22

The Human and Material Cost

AN ALL-DESTRUCTIVE FURY?

The Myth of Absolute Destruction

The sense of the Thirty Years War’s destructiveness remains deeply embedded in the popular consciousness. The extent to which this reflects how contemporaries perceived it is the subject of the last chapter. What follows here concentrates on measuring the loss of life, economic dislocation, political disruption and impact on German culture. Perception and reality remain nonetheless entwined, even if they are teased apart for analytical convenience. Contemporary texts and images do convey a sense of all-pervasive violence and unremitting destruction. The war in the Empire had already become a benchmark for atrocity elsewhere in Europe before 1648. British readers were informed by publications like Dr Vincent’s illustrated The Lamentations of Germany (published in 1638), showing murder, mutilation and mayhem in graphic detail. All parties in the subsequent British Civil Wars struggled to avoid their conflict descending into the depravity they believed afflicted Germany.¹

The emphasis on violence receded in accounts published during the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries that concentrated on personalities and constitutional and confessional issues.² This changed with the publication of Schiller’s history of the war (1791–3) and his Wallenstein drama trilogy (1797–9), as well as the rediscovery and popularization of Grimmelshausen’s near-contemporary novel Simplicissimus. Schiller and the others engaged in this literary revival were representatives of the German Romantic movement, fascinated with death, destruction and the loss of identity. They wrote at a time of renewed upheaval following the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. They witnessed the Empire’s final destruction and the controversy surrounding what kind of German state should replace it. The era after 1815 was generally repressive, restricting public discussion of politics and nationhood. Literature and history offered alternative arenas to express opinion on current issues. Above all, the Romantics were interested in human emotions and the search for supposedly authentic experience through personal testimonies and folklore. The most influential expressions of this were the popular accounts compiled by Gustav Freytag in his multi-volume Pictures from the German Past.³ In contrast to his academic colleagues Freytag paid little attention to high politics in favour of stories from everyday experience.

Three elements emerged from this Romantic interest that shaped both academic and popular writing on the war. The first is the sense of unlimited, indiscriminate and pointless violence that supposedly broke all bounds. We have already encountered aspects of this in the debate on the character of the war’s later stages in Chapters 17 and 18. In addition to the tales of cannibalism associated with the siege of Breisach, the most prominent motifs were rape, mutilation and torture, and images of a beautiful land left desolate and despoiled. The second element was a belief that these horrors were largely inflicted on innocent Germans by a merciless enemy. This could assume confessional form, as with Protestant stories of the Catholic ‘rape’ of Magdeburg. More commonly, various ‘foreign’ perpetrators were identified: Croats, Cossacks, Swedes, Finns, Scots, Irish, Hungarians, Transylvanians and, less often, French and Spaniards. The third element fitted the war into a typology of national redemption: a new, stronger German nation (later also ‘race’) would arise from the ashes. The tales of horror thus offered not just titillation, but hope that suffering and humiliation would eventually be rewarded. The power of this aspect lay in its roots in the Christian tradition that already influenced seventeenth-century perceptions of the war.

Some historians started to question this Gothic atrocity narrative around 1900. The military historian Robert Hoeniger sparked controversy by arguing the German population declined by only an eighth, not the three-quarters claimed by Freytag.⁴ Played out against the backdrop of renewed destruction during the First World War, this debate divided opinion into what have become known as the ‘Disastrous War’ and ‘Early Decline’ schools. Whereas the former propagated the received wisdom of Germany as innocent victim, the latter countered by arguing the Thirty Years War merely accelerated existing problems stemming from overpopulation and a reorientation of Europe’s economy towards the Atlantic seaboard in the late sixteenth century. This argument was pushed to its logical extreme following the further devastation of the Second World War by Sigfrid Henry Steinberg writing in the United States. Steinberg claimed the Empire experienced some slackening of growth and redistribution of inhabitants and economic activity, but overall both the economy and population increased. Though he cited very little evidence, his interpretation rapidly gained acceptance, because it appeared more reasonable than the excesses of the Gothic all-destructive fury.⁵

General Trends

A major reason for this debate is that the war’s impact varied across time and space, producing seemingly contradictory evidence. Western Westphalia and parts of the Lower Rhine had already suffered from Spanish and Dutch raids from the 1580s onwards, as well as the operations associated with the Cologne War (1584–7) and the two Jülich crises. The rest of the Empire last saw major conflict in 1546–52 with the Schmalkaldic War and the Princes’ Revolt. The Habsburg Brothers’ Quarrel involved relatively little fighting, and while the Long Turkish War (1593–1606) represented a considerable financial burden, actual operations were restricted to Hungary and Transylvania. The absence of serious violence for several generations no doubt magnified the sense of horror when war arrived after 1618.

Even then, the fighting varied in intensity and scope. It was concentrated after 1618 along the Danube, Upper Hungary and the passes into southern Bohemia and Moravia. It shifted to central Bohemia between Pilsen and Prague with the imperial-Liga invasion of July 1620, while fighting continued in Upper Hungary and parts of Moravia and Silesia into 1622. All the horrors traditionally associated with the war’s last phase were already present: brutality, plunder, murder of civilians, plague. These regions then largely escaped serious conflict for up to a decade, though the aftershocks were still felt, notably in the Upper Austrian Rebellion of 1626. Other pressures also continued with war taxation and the population displacement brought by re-Catholicization.

The main focus of the fighting meanwhile shifted to Alsace, the middle Rhine and lower Main valleys that saw the principal operations of 1621–3. Parts of Lower Saxony and Westphalia were also affected by the beginning of 1622 as Duke Christian of Halberstadt attacked Paderborn and moved south to join Count Mansfeld, before both were driven into East Frisia. This phase was one of relatively rapid movement that minimized damage, because armies did not stay in one place for long. Transit routes certainly suffered from looting and physical destruction, but areas a short distance either side of the road generally escaped. The war’s primary impact was still indirect as territories raised taxes to pay for the rapid establishment of comparatively large armies. The combined strength of all the forces operating in the Empire between 1618 and 1626 probably averaged 80–100,000 men. Such numbers had not been seen for seventy years. Charles V had mustered 56,000 men against the 50,000 Protestants in the summer of 1546 at the height of the Schmalkaldic War.⁶ Whereas that conflict was over within a year, the militarization after 1618 had to be sustained under worsening economic and ecological conditions. Crop failures in 1621–2 caused food prices to double the following year, exacerbated by hyperinflation, and transformed a subsistence crisis into an economic one that persisted into 1626.

Frederick V of the Palatinate had been comprehensively defeated by 1623, freeing the south from further direct conflict for eight years. Danish intervention after 1625 was concentrated in Lower Saxony. Areas to the west, south and east were occupied by Liga and imperial troops to contain the Danes. Hessen-Kassel and much of Westphalia were subjected to a prolonged Liga presence that proved costly financially, rather than in terms of human life. By contrast, the arrival of Wallenstein’s imperial army on the middle Elbe in the autumn of 1625 was disastrous. The Imperialists brought the plague, killing up to 40 per cent of the urban population in the archbishopric of Magdeburg and bishopric of Halberstadt, returning the population size to that of 1562.⁷ Operations spilled over into parts of Thuringia and Upper Saxony along the Elbe valley during 1626, while Mansfeld’s dash south-east brought the war back to Silesia and Upper Hungary that autumn. Wallenstein’s steady increase of the imperial army helped push the total number of combatants up to around 160,000 by 1629, or double that of only five years previously. The larger army establishment required the extension of the billeting system across much of the Empire, replacing indirect maintenance through taxation with direct occupation. This brought the war back to southern Germany ahead of the Swedish invasion as imperial units moved into Württemberg and some other territories to extend Wallenstein’s contributions and to enforce the Edict of Restitution.

The Swedish landing in June 1630 did not immediately alter this pattern. Active operations resumed after a year’s lull, but remained contained in Pomerania and Mecklenburg. Imperial and Liga units were withdrawn from other parts of Germany, either to confront the Swedes or to join the siege of Mantua. The impact of rising troop numbers was initially cushioned by better harvests in many areas during 1630 and 1631. The full effects were delayed until the Swedish exploitation of their victory at Breitenfeld rapidly spread the war into all parts of Germany by 1632. Total troop numbers reached an unprecedented 250,000 thanks to the new regional armies formed in Westphalia, Lower Saxony, the Upper Rhine and Swabia, as well as the main forces campaigning in Bavaria, Franconia and electoral Saxony.

