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.

This is an English translation of important writings on the Thirty Years' War by the great Soviet historian B. F. Porshnev. Little is known of the Muscovite contribution to the conflict and Paul Dukes - arguably Britain's senior historian of ancien regime Russia - has selected the most valuable areas of Porshnev's unparalleled archival research to fill a crucial gap in the literature of the seventeenth century. In placing this work in the context of Porshnev's larger undertaking, Professor Dukes' substantial introduction assesses Porshnev's critics and evaluates his contribution to our understanding of the Thirty Years' War and of relations between Eastern and Western Europe at the time. A significant reinterpretation of a fascinating period, the book will interest both Russian specialists and those working more generally in seventeenth- century European history.

More than three and a half centuries have passed since the Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years' War (1618-48); but this most devastating of wars in the early modern period continues to capture the imagination of readers: this book reveals why. It was one of the first wars where contemporaries stressed the importance of atrocities, the horrors of the fighting and also the sufferings of the civilian population. The Thirty Years' War remains a conflict of key importance in the history of the development of warfare and the 'military revolution'.

Gustavus Adolphus - A history of the art of war from its revival after the middle ages to the end of the Spanish succession war. Volume 1 is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1890. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres. As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature. Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare and historical knowledge for the future.

The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) remains a puzzling and complex subject for students and scholars alike. This is hardly surprising since it is often contested among historians whether it is actually appropriate to speak of a single war or a series of conflicts. Similarly emphasis is also put on the different motives for going to war, as conflicting religious and political interests were involved. This research companion brings together leading scholars in the field to synthesize the range of existing research on the war, which is still fragmented and divided along national historical lines, and to further explore the complexities of the conflict using an innovative comparative approach. The companion is designed to provide scholars and graduate students with a comprehensive and authoritative overview of research on one of the most destructive conflicts in European history.

The nineteenth century witnessed the birth of German nationalism and the unification of Germany as a powerful nation-state. In this era the reading public?s obsession with the most destructive and divisive war in its history?the Thirty Years? War?resurrected old animosities and sparked a violent, century-long debate over the origins and aftermath of the war. The core of this bitter argument was a clash between Protestant and Catholic historians over the cultural criteria determining authentic German identity and the territorial and political form of the future German nation. ø This groundbreaking study of modern Germany?s morbid fascination with the war explores the ideological uses of history writing, commemoration, and collective remembrance to show how the passionate argument over the ?meaning? of the Thirty Years? War shaped Germans' conception of their nation. The first book in the extensive literature on German history writing to examine how modern German historians reinterpreted a specific event to define national identity and legitimate political and ideological agendas, The Thirty Years? War and German Memory in the Nineteenth Century is a bold intellectual history of the confluence of history writing, religion, culture, and politics in nineteenth-century Germany.