50 Fun Facts About Thirty Years' War

Which war between Spain and the Dutch became part of the Thirty Years' War and ended in the same year?

The Eighty Years' War began as a Dutch revolt against Spanish rule in 1568, paused for a twelve-year truce in 1609, and resumed in 1621 as one front of the wider European struggle.

Where was most of the Thirty Years' War fought?

Central Europe, above all the German lands, was ravaged because the unpaid mercenary armies of every side lived off the countryside they marched through.

Which 1648 settlement ended the Thirty Years' War?

The Peace of Westphalia left each German state free to run its own affairs, and it is often credited with founding the modern system of sovereign states, a claim some historians dispute.

Which 1555 settlement divided the Holy Roman Empire into Catholic and Lutheran states?

The Peace of Augsburg let each prince choose Lutheranism or Catholicism for his lands and made that faith binding on his subjects, though those who dissented were free to sell up and emigrate.

Frederick V held the Bohemian throne so briefly in 1619–20 that he was mocked with which nickname?

The Winter King lost far more than Bohemia: after his army was routed in November 1620 the emperor outlawed him, and in 1623 gave his electoral title to Maximilian of Bavaria.

The Thirty Years' War began when two Habsburg officials were thrown from a window of which building in 1618?

Prague Castle: the two regents and their secretary all survived the fall, which Catholics credited to angels and Protestant writers to a dung heap below the window.

Which November 1620 battle destroyed the Bohemian army and sent King Frederick V fleeing?

White Mountain was over in about an hour, and the victors made it count: the rebel leaders were tried and executed, and Protestants were driven out of Bohemia.

Who led the Catholic League army that Maximilian of Bavaria funded against the Bohemian rebels in 1620?

Count Tilly had been in Maximilian's service since 1610, building the Bavarian force that became the backbone of the Catholic League army he now led against the rebels.

Gustavus Adolphus died as the Protestant cause's champion, yet which daughter and heir later abdicated and became a Catholic?

Christina inherited Sweden's crown at five, when her father fell in battle in 1632, then gave it up in 1654 and moved to Rome, where she died in 1689.

At which November 1632 battle was Sweden's King Gustavus Adolphus killed?

Lützen cost the king his life when he strayed into enemy cavalry in the smoke and was shot from his horse, yet the Imperial army left the field at dusk and the Swedes claimed the victory.

Which imperial generalissimo was assassinated by his own officers at Cheb in 1634?

Wallenstein was suspected of plotting to change sides, so the emperor he had served stripped him of command and charged him with treason, and he was dead within days.

Which French minister agreed to bankroll the Swedes under the 1631 Treaty of Bärwalde?

Cardinal Richelieu had crushed Protestant revolts at home, yet he paid Protestant Sweden to fight the Catholic Habsburgs, whose lands hemmed France in on almost every side.

Which German dramatist wrote a history of the Thirty Years' War and then a stage trilogy about one of its generals?

Friedrich Schiller was a history professor at Jena when he published his account of the war in the 1790s, and he mined it for the verse trilogy often called his greatest drama.

Which city's sack in May 1631 became a warning of what imperial victory would mean?

Magdeburg lost some 20,000 people to massacre and fire, and the news became a rallying cry that pushed wavering Protestant princes into alliance with Sweden.

At which September 1631 battle did Gustavus Adolphus rout Tilly's traditionally organised army?

Breitenfeld, fought just outside Leipzig, destroyed the main army facing the Swedes, their enemies' first major defeat in thirteen years of war, and let them overrun central Germany.

At which April 1632 battle on the River Lech was the veteran general Tilly mortally wounded?

Rain was where Tilly tried to stop the Swedes crossing into Bavaria; his thigh was shattered early in the fight, he died two weeks later, and the duchy lay open to invasion.

Which September 1634 defeat cost Sweden control of southern Germany?

Nördlingen was won when a Spanish army joined the emperor's troops, but the triumph backfired: within a year France entered the war openly to stop a Habsburg victory.