Sweden’s determination to make war pay extended billeting and confiscations into new areas, and plunged many territories into crisis. The remaining stocks of grain, wine and other essentials were sold in a desperate attempt to satisfy mounting military demands. Production declined as seed corn was consumed and vital assets like tools or mills were destroyed. The extensive operations and rapid reversals of fortune fostered a climate of uncertainty. Refugees had tended to return relatively quickly after troops had left areas during the 1620s but they now stayed away, leaving large areas deserted. Major transit routes like the Elbe, Rhine and Main valleys were especially severely affected. The earl of Arundel’s party, travelling along the Main in May 1636,

came to a wretched little village called Neukirchen, which we found quite uninhabited yet with one house on fire. Here, since it was now late, we were obliged to stay all night, for the nearest town was four miles away; but we spent that night walking up and down with carbines in our hands, and listening fearfully to the sound of shots in the woods around us… Early next morning, His Excellency went to inspect the church and found it had been plundered and that the pictures and the altar had been desecrated. In the churchyard we saw a dead body, scraped out of the grave, while outside the churchyard we found another dead body…⁸

The depopulation was hastened by the plague that returned to southern Germany after 1631 and spread to the north by 1636. Arundel’s party ‘hurried from this unhappy place and learnt later that the villagers had fled on account of the plague and had set that particular house on fire in order to prevent travellers from catching the infection’. Since the plague hit the young as well as the old and sick the hardest, it eliminated what demographic recovery there had been in areas like Magdeburg since the earlier outbreak in 1625–6. However, it could also bring some element of relief. Villages along the Bavarian-Swabian border suffered constant marauding from both sides during 1632–4, but the soldiers stayed clear once the plague struck and the inhabitants displayed straw crosses, a recognized warning sign.⁹

Rising unrest indicated the partial breakdown of government in many areas. Peasant guerrillas appeared in parts of Westphalia, Alsace, Swabia and the Lake Constance regions after 1631. As we have seen, they often opposed both sides with equal vehemence (Chapter 15, pp.532–4). People lost confidence in the established authorities’ ability to protect them. Unrest ranged from rural conspiracies and petitions in Hohenlohe in 1631–2, and renewed unrest in Upper Austria after 1632, to the large revolt in Bavaria in 1633–4.¹⁰ The two years following the battle of Nördlingen produced the most severe impact. The rapidity of Sweden’s collapse across southern Germany proved catastrophic for the Protestant territories there. The total value of damage and military exactions in Württemberg during the war was estimated at 58.7 million florins, of which three-quarters occurred in the four years following Nördlingen. The duchy’s population plummeted by between 23 and 69 per cent, depending on the district, during the same period. The mid-1630s also proved the worst for the lower Meuse region, because of the fighting around Maastricht. French intervention in the Rhineland, followed by the imperial attempts to clear Alsace and recover Lorraine, intensified destruction and spread plague to these areas as well.¹¹

The rapid escalation and spread of the war between 1631 and 1636 affected more than human life and activities. The shift of population, changes in land use and spread of unfamiliar microbes destabilized the eco-system. There was an explosion in the rodent population during 1636 that lasted several years and exacerbated the food shortage. Wolves roamed south-western Bavaria during 1638, returning in the early 1640s, while packs of wild pigs destroyed crops in 1639. Other animals disappeared as they became alternative sources of food. A Bavarian soldier marching along the Lower Rhine in February 1636 recorded there ‘was neither cat nor dog’, while there are numerous accounts of urban populations consuming both types of animal during the hunger years of the 1630s.¹²

French intervention actually lessened rather than intensified the overall impact, because imperial and Bavarian forces initially moved west of the Rhine, either to assist the Spanish in Picardy or to campaign in Lorraine and the Franche-Comté. While these areas suffered, much of southern Germany experienced some respite, boosted by a better harvest in 1638. Meanwhile, the Swedes were on the defensive and confined to the middle Elbe, Saxony and Brandenburg until 1639. Overall troop numbers declined following the collapse of the Heilbronn League and the dispersal of many of Sweden’s German auxiliaries. The Bavarian army remained roughly constant, but the imperial army contracted considerably after 1636, as did the Saxons two years later. These reductions were involuntary, forced upon all belligerents by the difficulties of recruiting and sustaining troops in the wake of plague deaths, economic decline and widespread devastation. The latter was now concentrated along the Upper Rhine and middle Elbe that saw the worst fighting between 1637 and 1639.

These shifts in theatres allowed some regions to recover after 1636. Much of the Habsburg monarchy was spared fighting during the later 1630s, while the prolonged negotiations with the Hessians and Guelphs restricted operations in Westphalia, the lower Main valley and Lower Saxony. The burden of war in these three regions was now largely static as communities sustained garrisons in their immediate vicinity. The same was true of Mecklenburg and Pomerania after the failure of Gallas’s campaigns there by 1639. Sweden’s garrisons nonetheless remained a heavy burden and prevented demographic recovery on the Baltic coast until forces there were reduced after 1648. North-west Germany experienced renewed fighting after the collapse of peace negotiations there in 1640. The former Bernhardine army arrived to support the Swedes and Guelphs, while the emperor and Bavaria sent reinforcements to Westphalia. However, the overall reduction in troop numbers meant these movements drained other areas of soldiers, notably south-west Germany where fighting was restricted to raiding until 1644. Alsace and the Franche-Comté were also spared active operations from this point. The pockets of relative tranquillity were expanded as Brandenburg, Hildesheim and the Guelph duchies left the war after 1642, while other areas paid contributions in return for garrison evacuation or a suspension of raiding. Such neutrality did not remove all the problems associated with the conflict, but it at least prevented a return of the frightful conditions prevailing in the mid-1630s.

Areas still exposed to active operations thus suffered disproportionately during the final years of the war. The Elbe valley saw renewed destruction during Sweden’s invasion of Denmark in 1644–5. Though Sweden forced Saxony into neutrality in August 1645, it lacked the forces to do the same in Westphalia. Fighting there after 1646 returned to the relatively static war of raiding between imperial and Hessian outposts. Instead, the main effort moved southwards again, with heavy fighting along the Upper Rhine and into Franconia during this period, as well as in Moravia and Lower Austria after an absence of over twenty years. The final phase was fought mainly along the Danube, returning the conflict to its area of origin.

THE DEMOGRAPHIC IMPACT

Overall Losses

The preceding discussion has already indicated some of the problems hindering any assessment of the war’s human and material cost. There was no uniform method of gathering population statistics even in the regions where this was carried out. Comparison of data across 1618–48 provides a very imperfect guide to actual losses, especially as the war only reached many areas after 1631, by which point the population had probably grown since the Defenestration of Prague. Demographers are obliged to extrapolate from other sources, such as lists of taxpayers or numbers of houses. There is no agreement on the ‘average’ size of households to use as a multiplier in these calculations. Lists of burned-out or abandoned houses are no real guide to actual population decline, because survivors either huddled together in the remaining buildings, or went elsewhere. Many modern estimates are distorted by estimating population only within later German borders (themselves hardly fixed historically) and thereby excluding areas that were previously part of the Empire like Lorraine, or Bohemia.

Steinberg asserted population rose by at least a million to between 16 and 18 million by 1650, largely by selective use of data drawn from areas experiencing a net gain. The only comprehensive survey remains that by Günther Franz who concluded that urban areas declined by a third, while the population in the countryside fell by 40 per cent. Most other accounts broadly agree by putting the overall loss at a third. Franz’s work remains problematic, not least given his membership of the Nazi Party who manipulated interpretations of the Thirty Years War for their own propaganda. Whilst no one still supports Steinberg’s claims, some modern estimates reduce the total decline to between 15 and 20 per cent.¹³

Even a 15 per cent decline would make the Thirty Years War the most destructive conflict in European history. By comparison the Soviet Union, which suffered the heaviest casualties of the Second World War, lost less than 12 per cent of its population. Both twentieth-century world wars were of course briefer, with the casualties each year correspondingly higher. Nonetheless, around 20 million of those lost during the First World War were due to the influenza outbreak at its end. A significant proportion of the casualties of the Second were killed in deliberate genocide, a feature mercifully absent from the Thirty Years War that was also waged with much less-potent weaponry (see Table 7). Total deaths in the Empire may have reached 8 million, given the relatively high number of military casualties and the fact that the true extent of civilian losses is often masked by the presence of wartime births recorded in overall population totals.¹⁴

Table 7: Comparative total deaths in major conflicts

Conflict	Deaths (millions, incl. from disease)	% of Pre-war Population
1618–48	5	20.0 (Empire only)
1914–18	27	5.5 (Europe only)
1939–45	33.8	6.0 (Europe only)

Overall totals of course obscure wide regional variations. The most comprehensive figures cover the Habsburg monarchy (see Table 8). The overall decline was relatively modest, but this was thanks to some growth in areas that largely escaped violence, whereas regions like Lower Austria or Bohemia that suffered repeated invasion saw a significant drop. More local data indicates further variations within this broad pattern. For instance, losses around Prague and the parts of the Elbe valley that experienced the worst fighting in Bohemia reached at least 50 per cent.¹⁵

Table 8: Population change in the Habsburg monarchy 1600–50

Region	1600	1650	Change (%)
Austrian Lands
Lower Austria	600,000	450,000	-25
Upper Austria	300,000	250,000	-17
Styria	460,000	540,000	+17
Carinthia	180,000	200,000	+11
Krain	290,000	340,000	+17
Görz and Gradisca	130,000	150,000	+15
	1,960,000	1,930,000	-2
Further Austria
Tirol	390,000	440,000	+13
Voralberg	40,000	45,000	+13
	430,000	485,000	+13
Bohemian Lands
Bohemia	1,400,000	1,000,000	–29
Moravia	650,000	450,000	–31
Silesia	900,000	700,000	–22
	2,950,000	2,150,000	–27
Hungarian Lands
Royal Hungary	1,800,000	1,900,000	+6
Total	7,140,000	6,465,000	-10

Source: Adapted from T. Winkelbauer, Ständefreiheit und Fürstenmacht (2 vols., Vienna, 2003), I, p.14.

