highwaymen, thus furthering the plight of the common peasant just trying to live their lives. Add to that the religious dimension of the conflict. A particularly fanatical lord would often decide he didn't like that his neighboring lord was Catholic, or Protestant, [[WeAreStrugglingTogether or the wrong kind of Protestant]], and order his mercenaries to go and slaughter his neighbor's peasants even if the majority of said peasants were the same religion as him, as this would destroy that lord's income. Sadly, that's just scratching the surface. Unsurprisingly, many of the greatest works of art depicting the horrors of war have their origin in this conflict, most famously ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Grandes_Mis%C3%A8res_de_la_guerre The Miseries and Misfortunes of War]]'' by Jacques Callot.

The causes of the war are complex, and considering the numerous participants arguably unique to each one of them. The basic conflict involved tensions between Protestants and Catholics inside the HolyRomanEmpire, tensions between the emperor and his princes (Protestant ''and'' Catholic), tensions between the Czechs and the [[UsefulNotes/{{Germany}} Germans]] within TheEmpire, the old French-Habsburg rivalry, [[UsefulNotes/{{Denmark}} Danish]]-[[UsefulNotes/{{Sweden}} Swedish]] rivalry, [[UsefulNotes/TheEightyYearsWar the Spanish conflict with the Dutch]], and Swedish designs on the Baltic. All of these things flowed together to create a 30-year long [[SophisticatedAsHell clusterfuck]] in which the sides were not always clearly marked, with certain factions frequently changing sides or essentially blackmailing their "allies" as the situation seemed to shift to their own advantage. The three decades of war are considered to be very important because of the military, social and economic development that it accelerated: Armies in this period became even larger than they had been during the Habsburg-Valois and Habsburg-Ottoman and Religious Wars of the 16th Century, and new tactics were tried out that would eventually become important.

The war itself is considered to have been exceptionally destructive, killing off as much as 1/3 of the population of the HolyRomanEmpire - not through fighting, though, so much as causing artificial famines with the giant and marauding standing armies' need to continually steal hundreds of tons of food daily from the surrounding landscape to sustain themselves. Worse, the indecisive and back-and-forth nature of the war meant that ''the same areas'' (given their economic and/or strategic importance) were raided again and again and again (whereas others remained totally untouched), as the page quote attests. The primary causes of death during the war were thus beriberi, measles, tuberculosis, smallpox, and the common cold.

The war once and for all broke any pretense of the HolyRomanEmpire being a unified state, cemented France as the dominant power in Europe, and propelled Sweden to the status of short-lived great power. [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking It also made boots fashionable.]] It concluded with the Peace of Westphalia, two treaties (in Münster and Osnabrück) that involved the Spanish accepting Dutch independence, a blanket pardon for any crimes committed in the war, and some territorial changes; it's sometimes called the "Peace of Exhaustion". The key point, though, was the acceptance that a ruler could choose the religion of his state (the so-called ''cuius regio, eius religio''-"whose realm, his religion" principle), but those who followed other Christian denominations (Calvinism was covered in this for the first time) could also do that with some restrictions. This pretty much wrapped up the religious wars of Europe.

* ''Film/TheLastValley'' (1971) starring Creator/MichaelCaine, Creator/OmarSharif, a young BrianBlessed, and a score by Music/JohnBarry.

[[quoteright:264:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thirty_Years_War_7284.JPG]]
[[caption-width-right:264: [- Wallenstein's order to Pappenheim to intervene in the battle of Lützen, where both he and Gustavus Adolphus were killed. The order is stained with Pappenheim's blood. -] ]]

* According to the opening narration, ''Film/{{Krabat}}'' (2006) takes place at the time of the Thirty Years War, although the movie never gives much evidence of this.

* ''VideoGame/{{Cossacks}}'': A DLC pack for ''Cossacks: Backs to War'' (an expansion pack to ''VideoGame/CossacksEuropeanWars'') has a campaign allowing the player to play as the French in the war. In addition, there are several multiplayer scenarios dramatising key battles in this conflict.

* ''VideoGame/{{Cossacks}}'': A DLC pack for ''Cossacks: Backs to War'' (an expansion pack to '': European Wars'') has a campaign allowing the player to play as the French in the war. In addition, there are several multiplayer scenarios dramatising key battles in this conflict.

* A DLC pack for ''Cossacks: Backs to War'' (an expansion pack to ''Cossacks: European Wars'') has a campaign allowing the player to play as the French in the war. In addition, there are several multiplayer scenarios dramatising key battles in this conflict.

The back end of the war is largely concurrent with the beginning of the EnglishCivilWar, which had similarly wide-ranging long-term effects (for entirely unrelated reasons).