Which future philosopher served as a young volunteer in Maximilian of Bavaria's Catholic army in 1619–20?

René Descartes had spent the previous year training with the Protestant army of Maurice of Nassau in the Netherlands before he joined the Catholic side in Germany.

Which 1629 measure did Ferdinand II largely abandon in the 1635 Peace of Prague?

The Edict of Restitution had ordered Protestants to hand back church lands; shelving it won most Lutheran princes over to the emperor, and the war became a contest with foreign powers.

Which French king inherited the throne as a small child in 1643, with France deep in the Thirty Years' War?

Louis XIV was only four, so Cardinal Mazarin steered France through the rest of the war, and the boy king went on to reign for 72 years.

Which commander of Spain's army in the Netherlands had to secure the Spanish Road before the Dutch truce expired?

Ambrosio Spinola was a Genoese noble who had raised his first army at his own expense; Spain never repaid the fortune he pledged for its wars, and he ended his life financially ruined.

What was the 'Spanish Road'?

An overland route from Italy to Flanders, it let Spain march troops north from Milan because ships in the Channel were at the mercy of the Dutch navy, until France cut the road in the 1630s.

Which Dutch admiral beat the Spanish at the Downs in October 1639?

Maarten Tromp attacked a Spanish fleet sheltering in the Downs, an anchorage off Kent that was supposed to be protected by English neutrality, and the defeat ended Spain's power at sea.

Which French commander crushed the Army of Flanders at Rocroi on 19 May 1643?

Condé, then the 21-year-old duc d'Enghien, was winning his first victory as a commander, and Rocroi shattered the long-held belief that Spain's tercios were invincible.

The Torstensson War began in December 1643 when Sweden invaded which Danish territory?

Jutland was overrun within weeks by a Swedish army marching up from Germany, but Christian IV's fleet kept the invaders off the Danish islands, and the king lost an eye fighting at sea.

Christian IV of Denmark joined the Thirty Years' War in 1625 as duke of which German territory?

Holstein lay inside the Holy Roman Empire, so Denmark's king was also an imperial prince, and the Protestant states of the Lower Saxon Circle elected him their military commander.

Gabriel Bethlen, the Calvinist prince who attacked the Habsburgs from the east in 1619, ruled which principality?

Transylvania's prince overran much of Habsburg Hungary and was elected its king in 1620, yet he was never crowned and gave the title up when he made peace the next year.

Emperor Ferdinand II, whose drive against Protestants lit the Thirty Years' War, was educated by which Catholic order?

The Jesuits taught him at Ingolstadt, where his parents sent him to keep him away from Styria's Lutheran nobles, and soon after taking power he set about stamping out Protestantism in his lands.

Alexander Leslie, whom Gustavus Adolphus sent to hold Stralsund in 1628, was a soldier from which country?

Scotland got him back in the end: Leslie rose to field marshal in Swedish service, then went home to command the Covenanter army against Charles I.

Frederick V married which daughter of James I of England in 1613?

Elizabeth lost her Bohemian crown after little more than a year, yet her line won a greater one: her daughter's son became George I of Great Britain in 1714.

Where did Frederick V set up his court in exile after losing Bohemia and the Palatinate?

The Hague sheltered him on Dutch subsidies for a decade, until he followed the Swedish army into Germany in 1632 hoping to be restored, and died at Mainz that November.

Which 1356 imperial decree fixed the seven electors who chose the Holy Roman Emperor?

The Golden Bull named three archbishops and four lay princes; by 1618 the seven stood four Catholics to three Protestants, so a Protestant king of Bohemia would have tipped the balance.

Which 1648 peace agreement was signed between the Holy Roman Empire and Sweden?

The Treaty of Osnabrück came from a split congress: Sweden dealt with the emperor's envoys there, while France dealt with them in Münster, where the pope's envoy refused to negotiate with Protestants.

The window-throwing of 1618 followed a precedent set in the same city in 1419, which had set off which wars?