Variations in other parts of the Empire could be even more extreme. As in the Habsburg monarchy, the overall decline was offset by net gains in fortunate areas like Hamburg, as well as below-average losses suffered in parts of Westphalia, Alsace and the Guelph duchies. Some territories suffered heavily early on, but then largely escaped further destruction – Holstein is a good example of this, where the severe losses of the mid-1620s had been made good by 1648. By contrast, areas along transit routes or under prolonged occupation suffered well above average losses. Some towns in the bishopric of Halberstadt lost between seven-and nine-tenths of their inhabitants. The population in Halberstadt itself fell from around 13,000 at the time of Wallenstein’s arrival in 1625 to under 2,500 by 1648. Brandenburg suffered in the decade after 1627, reducing the urban population from 113,500 to 34,000, while the number of rural inhabitants declined from 300,000 to 75,000, leaving around half the villages empty. The area next to the Elbe known as the Altmark was the worst hit, whereas the Oder region escaped serious action from the mid-1640s and had already recovered by the time government surveys were conducted in 1652. Fairly reliable data from Württemberg indicate the population fell by 57 per cent between 1634 and 1655, largely as a result of the prolonged imperial occupation, followed by intensified raiding and the major operations of the mid-1640s. Again, these figures alone do not give a complete picture. The population fell by three-quarters in the immediate aftermath of Nördlingen that also brought plague in its wake. It then recovered to around 30 per cent of the earlier level by 1645, reviving further by the time the census was conducted in 1655. At 60 per cent, Lorraine’s losses were roughly similar, again mainly falling during the 1630s. The Franche-Comté was ravaged between 1636 and 1639, but recovered thanks to its neutrality after 1644, which reduced the overall decline by 1648 to 48 per cent.¹⁶

Though not as severe, several other regions suffered considerable losses. The Bavarian population declined by 30 to 50 per cent depending on the estimate, with the 1630s being the worst decade. Much of Franconia lost 30 to 40 per cent of its population. The latest estimate for Pomerania suggests its population declined from 160,000 in 1630 to 96,000 by 1648, a fall of 40 per cent compared to the 50–66 per cent claimed by Franz. Nonetheless, based on pre- and post-war trends, Pomerania’s population would have grown without the war by 25,000. If these missing births are factored in, at least another 3 million need to be added to the overall impact on the Empire’s population.¹⁷

Causes of Mortality

The causes of mortality are as controversial as its scale. Accounts of battles and notorious massacres convey a false impression of violent death. Contemporary diaries are indeed full of stories of rape and murder, most of which rest on hearsay. Half the 72 eyewitness accounts analysed by Geoffrey Mortimer note the killing of named individuals, and one in five report personal assaults by soldiers, yet very few say these resulted in serious injury.¹⁸ Official papers rarely record rape, due to the difficulties of prosecuting such cases: only five rapists were convicted in Munich during the first half of the seventeenth century and three in Frankfurt between 1562 and 1695. The actual incidence was far higher and was probably one of the most common forms of serious interpersonal violence during the war.

Death records are more comprehensive. The Saxon town of Naumburg had 8,900 inhabitants in 1618, falling to 4,320 by 1645, yet only 18 citizens were listed as killed by soldiers, despite the place being sacked by the Swedes who plundered it for a week in 1635. Only 5 of the 699 deaths recorded in the Westphalian parish of Elspe were directly related to military violence, and though 241 people died in the Hohenlohe town of Ingelfingen during 1634, just 7 of these fell during its capture after the battle of Nördlingen, compared to the 163 who died of plague that year.¹⁹

Soldiers predominate among the victims of violence. Modern estimates place the total military casualties from combat at 450,000, calculated by aggregating the known losses from battles and sieges. Of these, 80,000 fell in French, Bernhardine and Hessian service, while the Imperialists lost 120,000 and the rest are accounted for by the Swedes, Danes and other German armies, including the Bavarian. Another 2–300,000 French were killed or wounded in the struggle against Spain from 1635 to 1659, making that country’s total combat loss significantly above the 280,000 casualties suffered in two further wars between 1672 and 1697.²⁰

Survival rates for the wounded are difficult to calculate, because what few data exist for hospital returns rarely distinguish the causes of admission. Most men were hospitalized through sickness, rather than injury. Conditions fell far below modern standards of hygiene and care, but some effort was made to ensure good food and attention. Only 10 out of 71 wounded imperial soldiers admitted to a hospital in August 1645 failed to return to their regiment, while 42 died out of 143 hospitalized in November 1646.²¹

Disease proved more potent than muskets, swords and cannon. On average, one in ten soldiers was sick, even if most generally recovered. Logistical failure or epidemics increased this proportion significantly. A form of typhus known as ‘Hungarian fever’ (morbus Hungaricus) killed 14,000 Liga soldiers during the 1620 campaign, compared to only 200 shot or hacked to death at White Mountain.²² However, Liga losses at White Mountain were exceptionally light and armies that were routed, like their Bohemian opponents, suffered far greater casualties, especially if they were pursued. It is likely that three men died of disease for every one killed in action, suggesting that up to 1.8 million soldiers died during the war. This figure is plausible when compared with the evidence culled from Swedish and Finnish parish registers and military archives. Around 150,000 Swedish and Finnish conscripts died in 1621–48, including 40,000 in the Prussian and Livonian campaigns in 1621–9, with the rest in Germany. Given that conscripts generally composed less than a fifth of the army in Germany, it is likely that at least another 400,000 Germans, Britons and others died from all causes in Swedish service.²³

Though violence caused relatively few deaths among civilians, fear of it helped drive people from their homes. Flight and emigration were major factors behind the losses recorded in the areas of the greatest population decline, accounting for 60 per cent of that in Waldeck and 80 per cent in the area belonging to the abbey of Ottobeuren near Memmingen.²⁴ Immigration offset or at least slowed population decline in many areas. For example, Munich’s population fell from 22,000 (in 1618) to 14,000 (1651), largely due to plague in 1633–4 and 1649–50, but at least 7,000 people settled in the city over the same period. They were rural artisans fleeing hardship and danger, mostly from other parts of Bavaria, with a fifth from neighbouring Franconia and Swabia. Augsburg experienced a broadly similar pattern as its population fell from 45,000 in 1618 to 16,400 by 1635 following Swedish occupation and the imperialist siege. It then revived to 20,000 by the end of the war thanks partly to immigration. Migration helped double the population of Nancy, the only town in Lorraine to experience growth, and also contributed to Hamburg’s net gain during the war.²⁵

Migration meant change in more than just numbers. The Empire’s Jewish population became more fractured as it dispersed to new areas and its members engaged in more diverse forms of economic activity.²⁶ Not all arrivals were welcome. Migrants often lacked prior association with their new community. They were generally poorer than those who had died or left, other than exceptional cases like the Catholic elite sheltering in Cologne after 1631. Many migrants did not want to stay but were simply waiting until it was safe to return home. Others arrived with occupying forces, heightening the sense of an alien population whose numbers could nonetheless be considerable in towns of strategic importance: in January 1647 Überlingen contained only 650 taxpaying citizens, compared to 652 peasant refugees, 592 ‘foreign’ women with 909 children, as well as a garrison of 239 soldiers with 61 wives and 72 children.²⁷

Flight could increase mortality due to the cramped, unhygienic conditions that bred disease in the places of apparent refuge. Migrants generally arrived malnourished and exhausted after their journey. At least 104 refugees died on the streets of plague-ridden Landsberg during the Swedish invasion of Bavaria in the 1630s, while refugees accounted for a third of deaths in the Hohenlohe town of Kirchberg in the aftermath of Nördlingen.²⁸ Most towns were small and poorly fortified. Overcrowding quickly caused serious food shortages, while strategic concerns often made towns military targets. The decade after 1625 saw many people fleeing urban areas for the countryside that could be safer and offered more food. Urban flight appears to have declined thereafter as the more mobile warfare made the countryside in its turn increasingly unsafe. Rural communities were particularly hard hit, because they were generally smaller and quickly lost their viability if too many people moved away. This helps explain the rural depopulation that became pronounced by the 1640s as people abandoned farms and hamlets to congregate in larger villages and towns. Location nonetheless often proved decisive, since many smaller isolated communities could potentially escape both plague and military depredations.

The pattern of civilian deaths confirms the general picture of military casualties, indicating that disease was the main killer. The first major plague epidemic occurred in 1622–3, followed by more serious outbreaks around 1625 and 1634, with the timing varying by a year or two depending on the region. A fourth, generally less fatal epidemic struck between 1646 and 1650. Bubonic plague was responsible for most of the mortality in the 1630s. Another major killer was typhus (Flecken-fieber), an infection spread by lice on clothing. Plague generally hit communities once every ten to twenty years during the sixteenth century. The frequency and scale of the outbreaks after 1618 suggests a pandemic where the infection ebbed but never completely disappeared due to increased mobility and malnutrition.²⁹

Areas hit in the first outbreak suffered fewer deaths in the second, though the impact remained proportionally high given the intervening population decline. For example, Naumburg recorded 1,642 plague deaths in 1625, or eight times the pre-war annual average mortality. Another 799 died the following year, but the peaks in the second outbreak reached only 702 (1633) and 741 (1636). The small town of Kroppenstadt, east of Halberstadt, likewise recorded peaks of 695 (1626) and 226 (1636), in contrast to an average of 50 deaths each year before the war. It is clear that the plague was the biggest single factor in overall mortality: 44 per cent of the deaths in Elspe parish in 1622–49 fell in its plague year (1636–7).³⁰ It was so significant, because infection generally proved fatal. Around 80 per cent of men and 70 per cent of women admitted to the Viennese plague hospital never recovered. Children suffered disproportionately, accounting for a third of victims in Magdeburg and Halberstadt in 1625.³¹ Plague also left communities vulnerable to other diseases, especially if military operations also disrupted the food supply. Mortality remained high in Naumburg after the 1633–6 outbreak because of Banér’s operations in its vicinity. The town recorded 411 deaths in 1639, mainly to malnutrition, followed by a further 1,109 across 1641–3 largely due to dysentery.