Some historians argue that, even compared to the wars of the twentieth century, it remains the most destructive war in European history in terms of its proportionate death toll and the degree of economic damage and social mayhem relative to the state of society before it. The unprecedented level of destruction stemmed from the way the war was fought continuously and entirely by very large mercenary armies operating without supply lines. Mercenaries were used so exclusively because the new, more effective gunpowder weapons (particularly the flintlock musket) in combination with the perfection of the pike-and-shot system[[note]]Pikes and other forms of "pointy stick" warfare were not yet obsolete at this point in time. That only came with the discovery of a way to turn a musket into a pointy stick--the bayonet--which only became widespread in the last quarter of the 17th century, long after the end of this particular war. For details, see [[Analysis/FantasyGunControl the Analysis page]] for FantasyGunControl.[[/note]] had made the old knight-based model of warfare obsolete nearly two hundred years ago by this point, and yet nobody had figured out the modern model of professional armies yet.[[note]]Gunpowder weapons had existed in Europe since at least the 15th century; however, actual gunpowder weapons and tactics had changed dramatically. Technically, Creator/NiccoloMachiavelli ''had'' figured out the rough outlines of the model--he advocated for armies composed solely of citizens of the state in question, although he envisioned it as a militia of all able-bodied male citizens in the style of TheRomanRepublic rather than a professional force--but nobody listened to him.[[/note]] Missing a payment would mean your armies switched over to your enemy. The soldiers themselves were conscripted. An army would come to town and say, "every man here joins us or we hang you". The ones who joined had to loot farms and towns in order to survive since armies march on their stomachs. Often an entire town had to pool their gold, and bribe the invading army to go away (of course sometimes they'd just take the money and loot anyway).

Massive European war raging from 1618 to 1648 (although the [[UsefulNotes/{{France}} French]] continued fighting the [[UsefulNotes/{{Spain}} Spanish]] for a bit longer), involving, directly or indirectly, just about every European power in some fashion. It is usually considered to be the longest recorded continuous war (UsefulNotes/TheHundredYearsWar had a couple of interruptions, as did UsefulNotes/TheEightyYearsWar), and in its time was one of the bloodiest wars recorded in history. It was mainly (though not exclusively) fought within the HolyRomanEmpire. It was devastating to the Empire: Most estimates suggest one ''third'' of Germans died in the war.

* The ''Theatre/{{Wallenstein}}'' trilogy of dramas by [[DichterUndDenker Friedrich Schiller]].

[[quoteright:264:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thirty_Years_War_7284.JPG]]
[[caption-width-right:264: [- Wallenstein's order to Pappenheim to intervene in the battle of Lützen, where both he and Gustavus Adolphus were killed. The order is stained with Pappenheim's blood. -] ]]

-->"The name was chosen after the title of Hermann Löns' novel, ''Der Wehrwolf'' (1910). Set in the Celle region, Lower Saxony, during the Thirty Years' War (1618�48), the novel concerns a peasant, Harm Wulf, who after his family is killed by marauding soldiers, organises his neighbours into a militia who pursue the soldiers mercilessly and execute any they capture, referring to themselves as ''Wehrwölfe'' ("Defense-wolves"). Löns said that the title was a dual reference to the fact that the peasants put up a fight (''sich '''wehr'''en'') and to the protagonist's surname of Wulf, but it also had obvious connotations with the word ''[[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent Werwölfe]]'' in that Wulf's men came to enjoy killing. While not himself a Nazi (he died in 1914), Löns' work was popular with the German far right, and the Nazis celebrated his work. Indeed, Celle's local newspaper began serialising ''Der Wehrwolf'' in January 1945."

* ''EuropaUniversalis'' includes this era and has a bookmark to start in the Thirty Years' War.

[[caption-width-right:264: [- Wallenstein's order to Pappenheim to intervene in the battle of Lützen, where both he and Gustavus Adolphus were killed. The order is stained with Pappenheim's blood. -] ]]

The war once and for all broke any pretense of the HolyRomanEmpire being a unified state, cemented France as the dominant power in Europe, and propelled Sweden to the status of short-lived great power. [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking It also made boots fashionable.]] It concluded with the Peace of Westphalia, two treaties (in Münster and Osnabrück) that involved the Spanish accepting Dutch independence, a blanket pardon for any crimes committed in the war, and some territorial changes; it's sometimes called the "Peace of Exhaustion". The key point, though, was the acceptance that a ruler could choose the religion of his state (the so-called ''cuius regio, eius religio''-"whose realm, his religion" principle), but those who followed other Christian denominations (Calvinism was covered in this for the first time) could also do that with some restrictions. This pretty much wrapped up the religious wars of Europe.

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* ''Välskärin kertomukset'' (The Surgeon's Tale) by Creator/ZachariasTopelius.

