[Dustin Faulkner]

Hello:

I just got this book. It is big! Hopefully, it will educate me about more battles and give me a sense of chronology and background. All these battles we discuss are a disorganized mess in my head.

Anyway ... I was wondering what others think of this book. It appears to be very thorough.

Thank you! :-)

Sincerely,
Dustin Faulkner

[A. Spanjer]

I've been looking at getting that book, but haven't yet as I have far to many books to read at the moment.

It looks like an excellent book to educate oneself on the thirty years war.

[Gottfried P. Doerler]

do you mean the book by Peter H. Wilson ?
maybe i`ll buy it, its only € 17 at amazon.
I´ve so far only read the osprey titles about gustavus adolphus army, which focus on the fighters but still leave great confusion about the course of events.
would be good to know better, after all the 30years war was the worst war my region has ever seen.

citing wiki
"So great was the devastation brought about by the war that estimates put the reduction of population in the German states at about 25% to 40%. Some regions were affected much more than others. For example, Württemberg lost three-quarters of its population during the war...The male population of the German states was reduced by almost half. The population of the Czech lands declined by a third due to war..."

[Marko Susimetsa]

It's one of my most important sources as I'm attempting to write novel set during the events of the 30 years war.

An excellent book at a general level, but when you want to go into the details, you will need accompanying source books.

[D. Phillip Caron]

Marko, there is a book by ERIC FLINT titled "1632" ( Amazon). It is a novel about that war in Germany. It's fiction, but a fun read. It has a LOT of history in it too. Might be good prep for your own book.

[Marko Susimetsa]

Excellent tip! Thank you!

[John Turner]

Marko,

I am reading it at the moment - I got it for Christmas. So far the detail is remarkable (I am still on the chapters dealing with the causes), but having skimmed through to have a look at the battle descriptions it is not so detailed - the Author's strong point certainly seems to be the social, religious and political context of the war. I would highly recommend it (so far), as even if the battle detail is lacking (and I have only glanced at those bits), it will give you a very detailed and insightful view of the background to the war.

[Marko Susimetsa]

I've been devouring history books (both old and new) as well as novels (including The Three Musketeers, Alatriste etc.) to get into the feel of the era and style of writing, but it sounds like 1632 might be able to provide what many other sources lack: the voice of the common people. I'll get my hands on it as soon as possible.

Now, the next thing to look for is some good descriptions of the telescopes one might find military officers using during the era...

[Kurt Scholz]

Contemporary sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplicius_Simplicissimus
Is a fiction book written by a contemporary of the war about the war or at least it appeared even to contemporaries as such. Remember Karl May, we are good forgers of adventurers in Germany. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_May

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hagendorf
Is a simple mercenary of this war whose diary has been discovered.

Later views in literature:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Courage_and_Her_Children
It's a modern fiction work by Brecht, but nicely highlights modern German attitudes towards this war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallenstein_%28play%29
Another famous play long after the war about later German views on this war is by Friedrich Schiller:


And here's the homepage of another writer who already did pretty good research on this specific time and region: Just ask him about anything, he's a nice guy and knows a lot of sources.
http://l-clausewitz.livejournal.com/

I read this brief summary of the telescope.
http://www.cosmicelk.net/telrev.htm
You should ask the technical museums on more information. They only exhibit part of their inventory and have much more in their archives. Especially Munich was one of the centers for optic instruments. http://www.deutsches-museum.de/en/contact/
Another source would be English patents, they are among the best documented and go way back and England would be one of the places where I'd get a patent on such an item (the aforementioned museum has a library with a collection of these ancient patents from England in case you decide to visit Munich)

[Marko Susimetsa]

Excellent stuff, again! I had found Simplicius on my own and have it on my Kindle, but those other sources are all new.

Actually, I had read that telescope bit as well. Great source on a general level, but tells nothing of what kinds of telescopes one might expect the military to use - I assume not the ones showing the image upside down and reversed?

[Lafayette C Curtis]

You can't beat the primary sources when you're looking for gritty but exciting details on contemporary battles. Which sources you pick will often depend on what languages you read. For the Thirty Years' War you'd generally be best off if you can read and access German sources, but it's worth noting that the war extended much further than that and saw a great deal of action in Italy as well as the Low Countries and parts of France (you know, the Spanish invasion of France, the campaigns along the Spanish road, and all that stuff), so there should be a healthy amount of memoirs written in French, Spanish, or Italians by participants in the respective theatres. If you're stuck with English, well, I'm afraid most of the memoirs from that era were from the English Civil War instead, but many Civil War soldiers were Continental veterans and English mercenaries made up a significant part of just about any Protestant army of the time (as well as some Catholic ones!). Finns...well, seriously? Where do you think Gustaf Adolf recruited many of his soldiers from?

[Sean Manning]

[Marko Susimetsa]

I found out that there's an English translation of that diary in this book:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0872209393

... ordered it immediately!

And, to the comment of me being a Finn and much of Sweden's army being Finnish: Yes, that is true, but it seems pretty much impossible to find any written journals or diaries of any of the men who served in the Hakkapeliittas or musketeers. If there are sources, they are hidden from public view. However, I have found several very good history books telling about the 30-year-war in Finnish in addition to the English language sources. So, overall, I'm pretty happy with the amount of knowledge available. Nevertheless, it is a hobby that only makes you hungrier for more as you get deeper and deeper into matters.

[Lafayette C Curtis]

Actually, if I'm not mistaken, there's a fair number of publicly-accessible Finnish and Swedish sources on the Thirty Years' War from the grunt's eye view in some of the older (and larger) public libraries. The problem of getting at those sources is usually about the cost of travel to said libraries, since such old works aren't likely to be lent out (and thus would most probably have to be read within the premises). I wonder if there's some way to get publishers interested in putting out modern reprints (or reprints with side-by-side English translations!) of these works.

[Marko Susimetsa]

[Marko Susimetsa]

[Daniel Staberg]

[Marko Susimetsa]

I've been reading The Thirty Years War: A Documentary History for a week now and gone through the first few pages of Hagendorf's diary. Very juicy stuff, I must say and I recommend it to anyone interested in the period. I was especially taken by how the mercenary manages to talk about witch burnings and bread making within a couple of sentences and seems more fascinated by the latter than he is horrified by the former:

"In Lippstadt there was good, old beer and also witches. I saw seven of them burned alive. Among them was even a pretty girl of eighteen, but she too was burned.

In this land they bake bread that is as big as a large grindstone, but square. The bread has to bake in the oven for twenty-four hours. They call it pumpernickel. It is, however, quite good and tasty bread, completely black."

And, this bit was pretty funny as well:

"At Schaffhausen I made so much by begging that I was going to buy woolen shoes, but I first went to the inn, and there the wine was so good that I forgot about the shoes. Instead I wrapped my old shoes with willow and then walked as far as Ulm on the Danube."

A very good purchase, I must say and I must thank Kurt Scholz for bringing up this diary so that I knew to look for it!

[Lafayette C Curtis]