Though undoubtedly high, these figures need to be placed into their contemporary context, where high mortality was the norm. Augsburg recorded 38,000 plague victims in eight years in the first half of the sixteenth century, followed by 20,000 in seven years between 1550 and 1600, compared to the 34,000 lost during the nine years of epidemics in 1600–50. London lost a fifth of its population in each of its outbreaks in 1595, 1603 and 1625, and had only eleven years without high mortality rates between 1625 and 1646. It is thus very likely that many of the people who died in the Empire between 1618 and 1648 would have had their lives cut short even without the war. The 1622 epidemic reached Augsburg not through soldiers but commerce with Amsterdam, for instance. The initial impact was magnified by adverse economic and climatic conditions. The year 1619 saw the first of a series of cold, wet summers contributing to a succession of poor harvests until 1628. The 1622–3 epidemic coincided with hyperinflation that eroded purchasing power and left many malnourished.

However, troop movements clearly made things much worse. The 1620 Bohemian campaign already saw high mortality from typhus which was then carried by Mansfeld’s army as it fled westwards to the Lower Palatinate. The army’s arrival in the autumn of 1621 spread panic as 20,000 civilians fled to Alsace, contributing to 4,000 deaths in overcrowded Strasbourg. Mansfeld’s men continued to spread typhus as they marched north into the Netherlands and then East Frisia, and he eventually succumbed to the disease himself in 1626. Plague also killed other prominent political and military leaders, including Elector Frederick V, Bernhard of Weimar, Governor Feria and General Holk.

The first epidemic flared again in Alsace during 1624–5 and spread through Metz into France, probably with refugees, where its impact was again magnified by malnutrition. The bad harvest of 1627 led to the first serious food shortages in France since the 1590s and the impact deepened with another poor harvest in 1629. The war clearly made a difference. Paris and the north largely escaped the epidemic that spread to the south with the troop movements during the last Huguenot rising. In all, the plague epidemic killed between 1.5 and 2 million of France’s population of 17–20 million.³²

The second, more lethal epidemic followed Wallenstein’s northwards march and the spread of operations across northern Germany during 1625–6. The relative decline in German plague deaths in 1630–1 despite the renewed troop movements is probably due to the better weather and harvests of these years. By contrast, northern Italy suffered its worst outbreak that, again, was clearly exacerbated by the operations around Mantua and Casale. The population of the duchy of Milan fell by a third to 800,000, while that of Mantua was halved. As in Germany, the impact of these losses was magnified by the relative absence of serious fighting in Italy for a century.

Southern Germany was re-infected by imperial and then Spanish troops marching north over the Alps in 1631. The epidemic spread eastwards with the Swedish invasion of Bavaria in 1632–3, eventually reaching Salzburg by December 1635, probably having been brought by refugees. It also swept westwards to the Rhine in the wake of Sweden’s collapse after Nördlingen. Mortality in that town was already two and a half to three times above its pre-war average in 1629–33, but jumped to over seven times in the year of the siege and battle as the plague arrived with the Spanish reinforcements. Its reappearance in Augsburg also coincided with that city’s blockade during the winter of 1634–5. The fourth outbreak in Augsburg followed the Franco-Swedish siege of September 1646. Behind these statistics lie innumerable personal tragedies. Only one of the cobbler Hans Heberle’s ten children outlived him. Two of them died, along with Hans’ own parents and four siblings, in the 1634–5 epidemic.³³

The post-war demographic recovery flowed from a rising birth rate and a fall in mortality. Württemberg’s population grew about 0.5 per cent annually prior to the war, but the rate shot up to 1.8 per cent in the two decades after 1648. Travellers reported Germany as a land of children: nearly half of Württembergers were under the age of fifteen during the 1660s.³⁴ Unfortunately many of these became the recruits for the prolonged wars after 1672 that retarded and in some areas reversed the recovery. Most sources agree that the 1618 population levels were generally not reached again until 1710–20. Again, there were variations. The duchy of Berg experienced a 20 per cent decline in total population in 1618–48, but had recovered by 1680, whereas neighbouring Jülich did not make good its 28 per cent loss until 1720. Economic decline retarded recovery in some areas. Stralsund did not recover its 1627 population until 1816, while the pre-war Nuremberg birth rate was not matched until 1850.³⁵

THE ECONOMIC IMPACT

The ‘Kipper and Wipper’ Hyperinflation

The more recent work on German economic history suggests that the Empire was neither flourishing nor in decline on the eve of the war. Some sectors were booming, while others contracted. The earlier population growth had levelled off, and land use had intensified, but a significant number of people were underemployed. Business failures, rising prices and growing numbers of beggars contributed to a widespread perception of worsening times. Most people felt life had been better in their parents’ day. Less than 7 per cent of households in Augsburg in 1618 were recorded as relatively wealthy in the city’s tax books, compared to over 48 per cent listed as penniless.³⁶

The sense of growing hardship was greatly magnified after 1621 by what is popularly regarded as the western world’s first financial crisis.³⁷ This period of hyperinflation became known as the Kipper and Wipper era, probably from the words for clipping coins and swinging the moneychanger’s scales. The episode demonstrates the Empire’s strengths and weaknesses during its wider political crisis, as well as indicating the difficulties governments encountered in financing warfare. It brought widespread misery and made it harder for people to cope with the resumption and intensification of the conflict from 1625.

Inflation followed the ill-judged manipulation of the Empire’s monetary system that relied on a combination of nominal units of account and actual coins used in daily transactions. The former were the silver taler used primarily in the north and the southern gold or silver florin. These were indeed minted as actual coins, but most people used small change (Schneidemiinzen) that included a growing copper content. Mint rights were an imperial prerogative that had long been devolved to princes and imperial cities that issued their own coinage. Regulation was provided by the 1559 Imperial Currency Ordinance that related coins to each other according to their precious metal content measure using the Cologne silver mark (about 233g). Adjustments in exchange rates were negotiated at regional currency conventions charged with upholding the 1559 rules that threatened death to those who infringed them.

Enforcement proved difficult as more territories established their own mints. The number operating in Lower Saxony alone rose from six in 1566 to thirty by 1617. Territorial fragmentation undoubtedly added to the complexity, but what followed cannot be blamed entirely on the imperial constitution. The 1559 ordinance reflected the wider early modern ideal of a static order. It left little room for fluctuations in the supply of copper and precious metals, or changes in demand due to economic and demographic growth. Interruptions in the supply of New World bullion were offset by growing use of copper in Spain and the Dutch Republic, fuelled by Japanese imports and, above all, greatly increased Swedish output. The difficulty of distinguishing between metal as a commodity and a means of exchange added to the general problem. The cost of silver rose above the nominal value of the coins it was used to make, encouraging mint operators to debase their production by adding more copper to the mix.

Debasement had been relatively rare until governments encountered problems in paying for the war after 1618. Underdeveloped credit facilities made borrowing difficult, whereas debasement appeared a deceptively simply solution, especially as the inflationary risks were poorly understood. The Bohemian rebels already resorted to it in 1619, as did a number of other territories, some merely seeking easy profits. The Habsburgs continued the practice after they recovered control of the Bohemian mint and silver mines in 1620. However, debasement only fully got under way in January 1622 when Emperor Ferdinand II entrusted the mint to a private consortium largely composed of his own officials, including the governor of Bohemia, Karl Liechtenstein. Whereas one silver mark had produced 19 florins of change in 1618, the consortium diluted it to mint coins with a total face value of 79 fl. and later even 110 fl., issuing a nominal 29.6 million fl. in bad coin in return for paying the Habsburg treasury 6 million. The operators’ profits have been put as high as 9 million, but were more likely only 1.3 million. Their real return came from using debased coin to buy the confiscated rebel properties that the emperor released for sale in September 1622. Using bad coin for good deals soon became widespread. Municipal debt repayment in the imperial city of Überlingen jumped from a pre-war annual average of 1,900 fl. to 8,000 fl. as its astute treasurer paid its creditors in debased coin.³⁸

The scale of the mint consortium’s activities has attracted considerable attention, but it played a relatively small role in the overall crisis. The worst period of inflation began in March 1621 and was already dissipating as the Prague operation got under way. The presence in the consortium of Jacob Bassevi, head of Prague’s Jewish community, fuelled the virulently anti-Semitic Protestant critique of debasement, but some of the worst offenders were based in Lutheran north Germany, as well as parts of Franconia, Alsace and Calvinist Hessen-Kassel. Illegal ‘hedge mints’ (Heckenmünzen) sprouted in minor provincial towns, sometimes with covert backing from neighbouring rulers hoping to profit at others’ expense.

The consequences rapidly became obvious. The Leipzig city council ruined municipal finances by speculating on the copper market. Good coins disappeared from circulation, while taxes were paid with debased currency. The real value of civic revenue fell by nearly 30 per cent in Naumburg.³⁹ Prices soared as traders demanded sackfuls of bad coins for staple commodities: the cost of a loaf of bread jumped 700 per cent in Franconia between 1619 and 1622. Those on fixed incomes suffered, like theology student Martin Bötzinger whose 30 fl. annual grant became worth only three pairs of boots.⁴⁰ Serious rioting spread from 1621, with that in Magdeburg leaving 16 dead and 200 injured.

The Saxon response is typical of the action taken by the larger territories. The elector agreed a joint commission with his Estates in March 1622 to close illegal mints and recall coins so that they could be reissued with the full silver content.⁴¹ Such measures were implemented at regional level through the Kreis structure in Lower Saxony, Bavaria and Franconia, while elsewhere, neighbouring territories also cooperated. Ferdinand II refused to renew his consortium’s contract when it expired in January 1623 and ordered an 87 per cent devaluation of its coinage that December.

