Added to the sheer human dimension of the conflict are its social and political consequences-its beginning is usually associated with the start of perhaps the last religious war of the Reformation, and its end is often considered to be the first stepping stone in the development of the modern nation-state. While information on the extent of the material losses is sketchy, recent scholarship estimates human casualties to be in excess of millions, or about 15 to 20 percent of the prewar population of the region. The suffering and heroism of both the combatants and the hapless victims of the fighting has burned itself into the national literatures and historical consciousness of that age and those ages that follow.
Recommended.The Thirty Years War, a multifaceted and multinational political and military conflict that raged over central Europe between 16 has often been considered, at least in the scope of misery and destruction it brought to those experiencing it, as a disaster comparable to, if not greater than, the two world wars and the Black Death. While at nearly 1,000 pages this book is a significant investment of time, it is one that repays that investment ten fold.
The quality and plenitude of maps and illustrations are a great aid in following the often highly complex narrative. The longer the war continued however, the harder it became to stop with none of the numerous participants able to muster enough strength to force a conclusion, leading to atrocities like the sack of Magdeburg and to a loss of life from plague and famine on an unimaginable scale. Wilson shows there was nothing inevitable about the war that broke out in 1618 and argues that there were many opportunities for peace throughout the period. Wilson has produced a magisterial work that eloquently covers the causes, the main events and the consequences of this conflagration, perhaps the most terrible period in European history between the Black Death and the Second World War.’ With Europe’s Tragedy, the first major history of the war in English for seventy years, Peter H. The Thirty Years’ War ravaged Europe from 1618 to 1648, splitting the Holy Roman Empire into opposing confessional camps and drawing almost every major power into conflict. Europe’s Tragedy: A New History of the Thirty Years’ War
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