The Thirty Years War

The Thirty Years War
Author: C. V. Wedgwood
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Total Pages: 538
Release: 2016-09-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1681371235

Europe in 1618 was riven between Protestants and Catholics, Bourbon and Hapsburg--as well as empires, kingdoms, and countless principalities. After angry Protestants tossed three representatives of the Holy Roman Empire out the window of the royal castle in Prague, world war spread from Bohemia with relentless abandon, drawing powers from Spain to Sweden into a nightmarish world of famine, disease, and seemingly unstoppable destruction.

The Robbers and Wallenstein

The Robbers and Wallenstein
Author: F. Lamport
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 480
Release: 1979-11-22
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0141908203

Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) was one of the most influential of all playwrights, the author of deeply moving dramas that explored human fears, desires and ideals. Written at the age of twenty-one, The Robbers was his first play. A passionate consideration of liberty, fraternity and deep betrayal, it quickly established his fame throughout Germany and wider Europe. Wallenstein, produced nineteen years later, is regarded as Schiller's masterpiece: a deeply moving exploration of a flawed general's struggle to bring the Thirty Years War to an end against the will of his Emperor. Depicting the deep corruption caused by constant fighting between Protestants and Catholics, it is at once a meditation on the unbounded possible strength of humanity, and a tragic recognition of what can happen when men allow themselves to be weak.

Europe's Tragedy

Europe's Tragedy
Author: Peter Hamish Wilson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 1048
Release: 2009
Genre: History
ISBN:

The horrific series of conflicts known as the Thirty Years War (1618 - 48) tore the heart out of Europe, killing perhaps a quarter of all Germans and laying waste to whole areas of Central Europe to such a degree that many towns and regions never recovered. All the major European powers apart from England were heavily involved and, while each country started out with rational war aims, the fighting rapidly spiralled out of control, with great battles giving way to marauding bands of starving soldiers spreading plague and murder. The war was both a religious and a political one and it was this tangle of motives that made it impossible to stop. Whether motivated by idealism or cynicism, everyone drawn into the conflict was destroyed by it. At its end a recognizably modern Europe had been created but at a terrible price. Peter Wilson's book is a major work, the first new history of the war in a generation, and a fascinating, brilliantly written attempt to explain a compelling series of events. Wilson's great strength is in allowing the reader to understand the tragedy of mixed motives that allowed rulers to gamble their countries' future with such horrifying results. The principal actors in the drama (Wallenstein, Ferdinand II, Gustavus Adolphus, Richelieu) are all here, but so is the experience of the ordinary soldiers and civilians, desperately trying to stay alive under impossible circumstances. The extraordinary narrative of the war haunted Europe's leaders into the twentieth century (comparisons with 1939 - 45 were entirely appropriate) and modern Europe cannot be understood without reference to this dreadful conflict.

The Thirty Years War

The Thirty Years War
Author: Peter H. Wilson
Publisher: Belknap Press
Total Pages: 1038
Release: 2011-10-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674062310

A deadly continental struggle, the Thirty Years War devastated seventeenth-century Europe, killing nearly a quarter of all Germans and laying waste to towns and countryside alike. Peter Wilson offers the first new history in a generation of a horrifying conflict that transformed the map of the modern world. When defiant Bohemians tossed the Habsburg emperor’s envoys from the castle windows in Prague in 1618, the Holy Roman Empire struck back with a vengeance. Bohemia was ravaged by mercenary troops in the first battle of a conflagration that would engulf Europe from Spain to Sweden. The sweeping narrative encompasses dramatic events and unforgettable individuals—the sack of Magdeburg; the Dutch revolt; the Swedish militant king Gustavus Adolphus; the imperial generals, opportunistic Wallenstein and pious Tilly; and crafty diplomat Cardinal Richelieu. In a major reassessment, Wilson argues that religion was not the catalyst, but one element in a lethal stew of political, social, and dynastic forces that fed the conflict. By war’s end a recognizably modern Europe had been created, but at what price? The Thirty Years War condemned the Germans to two centuries of internal division and international impotence and became a benchmark of brutality for centuries. As late as the 1960s, Germans placed it ahead of both world wars and the Black Death as their country’s greatest disaster. An understanding of the Thirty Years War is essential to comprehending modern European history. Wilson’s masterful book will stand as the definitive account of this epic conflict. For a map of Central Europe in 1618, referenced on page XVI, please visit this book’s page on the Harvard University Press website.

Friedrich Schiller's Wallenstein

Friedrich Schiller's Wallenstein
Author:
Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing
Total Pages: 100
Release: 2013-03-01
Genre: Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648
ISBN: 9781457518942

STC is proud to announce a newly commissioned adaptation and translation f Friedrich Schiller's Wallenstein by former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky. Wallenstein, one of Germany's greatest dramatic works, follows the famous general Albrecht Wallenstein at the height of his influence and power during the Thirty Years' War. Leading Europe's most powerful army, Wallenstein is caught between his ambition and his Emperor's growing distrust. He must decide either to stay loyal to his king and lose his power or to betray his country for greater gain. STC Artistic Director Michael Kahn envisions this epic story of war, intrigue and loyalty tested. Wallenstein was commissioned through the generous support of The Beech Street Foundation.