On the surface, the Empire made a remarkable recovery as monetary probity was restored by the end of 1623. Illegal mints were closed and the Kreise resumed their currency regulation meetings. Revenue also recovered in areas unaffected by military operations. This relative success demonstrates the resilience of the imperial constitution, as well as the continued ability of Protestants and Catholics to use formal institutions to resolve common problems. Official currency regulation only encountered serious difficulties with the disruption caused by the Swedish invasion, but the constitutional framework remained the preferred means to tackle a resurgence of debasement in the 1630s fuelled by spiralling military expenditure.⁴²

More serious problems lurked behind the formal return to probity. The Kipper and Wipper inflation combined with the poor harvest of 1621–2 to wipe out most of the gains from the previous two decades of relative stability in the countryside. The previously wealthier sections of rural society sold assets and exported the remaining agricultural surpluses to cover their losses. Though only temporary, inflation frustrated the customary response to subsistence crises: lenders refused to extend new loans unless repaid in good coin that became hard to find. Territorial governments were forced to extend credit to their own subjects by, for instance, allowing taxes to fall into arrears. The continuation of the war left no room for any respite, leaving many vulnerable precisely when military exactions increased after 1625.⁴³

Trade and Industry

There seems little evidence to support the nineteenth-century lament that the failure of Wallenstein’s Baltic Design and the loss of Pomerania to Sweden denied Germany a chance to become a colonial power until the 1880s.⁴⁴ Bremen and Hamburg, the two largest ports, remained free from foreign occupation and retained access to the North Sea. Other ports also remained available, despite the presence of foreigners, such as Emden that became the base for Brandenburg’s attempt to break into the slave trade after 1680. Lübeck and Rostock were still free to trade in the Baltic. Germans formed the majority of personnel serving the Dutch East India Company and were a significant element in Portugal’s presence in India.⁴⁵ The real reason for the late participation of Germans in colonial ventures, especially at state level, was the lack of incentive. Central Europeans long benefited from a pattern of trade that only gradually reoriented westwards to the Atlantic. Denied access to much of this earlier pattern thanks to their location on Europe’s western periphery, the Portuguese and Spanish struck out across the oceans seeking what at the time seemed a very risky and unprofitable alternative.

The war made a more direct impact in other areas of trade, but, like the affects on population, there were considerable variations in experience. Towns generally fared better than the countryside, though as Prague’s example illustrates their concentration of wealth often made them tempting military targets. A few were completely destroyed, like Magdeburg’s two suburbs that were razed during its siege of 1630–1. Rather more were damaged severely through repeated attacks. These included Magdeburg itself, as well as Bamberg, Chemnitz, Pirna and Marburg. Most others suffered at least some damage but this did not always inhibit growth – as indicated by the rising populations of Vienna, Nancy and Frankfurt am Main. Much depended on individual circumstances, especially location and whether the town possessed dependent villages. Hamburg’s surrounding territory suffered greatly, in contrast to the city itself where the number of inhabitants grew by 50 per cent. Damage around Magdeburg was even greater, because the city was subjected to repeated sieges and blockades. Around half the houses in its immediate vicinity were destroyed, compared to 15 to 35 per cent across the rest of the archbishopric. Likewise, a quarter of Rothenburg’s 100 dependent villages had been abandoned by the 1640s. Towns that closed their gates to soldiers displaced the burden on to the countryside. Raiders often devastated the surrounding area to intimidate towns, or to put pressure on territorial rulers.⁴⁶

Less immediately visible but just as fundamental were the changes among the inhabitants in the trade centres. City councils favoured citizens (who elected them) over the disenfranchised rural subjects and immigrants. Trades serving essential needs generally fared better. The numbers of bakers and brewers, for instance, experienced lesser declines than musicians, builders, textile workers and those in service industries. Metal workers also fared better thanks to their involvement in the arms industry. Individuals clearly made money, but there were relatively few war profiteers. Most producers tried to remain on good terms with all parties, not just for profit but to avoid reprisals. Manufacturers in Aachen, a centre of arms production, made good returns until the 1630s when rival armies began seizing weapons without payment. The Swedes failed to pay for large shipments of weapons from Suhl in Thuringia.⁴⁷ Such behaviour affected other sectors too. Naumburg’s municipal brewery closed in 1639 because soldiers had stopped paying: a serious blow in a town famed for its beer. However, the relatively small scale, decentralized character of seventeenth-century industry enabled it to recover relatively quickly provided markets remained for the goods. The Imperialists destroyed most of the plant in the Suhl arms workshops in October 1634, but production soon resumed once the workers returned.

Fear and uncertainty contributed to the disruption of trade, especially as travelling became unsafe. Often, this merely accentuated existing trends. Established centres frequently benefited from the decline of lesser regional rivals. Leipzig, for instance, profited at Naumburg’s expense. Major financial centres like Hamburg and Frankfurt also remained prosperous. Occupation was not invariably disastrous. Wesel did suffer when it was captured by the Spanish in 1614, but it recovered rapidly after 1629 once it was garrisoned by the Dutch with whom it had previously traded.

The fighting disrupted economic cooperation between territories in the Empire. Schemes to improve navigation along rivers were abandoned, and the failure to maintain defences caused flooding along the Lower Rhine. Ambitious plans such as Wallenstein’s canal to link the Baltic and North Sea came to nothing. Fear that soldiers would simply steal things led to a disregard for vital resources. Forestry laws were broken in Württemberg after 1634 as communes sold off protected oak trees for cash and plundered woods, especially during harsh winters. However, the human impact of these actions remained restricted compared to that of the twentieth century, and the ecology recovered quickly after the war.⁴⁸

Though the war’s impact was overwhelmingly negative, it did not prevent economic development entirely. The archbishop of Salzburg began a major drainage project in 1625 and stepped this up at the height of the crisis in southern Germany in 1632, laying the foundation stone for a new suburb on the reclaimed land. The project was completed in 1644 using Dutch, and hence probably Protestant, engineers. Similarly, the abbey of Ottobeuren developed textile weaving after 1625, training new apprentices even if their certificates could be registered only after the war.⁴⁹

Agriculture

The physical character and location of activity influenced how the rural world fared during the war. Livestock was especially vulnerable because it could be rounded up and driven away by soldiers. A survey in the abbey of Ottobeuren found only 133 horses and 181 cattle in 1636, compared to 2,094 and 6,607 respectively 16 years earlier. The loss of draught animals was particularly serious, because it affected food production. Peasants around Bamberg were left to pull their own ploughs after the Swedes stole their horses and oxen in 1633.⁵⁰

The overall impact mirrored that for urban areas and settlement patterns generally. Larger farms usually fared better, because they already had greater resources and more fertile land. Following the Swedish depredations in Bavaria in the 1630s, one district recorded 58 per cent of cottages burned down or abandoned, 69 per cent of medium farms, but only 37 per cent of the larger ones.⁵¹ However, recent research no longer sustains the older belief that the war promoted the consolidation of farms into large manorial estates east of the river Elbe. The domain economy had already developed in this area in the sixteenth century, though it was by no means all-pervasive. Some landlords did enlarge their estates by incorporating abandoned land. However, there was no wholesale bargain with rulers at the peasantry’s expense. Depopulation increased the labour value of the survivors. Peasants were often able to negotiate better conditions such as hereditary leases from landlords who, rather than being the princes’ natural allies, were often ground between an increasingly assertive territorial state and adverse economic conditions. Some lords did impose greater obligations on their peasants to perform labour service, notably in Bohemia, but this was far from universal and does not justify the old label of ‘second serfdom’.⁵²

Land prices fell due to the destruction of assets like barns or vineyards, as well as rural depopulation. Around a third of the Empire’s cultivated land had been abandoned by 1648 and in some areas the proportion was nearer a half. Even areas still being worked often had to be sold by hard-pressed owners. Überlingen sold its principal rural territory in 1649 to raise its share of the Swedish satisfaction money. The market was quickly flooded. A farm in Franconia that cost 500 fl. in 1614 could be bought for 37 fl. in 1648. The scarcity of capital made it hard even for those willing to buy. In this case, the purchaser lacked even 37 fl. and raised the money by taking on a partner he bought out five years later.⁵³

The Credit Crunch

Growing indebtedness was already common before the war and is one area where the ‘Early Decline’ interpretation of the economic impact of the war rests on firmer ground. The bishopric of Bamberg’s debt hovered at around 800,000 fl. between 1554 and the late sixteenth century, despite paying off 470,000 fl., because the bishop contracted new liabilities in the meantime. The fighting during the Princes’ Revolt of 1552 quintupled Nuremberg’s debt to 4.3 million fl., of which only 300,000 was paid off by 1618. The Kipper and Wipper inflation caused serious problems, pushing Bamberg’s liabilities to 1.2 million fl., and those of Nuremberg to 5.7 million. Against these increases, those caused by the rest of the war seem relatively modest. Nuremberg’s debt rose to 6 million, but Bamberg reduced its liabilities to 831,802 fl. by 1653. As with all statistics from the war, these figures need careful interpretation. Debts were potentially much higher, because most territories and communities defaulted on their interest payments. Überlingen’s debt more than doubled to 280,000 fl., but was nearly three and a half times the pre-war level if the 163,553 fl. of interest arrears were also included.⁵⁴

Rising indebtedness was not solely due to the cost of the war. Count Eitel Friedrich of Hohenzollern-Hechingen accumulated over 610,000 fl. of debts in twenty years of mismanagement and absence from his territory as an imperial general. Other rulers continued to spend lavishly despite widespread hardship among their subjects. The supposedly thrifty Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg bought tapestries, jewellery and silverware worth 29,200 talers at the height of the Swedish occupation of his electorate in 1641–5. Together with the pre-war record of poor financial management, this suggests many territories would have run into difficulties even without the war. The conflict certainly made matters worse through military burdens and the shrinking tax base. Revenue from Count Eitel Friedrich’s small Swabian territory declined from a respectable 30–40,000 fl. a year in 1623 to only 4,000 fl. two decades later. The value of taxable assets in the Lower Palatinate crashed from 18.8 million to 3.8 million fl., while annual revenue fell from 441,508 fl. to 76,977 fl. between 1618 and 1648. Though this was an extreme case, the number of taxpayers fell faster than the overall population decline almost everywhere, reflecting widespread impoverishment.⁵⁵

Imperial institutions played an important part in easing these problems after 1648. Rulers, Estates and communities borrowed from individuals, religious foundations and (less often) rich bankers. Money was also raised by selling annuities. German debt, like that in Naples, was thus spread among a relatively broad cross-section of society, including many who depended on regular interest payments for their income. For example, Protestant refugees fleeing the Habsburg lands in the 1620s had to sell their property before leaving and invested the proceeds in annuities issued by the cities of Regensburg, Ulm and Nuremberg. By 1633 only Regensburg was still paying interest. Because of the risk of debt defaulters, imperial law traditionally favoured creditors over debtors. However, the war made repayment difficult and debtors faced ruin if creditors sequestrated their assets. The Pomeranian Estates had already taken steps to protect debtors in 1628, followed by numerous other territories. Debt was still considered something to be avoided. Governments refused to allow debtors to write off their liabilities. They made some allowance through short-term moratoria, but rejected arguments that the exceptional circumstances of the war overrode obligations to repay loans.

