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knightofswords's review
4.0
Wedgwood was an excellent author for her time. Dated, but still one of the best short courses on the Thirty Years War.
alisonjfields's review
5.0
Well, I absolutely loved this book. And if you the type of person who enjoy an impeccably researched, lively account of a complicated, bloody and famously frustrating conflict that consumed most of central Europe for the middle third of the 17th century, I'm pretty sure you will too.
binstonbirchill's review
5.0
This is among the very best of histories, it’s truly astonishing what she was able to accomplish at the age of 28.
She’s able to give the reader a feeling for the era.
“France, England, Spain, Germany-already in the seventeenth century the historian is faced by these conglomerate abstracts. The self-conscious nation existed even if its connexion with the individuals who composed it was hard to define; all peoples had their border problems, their minorities, their divisions. In certain professions there was a fluidity which is startling to the modern mind: no one thought it strange that a French soldier should command an army against the French, and loyalty to a cause, to a religion, even to a master, was commonly more highly esteemed than loyalty to a country.”
She also can write an incredibly vivid scene.
“It passed, gathering momentum, from lip to lip across the excited throng. Ferdinand had been deposed in Bohemia. And while their voices rose in a hubbub of excitement, the great windows above them were thrown open and before them on the balcony stood the man himself, Ferdinand, deposed King of Bohemia, but irrevocably chosen and sworn, Holy Roman Emperor of the German Nation.”
The history is complex almost to the point of absurdity with the religious, regional, and monarchical interlocking and contrasting agendas but somehow Wedgewood lays it all out in a way that, while difficult, is immensely compelling. The character sketches are one of the highlights for me.
“Richelieu's ambitions had never been confined to the narrow boundaries of his see, although he fulfilled his episcopal duties, as he did everything in his intricate career, with scrupulous thoroughness. Attaching himself at first to the party of the Queen-mother, he had gained his first ministerial appointment in 1616; since then he had contrived to maintain, except for a short interlude, his foothold on the slippery ground of advancement. He had not risen without abandoning his old friends and protectors, without arousing many bitter enemies -the Queen-mother the bitterest of all but in the larger field of politics his ambitions were impersonal and he had used intrigue as the means to a greater end. He had the organizer's careful ability, the percipience of the statesman and that unrestrained ambition to serve his country regardless of domestic happiness which is often the accompaniment of political genius.”
I highly recommend this book. An absolute classic.
She’s able to give the reader a feeling for the era.
“France, England, Spain, Germany-already in the seventeenth century the historian is faced by these conglomerate abstracts. The self-conscious nation existed even if its connexion with the individuals who composed it was hard to define; all peoples had their border problems, their minorities, their divisions. In certain professions there was a fluidity which is startling to the modern mind: no one thought it strange that a French soldier should command an army against the French, and loyalty to a cause, to a religion, even to a master, was commonly more highly esteemed than loyalty to a country.”
She also can write an incredibly vivid scene.
“It passed, gathering momentum, from lip to lip across the excited throng. Ferdinand had been deposed in Bohemia. And while their voices rose in a hubbub of excitement, the great windows above them were thrown open and before them on the balcony stood the man himself, Ferdinand, deposed King of Bohemia, but irrevocably chosen and sworn, Holy Roman Emperor of the German Nation.”
The history is complex almost to the point of absurdity with the religious, regional, and monarchical interlocking and contrasting agendas but somehow Wedgewood lays it all out in a way that, while difficult, is immensely compelling. The character sketches are one of the highlights for me.
“Richelieu's ambitions had never been confined to the narrow boundaries of his see, although he fulfilled his episcopal duties, as he did everything in his intricate career, with scrupulous thoroughness. Attaching himself at first to the party of the Queen-mother, he had gained his first ministerial appointment in 1616; since then he had contrived to maintain, except for a short interlude, his foothold on the slippery ground of advancement. He had not risen without abandoning his old friends and protectors, without arousing many bitter enemies -the Queen-mother the bitterest of all but in the larger field of politics his ambitions were impersonal and he had used intrigue as the means to a greater end. He had the organizer's careful ability, the percipience of the statesman and that unrestrained ambition to serve his country regardless of domestic happiness which is often the accompaniment of political genius.”
I highly recommend this book. An absolute classic.
sean_tracy's review
4.0
The author is an interesting story-teller, but also provides deeper analysis and assessment throughout the book (e.g., regarding the interests and likely motivations driving the main actors to act the way they do throughout the war). I mainly read it to better understand the ensuing Peace of Westphalia and new European order, so it was interesting and unexpected how much she downplayed the war's importance to all that in the end:
"The Peace of Westphalia was like most peace treaties, a rearrangement of the European map ready for the next war. The Peace has been described as marking an epoch in European history, and it is commonly taken to do so. It is supposed to divide the period of religious wars from that of national wars, the ideological wars from the wars of mere aggression. But the demarcation is as artificial as such arbitrary divisions commonly are. Aggression, dynastic ambition, and fanaticism are all alike present in the hazy background behind the actual reality of the war, and the last of the wars of religion merged insensibly into the pseudo-national wars of the future...The war solved no problem. Its effects, both immediate and indirect, were either negative or disastrous. Morally subversive, economically destructive, socially degrading, confused in its causes, devious in its course, futile in its result, it is the outstanding example in European history of meaningless conflict" (505-6).
"The Peace of Westphalia was like most peace treaties, a rearrangement of the European map ready for the next war. The Peace has been described as marking an epoch in European history, and it is commonly taken to do so. It is supposed to divide the period of religious wars from that of national wars, the ideological wars from the wars of mere aggression. But the demarcation is as artificial as such arbitrary divisions commonly are. Aggression, dynastic ambition, and fanaticism are all alike present in the hazy background behind the actual reality of the war, and the last of the wars of religion merged insensibly into the pseudo-national wars of the future...The war solved no problem. Its effects, both immediate and indirect, were either negative or disastrous. Morally subversive, economically destructive, socially degrading, confused in its causes, devious in its course, futile in its result, it is the outstanding example in European history of meaningless conflict" (505-6).