* German 1910 historical novel ''Der Wehrwolf'' (''The Warwolf'') by Hermann Löns, a revenge-fantasy about North-German peasants who, after having been plundered and brutalized repeatedly by occupying troops, become guerrillas who routinely ambush and massacre foraging soldiers. The book is notorious for being a favorite of the Nazis; it directly inspired the terrorist ''Werwolf'' guerrillas at the end of WorldWarII. From the other wiki:
-->"The name was chosen after the title of Hermann Löns' novel, ''Der Wehrwolf'' (1910). Set in the Celle region, Lower Saxony, during the Thirty Years' War (1618–48), the novel concerns a peasant, Harm Wulf, who after his family is killed by marauding soldiers, organises his neighbours into a militia who pursue the soldiers mercilessly and execute any they capture, referring to themselves as ''Wehrwölfe'' ("Defense-wolves"). Löns said that the title was a dual reference to the fact that the peasants put up a fight (''sich '''wehr'''en'') and to the protagonist's surname of Wulf, but it also had obvious connotations with the word ''[[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent Werwölfe]]'' in that Wulf's men came to enjoy killing. While not himself a Nazi (he died in 1914), Löns' work was popular with the German far right, and the Nazis celebrated his work. Indeed, Celle's local newspaper began serialising ''Der Wehrwolf'' in January 1945."

* ''Wallenstein'' (1920), German historical novel by Alfred Döblin, focusing on Ferdinand II and Wallenstein, and drawing many [[RealitySubtext implicit parallels]] to UsefulNotes/WorldWarI.

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Its start is usually fixed on the [[InherentlyFunnyWords Defenestration of Prague]], an event in which a throng of rebellious Bohemian Protestants forced their way into Prague Castle and, after a symbolical trial, threw two Catholic Imperial governors [[DestinationDefenestration from a third-storey window]]. They survived badly bruised, their fall having been cushioned by either angels led by St. Mary (Catholic propaganda), a heap of horse manure (Protestant propaganda), or neither of the two, because it wasn't a particularly high window (modern historians).

Indeed, 'sovereignty' is the real meaning of ''cuius regio, eius religio'': while religious affairs were in themselves important, they also served as a stand-in for the more general displeasure of the German princes at the constant interference of the Emperor and of rulers across Europe at the constant interference of UsefulNotes/ThePope (it's no coincidence that the Pope tends to drop out of European history textbooks sometime in the 17th century). The Westphalian system continued unchallenged among Western powers until the 20th century, when a few theoreticians attempted to make modifications in response to the atrocities of WorldWarII and the nasty business after TheGreatPoliticsMessUp (particularly TheYugoslavWars). Nevertheless, the modern system of states is more or less Westphalian, and several states (particularly [[RedChina China]] and to a lesser extent [[TheNewRussia Russia]]) still insist on it.

Massive European war raging from 1618 to 1648 (although the [[UsefulNotes/{{France}} French]] continued fighting the [[UsefulNotes/{{Spain}} Spanish]] for a bit longer), involving, directly or indirectly, just about every European power in some fashion. It is usually considered to be the longest recorded continuous war (UsefulNotes/TheHundredYearsWar had a couple of interruptions, as did UsefulNotes/TheEightyYearsWar), and in its time was one of the bloodiest wars recorded in history. It was mainly (though not exclusively) fought within the HolyRomanEmpire.

->''"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."''

Indeed, 'sovereignty' is the real meaning of ''cuius regio, eius religio'': while religious affairs were in themselves important, they also served as a stand-in for the more general displeasure of the German princes at the constant interference of the Emperor and of rulers across Europe at the constant interference of ThePope (it's no coincidence that the Pope tends to drop out of European history textbooks sometime in the 17th century). The Westphalian system continued unchallenged among Western powers until the 20th century, when a few theoreticians attempted to make modifications in response to the atrocities of WorldWarII and the nasty business after TheGreatPoliticsMessUp (particularly TheYugoslavWars). Nevertheless, the modern system of states is more or less Westphalian, and several states (particularly [[RedChina China]] and to a lesser extent [[TheNewRussia Russia]]) still insist on it.

Massive European war raging from 1618 to 1648 (although the [[UsefulNotes/{{France}} French]] continued fighting the [[UsefulNotes/{{Spain}} Spanish]] for a bit longer), involving, directly or indirectly, just about every European power in some fashion. It is usually considered to be the longest recorded continuous war (UsefulNotes/TheHundredYearsWar had a couple of interruptions, as did the EightyYearsWar), and in its time was one of the bloodiest wars recorded in history. It was mainly (though not exclusively) fought within the HolyRomanEmpire.

The causes of the war are complex, and considering the numerous participants arguably unique to each one of them. The basic conflict involved tensions between Protestants and Catholics inside the HolyRomanEmpire, tensions between the emperor and his princes (Protestant ''and'' Catholic), tensions between the Czechs and the [[UsefulNotes/{{Germany}} Germans]] within TheEmpire, the old French-Habsburg rivalry, [[UsefulNotes/{{Denmark}} Danish]]-[[UsefulNotes/{{Sweden}} Swedish]] rivalry, the [[EightyYearsWar Spanish conflict with the Dutch]], and Swedish designs on the Baltic. All of these things flowed together to create a 30-year long [[SophisticatedAsHell clusterfuck]] in which the sides were not always clearly marked, with certain factions frequently changing sides or essentially blackmailing their "allies" as the situation seemed to shift to their own advantage. The three decades of war are considered to be very important because of the military, social and economic development that it accelerated: Armies in this period became even larger than they had been during the Habsburg-Valois and Habsburg-Ottoman and Religious Wars of the 16th Century, and new tactics were tried out that would eventually become important.