Debt levels soared as interest arrears compounded the original liabilities. The smaller territorial governments feared the courts might sequestrate their possessions as the only way to recover what they owed. The matter was raised by the imperial city of Esslingen at the 1640–1 Reichstag, which was unable to resolve it due to other pressing problems. Emperor Ferdinand III nonetheless instructed the Reichshofrat to pay more attention to debtors’ interests in cases lodged by their creditors. However, the Reichskammergericht continued to issue injunctions against debtors, arguing that lenders’ interests had to be protected to avoid a collapse in financial confidence. The issue was taken up again by the Imperial Deputation in Frankfurt after 1643 and then at the Westphalian congress, where it was postponed along with the rest of judicial reform to the next Reichstag. Article IV of the IPO merely annulled debts resulting from military extortion, obliging creditors to prove the legality of their claims within two years through the courts.

The issue prompted intense debate across the Empire. Both imperial supreme courts submitted detailed opinions to the Reichstag as it convened in 1653, while the Bohemian and Austrian exiles lodged petitions, fearing the loss of their properties would now be followed by that of their annuities. The Reichstag issued a landmark ruling in its final Recess of 1654. This was of considerable general significance since it signalled the Empire’s collective superiority over territorial autonomy: the relevant passages of the Recess were passed despite Brandenburg and Bavarian objections that a general ruling infringed their princely jurisdictions guaranteed by the IPO. It confirmed the illegality of military exactions, issued a three-year moratorium on capital repayments in valid debts and allowed debtors to set their own level of payment for the following seven years. In addition, it wrote off a quarter of the interest arrears up to 1654 and delayed repayment of the remainder until after 1664. The Palatinate received a special exemption from all interest payments for a decade and was allowed to pay only 2.5 per cent (half the official rate) for the following ten years.

Like the normative-year rule, actual implementation varied considerably. Many territories expanded the capital repayment moratorium to their own advantage. Saxony wrote off nearly 600,000 tlr on the grounds it had been contracted in debased coin, as well as unilaterally repudiating 10 million tlr of interest arrears in 1656, writing off the remainder five years later. Brandenburg, Bamberg, the Palatinate and others repudiated around a fifth of their debts, while Württemberg wrote off all its communes’ interest arrears and those of private individuals. The duchy’s Estates had already written off half their own debt of 4 million fl. Private creditors were generally lucky to receive a third of their original capital.

Nonetheless, the Reichstag upheld the overall integrity of the capital market by stopping well short of using the war to justify complete repudiation. It was a conservative arrangement that confirmed the prevailing attitude to debts. Old obligations remained valid and could be passed down the generations through inheritance. Subsequent difficulties like the mid-eighteenth-century wars further delayed repayment. Debts persisted well beyond the Empire, because the successor states were obliged to assume their predecessors’ liabilities. The Westphalian town of Werl finally cleared its debt from the Thirty Years War in 1897. The 5 per cent ceiling on interest rates fixed in 1654 remained the norm in much of Germany until 1867. The success of the ruling was assisted by local pragmatism. Rulers and landlords generally tried to avoid foreclosures because eviction hit production and rents. Tenants’ wartime debts were renegotiated into the 1670s to ease pressure on them and allow agrarian production to revive.⁵⁶

Level of Recovery

Territorial revenues rose relatively rapidly immediately after the war. Whereas the bishopric of Hildesheim raised only 7,670 tlr across 1643–5, annual revenue was more than three times that figure by the 1651–2 financial year.⁵⁷ Much of this was due to the peace dividend following demobilization. Money previously diverted as contributions to occupying garrisons now flowed back into territorial treasuries. Such figures are thus a poor guide to actual economic recovery.

Beyond debt and currency regulation, imperial institutions made little effort to coordinate the recovery. The IPO and IPM abolished all wartime tolls except those of Sweden, the emperor and the electors. Like the debt arrangements, this asserted the collective good over territorial autonomy. Rulers were forbidden to disrupt trade, impose new tolls or raise pre-war ones without express permission from the emperor. The Nuremberg Execution Congress entrusted enforcement to the Kreise. Some minor territories did gain exemption by following the rules and appealing to the emperor. Bremen was allowed to retain its Weser toll first imposed in 1623. The Franconian Kreis had some success in abolishing illegal tolls and, along with Swabia and some other regions, in coordinating economic activities among its members into the eighteenth century. However, many rulers placed short-term gain in revenue over the longer-term advantages of free trade, and new excise taxes were soon imposed in most territories.⁵⁸ The constitution did not necessarily hinder growth. A far more significant constraint was the reluctance to shed traditional customs and inflexible business practices. For example, the reluctance of most towns to modify criteria for citizenship deterred the migrants needed to repopulate them.

Commerce recovered relatively quickly along the major routes, though much of the evidence comes from toll receipts that provide only a proximate indication of the true volume of activity. The Lobith toll on the Rhine and that at Lenzen on the Elbe, both of which were controlled and administered by Brandenburg, plummeted during the war but recovered their former levels within a decade of the peace. Land tolls levied on goods crossing the electorate displayed a similar revival.⁵⁹ Recovery was nonetheless uneven. Some sectors revived faster than others. The construction industry that had been one of the hardest hit during the conflict prospered with reconstruction and the revival of municipal finances that allowed communities to tackle a backlog of repairs on their public buildings.

It proved relatively easy to take over abandoned farms, but harder to resume agriculture. Animal husbandry recovered fastest, provided there was money to restock the farms. However, it took fifteen to twenty years to bring wasteland back under cultivation, because the soil had often deteriorated through lack of fertilization or had become overgrown. Labour and capital shortages further slowed recovery, but the worst effects had been overcome by the 1660s. Grain production returned to pre-war levels around 1670, well ahead of the demographic recovery, assisting other economic activity by keeping food prices low.

Capital- and time-intensive activities were the hardest to revive. A major wartime casualty was the Empire’s wine industry. Vineyards were expensive and time-consuming to develop, yet very vulnerable to soldiers who uprooted or burned them during sieges or raids. The area of vineyards owned by the Überlingen burghers contracted by nearly two-thirds during the war; wine-makers were obliged to mortgage their homes to Swiss banks to rebuild the industry after 1648, but the area used for viticulture was still only half what it had been in 1618 when the city lost its autonomy in 1802. Überlingen’s fate was far from unique and the damage to what had been the mainstay of the local economy helps explain the stagnation of many south-west German towns. The picture was rarely completely black, however. Contraction of the wine industry, for example, proved a boon to the region’s brewers whose recovery was speeded by the relatively rapid revival of grain production.

THE CRISIS OF THE TERRITORIAL STATE

War and State-building

While war is usually regarded as retarding economic activity, historians and political scientists widely see it as promoting political development through the need to coordinate human action.⁶⁰ A recent influential summary of the Thirty Years War presents it as Europe’s ‘state-building war’, forging new states like the Dutch Republic, or enabling old ones to regain their independence, like Portugal. The war is interpreted as a consequence of the imperfect level of state development around 1600. Executive authority, in the sense of the ability to take binding decisions, was not fully monopolized by a recognized, legitimate central government. Other ‘deficits’ included the challenge of alternative claims on inhabitants’ loyalties, such as those of the rival Christian confessions, each purporting to be ‘universal’.⁶¹

The Empire is usually interpreted in line with the earlier, negative assessment of its constitution. At best, it emerges as ‘partially-modernised’, stuck in the early modern stage of European development, failing to make the transition to a centralized, sovereign state.⁶² Political dynamism is generally believed to have shifted to the larger principalities like Brandenburg and Bavaria that consolidated their external autonomy and imposed greater authority within their own borders. These developments have customarily been labelled ‘absolutism’, which has been used to define the entire period between 1648 into the nineteenth century.⁶³ The territorial Estates lost their ability to constrain princely power. Many reasons have been advanced for this, but indebtedness was clearly prominent among them. Unable to maintain their status from traditional sources of income, nobles either had to accept alternative employment as the state’s servants or relinquish political power in return for confirmation of their social and economic privileges.⁶⁴This trend was already present prior to 1618, but it was accelerated by the war. Several examples have been noted in the course of this book, especially the Habsburgs’ success in reshaping the social basis of their monarchy through patronage and the expulsion of opponents.