The Hussite Wars began after followers of the burned reformer Jan Hus hurled town councillors from a window, and they too pitted Bohemian religious rebels against a Catholic emperor.

Besides five million thalers, Sweden's prize at the 1648 peace included the western half of which Baltic duchy?

Pomerania's western half gave Sweden the mouth of the Oder and a seat in the Imperial Diet, and part of it stayed Swedish until 1815.

Which pope declared the treaties that ended the Thirty Years' War null and void?

Innocent X condemned the peace for signing away lands he held to be the Church's, but his envoy's protests at the congress were ignored and his brief Zelo Domus Dei changed nothing.

Which hymn did pastor Martin Rinkart write in a refugee-crowded town during the Thirty Years' War?

Now Thank We All Our God came from a pastor who in 1637 was the only clergyman left in Eilenburg, conducting up to fifty funerals a day, including his own wife's.

Which manuscript, nicknamed the Devil's Bible, did Swedish troops loot from Prague in 1648 and carry off to Stockholm?

The Codex Gigas, thought to be the largest surviving medieval manuscript, owes its nickname to a full-page portrait of the devil; the Swedes took it from the emperor's library as spoils of war.

Who wrote Simplicius Simplicissimus, the 1668 novel of a soldier's life in the war?

He drew on his own service, and other sources back up the brutal everyday detail he describes.

Which 1939 Bertolt Brecht play uses the Thirty Years' War as its backdrop?

Mother Courage and Her Children follows a trader who lives off the armies with her provisions cart and loses all three of her children to the war, yet never stops doing business.

France's gains at the 1648 peace gave it a lasting foothold in which region?

Alsace came piecemeal: the peace gave France its first hold on the region, but Strasbourg stayed outside it until French troops occupied the city in 1681.

By roughly what share did the population of the German lands fall during the Thirty Years' War?

About 40% is the most quoted estimate, though figures from 20% to 45% are argued; far more people died of the hunger and disease the armies spread than in battle.

Which son of the exiled Frederick V became the leading Royalist cavalry commander of the English Civil War?

Prince Rupert of the Rhine was born in December 1619, weeks after his father's coronation in Bohemia, and grew up in exile before leading the cavalry of his uncle, Charles I.

Which Spanish court painter showed a victorious general receiving the keys of a Dutch city in The Surrender of Breda?

Diego Velázquez painted it about ten years after the long siege of 1624–25, a victory that drew attention across Europe in a war against the Dutch that Spain went on to lose.

Which Swedish chancellor took charge of the war effort after Gustavus Adolphus's death and formed the Heilbronn League in 1633?

Axel Oxenstierna headed the regency for the dead king's six-year-old heir and kept Sweden's armies fighting in Germany until the peace, sixteen years later.

The Hakkapeliitta, the light horsemen Gustavus Adolphus used as shock cavalry, were recruited from which part of his realm?

Finland's riders are said to take their name from the battle cry 'hakkaa päälle', roughly 'cut them down', and a Finnish military march is named after them.

Which mercenary commander led the army Savoy helped fund for the Bohemian rebels?

Ernst von Mansfeld was a Catholic who had learned his trade in Habsburg service, then sold his sword to the Protestant side and stayed the Catholic League's most dangerous opponent until he died in 1626.

Where did the Dutch capture the Spanish treasure fleet in 1628?

Matanzas Bay in Cuba is where the cornered treasure ships ran aground and gave up almost without a fight, and their silver paid for the Dutch Republic to keep up its war against Spain.

In which Franconian bishopric did the witch trials of the late 1620s claim even the mayor, Johannes Junius, among their victims?

Bamberg built a special prison for its accused, and the letter Junius wrote to his daughter from his cell, saying that torture had forced his confession, survives as a record of how the trials worked.

Which Czech educator, driven from his homeland by the Thirty Years' War, lived out his life as a Protestant exile?

John Amos Comenius fled when Ferdinand II set out to make Bohemia Catholic again; he went on to write school textbooks for Sweden and died in Amsterdam in 1670, still an exile.