The war also helped change political behaviour. Dire threats like foreign invasion fostered acceptance of ‘necessity’ as an argument to legitimize change. If established patterns and methods no longer proved adequate, rulers could impose new ones in the interests of the ‘common good’, the early modern equivalent of modern arguments like ‘national security’. Necessity was the mother of absolutism. Monarchs and princes claimed unfettered powers on the grounds that a single ruler deriving authority directly from God could stand above subjects’ petty squabbles and see their true interests. Such a ruler, born and raised in the appropriate environment, alone understood the ‘mysteries of state’, whereas subjects pursued selfish individual or sectional interests.⁶⁵

Absolutism’s emergence is generally fitted into a longer-term process of taming violence, in which the Thirty Years War again played a prominent part. Much of the state-building literature draws on the German sociologist Max Weber’s influential definition of a state as the monopoly of legitimate violence. ‘Violence’ in this sense is a translation of the German term Gewalt and can be related to other aspects of power. The centralized state embodied power (Gewalt), authority (Potestas) and strength (Vis), enabling it to triumph over violence (Violentia). We have already encountered aspects of this in the discussion of the alleged lawlessness of the war’s last phase, allegations that were rooted in post-war efforts by territorial governments to monopolize armed force and present their peacetime armies as superior to the undisciplined soldiery employed before.⁶⁶

These developments wrought changes throughout society. Authority was more centralized but still remained hierarchical. Male heads of household possessed the authority to discipline other family members and servants, but only within limits set by the state’s overarching power resting on moral and secular norms. Actual violence was de-legitimized and forced from public life. Heads of household might still be abusive, but only provided this went unnoticed by their neighbours or the local authorities. Public violence was reserved for the state, but much of this was also tamed. Executions were ritualized and gradually removed from public view into prison yards, or abolished altogether in many places after the later eighteenth century. In the meantime, the use and toleration of violence (in the sense of what was considered acceptable) varied between social groups, but was also subject to tighter state supervision.

This interpretation is broadly helpful provided state development is regarded as largely unintended. European rulers were rarely conscious state ‘builders’, at least prior to the later eighteenth century. Rather than being planned according to some abstract ideal of what a state should be, political change was driven by rulers’ desires to achieve other, largely dynastic goals. A second important caveat is that state development did not follow a smooth linear path of progressive modernization.

War and State Destruction

A third qualification is to note war’s destruction of political institutions, as well as human life and material objects. There are good grounds for seeing the Thirty Years War as the crisis of the Empire’s territorial states. This should not be misconstrued as a return to the once-fashionable ‘general crisis’ theory that presented seventeenth-century wars and revolts as ‘crises of authority’.⁶⁷ Clearly there were challenges from below against attempts to impose greater authority from above. The Bohemian Revolt loosely fits this pattern. But there was no generalized danger of Estates-led risings, still less of popular revolt prior to 1618. The real challenge to the established order emerged only once the war began.

The war disturbed dynastic continuity and traditions, and undermined fundamental pillars of established authority. Significant areas of land were redistributed in the wake of major victories: in 1620, 1629, 1631 and 1634. Entire territories changed hands, like the Palatinate, Mecklenburg, Bamberg, Würzburg and Mainz. Districts were removed from one territory and assigned to another. Numerous lordships, abbeys and manors were confiscated and redistributed. Some of the Empire’s oldest and most distinguished families found themselves branded as outlaws. Others lost heirs killed in battle. The new owners included men like Wallenstein whose rapid rise to prominence broke social conventions. These changes were profoundly unsettling. They severed associations between land, inhabitants and rulers hallowed by lineage and custom, replacing them with an order seemingly based on brute force. Speculation, however unfounded, that Wallenstein might crown himself king of Bohemia or even emperor indicates a general anxiety at the loss of stability. Nothing seemed sacred, while authority passed to those who often lacked the roots or status to make it legitimate in the eyes of their subjects.

The latter felt betrayed and abandoned by those who were supposed to protect them. Sister Junius recorded how, when the bishop of Bamberg fled as the Swedes approached, ‘the wicked people shouted as he drove out: “He’s getting out again now and leaving us in the lurch; may this and that [i.e. the devil’s hangman and other terms of abuse] take you; may you fall and break every bone in your body.” ’ Likewise, the Lutheran pastors regarded the flight of Regent Anna Maria of Hohenlohe-Langenburg after Nördlingen as a sin.⁶⁸

The departure of rulers and their officials also curtailed effective government. Local officials and community leaders were among soldiers’ favourite targets as hostages to ensure contributions were paid. Even when they were left alone, billeting disrupted their activities and brought officers whose military authority and demands competed with those of civil government. This posed a serious challenge if the soldiers remained in prolonged occupation. The Swedish commandant in Olmütz told its councillors that ‘he was master in the town and could do what he liked’.⁶⁹ Temporary transit could also bring chaos and make it dangerous to leave safe areas to attend to pressing problems. The breakdown of justice was felt especially keenly since the population regarded this as one of their rulers’ primary tasks. Military requisitioning and plunder were experienced as robbery, yet the courts seemed powerless to prevent it. People feared to answer court summonses to assist in the apprehension of criminals because they feared that those caught would be drafted into the army and return as soldiers to take reprisals. The organized church structure suffered too. By the end of the war only 64 of Bamberg’s 110 parishes still had a priest, while the ratio of clergy to parishioners in the Habsburg Sundgau in Alsace fell from 1:345 to 1:1,177.⁷⁰

The war also disrupted the functioning of the Estates. The bailiff, mayor and council of Lauffen apologized for not attending the Württemberg diet, on the grounds their homes were full of soldiers and two French cavalry regiments were roaming the surrounding countryside.⁷¹ The growth of military taxation eroded the Estates’ role, since the burdens were often imposed without consultation. Many territorial rulers continued these taxes after 1648, citing the necessity argument that the prevailing international uncertainty, or the need to assist the emperor against the Turks, made this unavoidable. As taxes became permanent, diets were no longer summoned, denying Estates their chance to extend their privileges or air grievances. However, their decline was far from universal and some emerged stronger by 1648. Estates acquired new functions because of the war, especially in areas where the prince and his officials had fled, or were unable to exercise effective rule.

The New Order

Though in crisis, territorial rule did not collapse. It survived because there was no alternative. The army was unable to assume its functions, and commanders preferred to use the existing civil administration to collect money and supplies. The Imperialists received cash and services worth 284,600 fl. from public funds from the Franconian town of Kitzingen in nine years after they recaptured it in September 1634, compared to only 144,000 fl. directly from private individuals.⁷² Where rulers were deposed, the conquerors rarely altered existing institutions and generally confirmed officials in their posts. Bavarian practice in the Palatinate and Upper Austria, as well as Sweden’s conquest of Mainz and the Franconian bishoprics, indicates that even confessional differences did not mean the automatic expulsion of incumbent personnel (see Chapters 10 and 14).

Administrators adapted. New, simpler forms of taxation were introduced during the 1630s, because there were insufficient numbers of staff or information to take account of personal circumstances. The new levies were generally flat-rate poll taxes or excises on staples that naturally hit the poor hardest. Officials in Gotha, for instance, assumed control of tax administration from the Estates as part of a new effort to coordinate security after 1640. They mediated between soldiers and civilians, securing exemptions from military exactions in return for regular contributions. Evacuation measures were instituted should these safeguards fail to prevent soldiers returning. People and property would be moved to fortified towns in each district. The militia was revived in 1641 to assist this. Tax burdens were redistributed to compensate those communities close to transit routes that were suffering the most.⁷³

This more active and innovative role would continue during post-war reconstruction and help change the ideal of the state from guardian of the established order to promoter of the common good. One example is how the high incidence of plague drove secular officials to interfere in more aspects of daily life, often in the face of popular and clerical opposition. Pope Urban VIII excommunicated Florentine public health officials after they banned religious assemblies and processions to help combat infection. German officials also encountered protests as they prevented grieving relatives from holding funerals and instead disposed of corpses with quick, nocturnal burials.⁷⁴ People insisted on returning to what they considered ‘proper’ customs and behaviour as soon as the crisis passed, but it proved impossible to reverse the process of secular rationalization inherent in state development. With a more effective claim on resources, the state alone seemed capable of coordinating activity. Even the hard-pressed duke of Pfalz-Neuburg managed to distribute 1,200 oxen and 17,000 tlr worth of wine and corn to help his subjects recover from the plague and Swedish occupation in 1635.

The war also weakened the ability of local elites to manage affairs without official assistance. Tenant farmers, millers, clergy and innkeepers all saw their wealth diminished or destroyed. Their prestige suffered from their inability to protect those in their community who had depended on them. They looked to the district and central authorities for help and protection. For example, they collaborated with officials to preserve patterns of inheritance that left the best land in their hands. In return, they helped enforce territorial legislation, public order and tax collection. Post-war princely government was built on these foundations.

CULTURAL IMPACT

Cultural Destruction

Interpretations of the war’s cultural impact have followed those for its other consequences.⁷⁵ Both Czech and German nationalists believed the conflict destroyed vibrant, pre-war cultures and led to alien domination. In the former case, this came in the form of ‘German’ Habsburg rule. In the latter, it followed the slavish copying of foreign styles and a rejection of everything later considered authentically German. Frederick the Great, a nationalist hero despite his disdain for German literature, wrote that after the war ‘the land was devastated, the fields lay barren, the cities were almost deserted… how could someone in Vienna or Mannheim compose sonnets or epigrams?’⁷⁶

Alongside this cultural equivalent of the ‘Disastrous War’ school, there is also an interpretation suggesting earlier decline. The war supposedly exacerbated an existing trend inherent in the confessional polarization to further fragment the earlier, cosmopolitan humanism, destroying its values of moderation, tolerance and intellectual exchange. Already before the war, rulers founded their own universities to promote their chosen faith and to train administrators and clergy for their territory. ‘A series of outstanding thinkers, left isolated, turned inwards, attempting to preserve in themselves a unitary grasp of the world, to recreate in an individual intellect the totality of human wisdom.’⁷⁷ This introspective project failed, leaving only what absolutist rulers considered useful to instil thrift in their subjects and to promote dynastic grandeur with new baroque palaces.

Neither approach is helped by the tendency among many art and literary historians to judge the vibrancy of a culture by criteria of originality and innovation. The Empire appears in decline after 1600 when measured against the ‘heights’ achieved by painters like Albrecht Dürer or Lucas Cranach, the innovation of Johann Gutenberg’s printing press, and a series of outstanding humanist scholars in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Those working in the first half of the seventeenth century allegedly only produced derivative works. There were no ‘national’ cultural centres, equivalent to Rome, London or Paris to attract talent and develop new styles.⁷⁸

The war certainly disrupted artistic activity and destroyed or removed cultural artefacts. Queen Christina’s plundering of Catholic libraries has already been noted. Libraries represented expensive cultural assets and priceless repositories of knowledge. All governments struggled with a shortage of expertise and qualified personnel. Sweden had just a single university (Uppsala) and could send only theology graduates to serve as army secretaries, because there were no others with sufficient skills. Universities and libraries were thus strategic targets. Marburg University was at the centre of the dispute between the rival Hessian dynasties. Maximilian of Bavaria coveted the famed Bibliotheca Palatina in Heidelberg that held an astonishing (for the time) 8,800 books and manuscripts, including ancient Greek texts and a large collection of Protestant theology. The pope wanted this to gain insight into the mind of the enemy. Concerned not to lose papal goodwill, Maximilian reluctantly sent the library to Rome in February 1623 where it remained until 1815. The contents of monastic libraries in Mainz were despatched to Sweden within weeks of the electorate’s capture. Others were deliberately sought out later by Swedish generals eager to win favour by sending them to Christina. Libraries were also depleted by sale as universities, schools and monasteries compensated for falling incomes by selling valuable works. Once lost, they were difficult to replace, especially as the war also caused the decline of the Frankfurt book fair. Würzburg University did not reopen until 1636, two years after its liberation from the Swedes, because it had to wait until the bishop could replace the 5,000 books stolen from its library.⁷⁹

Protestant schools and universities declined when the Restitution Edict removed church property previously used to sustain them. Calvinist institutions suffered the most. Heidelberg University was captured early in the war. By 1622 more than half the staff had gone, mostly fleeing with the students to Switzerland or the Dutch Republic. The remainder were dismissed in 1626, except for one who converted to Catholicism. The conversion of intellectuals was highly prized by the authorities, keen to demonstrate the supposed superiority of their own creed. The conversion of Christoph Besold, a professor at Württemberg’s Lutheran university at Tübingen, was trumpeted as a Catholic triumph.

The fate of German universities does support part of the generally negative assessment of the cultural impact. Whereas many had been centres of European importance, they became increasingly parochial as foreign students stopped enrolling and failed to return once the war ended. The number of aristocratic students also declined disproportionately due to the attraction of military careers as an alternative to studying. The disruption and, in several cases, collapse of universities worsened the skills shortage and adversely affected territorial administration.

Creativity and Innovation

Other activities suffered too. Numerous artists fled abroad. Less money was left for patronage, while measures like the Restitution Edict and the Swedish donations removed assets previously used to sustain theatre, and especially music. Heinrich Schütz, one of the century’s greatest composers, despaired in 1637, believing there was no longer a future for Lutheran church music. Reduced resources obliged him to innovate, however. He pushed creative boundaries by composing works for smaller groups of musicians and singers.⁸⁰

Poetry was another area of creativity that has been underestimated because it was an art form that lost favour in Central Europe soon after the war. Lutherans predominated, though they included men like Martin Opitz who was named imperial poet laureate. Other leading poets were Pastor Johann Rist, Daniel von Czepko, Johann Moscherosch and the Silesians Andreas Gryphius and Friedrich Baron Logau. Their work was a direct response to the war that they struggled to comprehend, comment on and suggest ways to overcome the violence. Some caution is required when drawing wider conclusions from their large body of work. Much was introspective and most open to diverging interpretation. Nonetheless, they did produce a distinctly national, poetic culture. Moscherosch and Logau ridiculed the imitation of foreign styles and fashions. Opitz, who fled to Holland in 1620, published his Prosodia Germanica four years later in a conscious attempt to free German poetry from confessional strife and make it the equal of classical Latin and Greek verse.

Their efforts flowed into the cultural politics of the largely Protestant literary societies that began in the decade before the war and continued beyond the peace. Opitz and Rist both belonged to the Fruitful Society associated with Christian of Anhalt’s efforts to rally Calvinists and Lutherans within the Protestant Union. Rist also belonged to the Pegnesischer Blumenorden (Flower Order of the Pegnitz River), based in Nuremberg, and founded the Sprachgesellschaft des Elbschwanenordens (Linguistic Society of the Order of the Elbian Swan). Rist and his contemporaries did not reject foreign influence on modern nationalistic grounds. Its presence was a symptom, not a cause of Germany’s greater sin. Far from being innocent victims of foreign aggression, Germans had brought misfortune upon themselves by failing to live in harmony as true Christians.

Rist developed this theme in various works after 1630, notably his 572-verse – baroque poetry applauded epic scale – ‘Peace Trumpet’ (Frieden-Posaune, 1646), his ‘Germany longing for Peace’ (Das Friedewünschende Teutschland, 1647) and the post-war music drama ‘Germany Jubilating Peace’ (Das Friedejauchzende Teutschland, 1653). In the latter work, ‘Mars’ as god of war makes ‘Ratio Status’ (reasons of state) his supreme privy councillor to help him undermine the tranquillity of ‘Germany’. ‘Peace’ puts ‘Mars’ in chains, but warns ‘Germany’ that he will be released if she does not behave.⁸¹ The story was thus closely in tune with the official message propagated by the territorial church and state that inhabitants should shun sin and lead obedient lives to prevent God sending another war to scourge their homeland.

Critical Voices?

This example raises the thorny question of whether artists criticized war in more general terms. Most historians have concluded that poetry, literature and painting raised only moral and theological objections to war in line with Rist’s drama. One example is the interpretation of a cycle of engravings produced by Hans Ulrich Franck entitled Memento Mori. The last image shows the rotting corpse of a cavalryman with a gallows on one side and a still-intact church on the other. It seems a warning to repent before it is too late.⁸² This has been rejected as a neo-conservative interpretation that denies that early modern Europeans were able to empathize with the suffering of others and use art as a mirror and a tool of political consciousness. Paintings, these modern critics claim, were explicit denunciations of war as a crime against the innocent. Far from demonstrating faith in divine punishment, artists suggested that people could not rely on God’s saving grace and instead should confront the problems of this world through practical solutions.⁸³

This critical interpretation cites the famous cycle of engravings entitled The Miseries of War (1633) produced by Jacques Callot from Lorraine. Many of these show soldiers attacking villages, plundering, murdering and raping. One, however, depicts marauders being strung up from a tree. It has been suggested the cycle thus illustrates both the problem and a potential solution in tighter discipline, not prayer and penance.⁸⁴

The problem is that Callot also produced panoramic engravings and other more propagandist images, such as a large picture illustrating how Spinola captured Breda in 1625. Dutch artists alone produced several million paintings in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, of which perhaps 10 per cent survive. When placed alongside engravings and other images, the number from the war years is truly vast. It is impossible to fit these into simple categories, especially as the majority are by artists who are only now being studied. Even less is known about the market for such images. It is clear that many artists produced critical works as personal attempts to come to terms with what they had witnessed or heard, rather than as acts of political commentary. Valentin Wagner, for instance, constantly drew sleeping figures that have been interpreted as a personal attempt to escape the horrors of war. Rudolf Meyer’s etchings of soldiers massacring civilians were drawn in the early 1630s but not published until twenty years later.⁸⁵

Such scenes of violence were common, but need to be placed in their context. Meyer, Callot and Franck were among many artists producing cycles of engravings showing all aspects of military life. Variously entitled Kriegstheater (Theatre of War) or Soldatenleben (Soldier’s Life), these prints showed cavalry skirmishes, raids, camps, men drilling, gambling or fighting in drunken brawls. Numerous small-scale paintings also used such themes. Depictions of war and violence thus belong to the general contemporary world of genre painting. The scenes of rowdy or violent soldiers are not dissimilar to other cycles showing rustic life, with inebriated peasants fighting or eating to excess. Franck and others also depicted the peasants’ revenge, showing soldiers being set upon and murdered by villagers.

Though also not free from controversy, princely commissions and other propaganda paintings are rather easier to interpret. The patron is generally depicted mounted in the foreground on an elevation painted into the pseudo-realistic landscape. The middle distance displays a panoramic view of their victorious battle or siege under a suitably dramatic sky. Corpses, usually lying near the hoofs of the general’s horse, function less as victims of war than to evoke the classical image of the victor trampling his foe underfoot. The Netherlands painter Pieter Snayers also produced images of soldiers looting, but made his name with a cycle of 21 vast battle paintings commissioned by Piccolomini to commemorate his career.

Snayers’ prodigious output also included a painting of the battle of White Mountain that later hung in the bedroom used by successive Bavarian electors. Maximilian had already donated his personal standard carried in the battle, along with twenty banners taken from the enemy, to a church dedicated in Rome as thanks for the victory. The building was decorated with a specially commissioned series of paintings with scenes from the action, while a monumental column was later erected in Munich and dedicated to the Virgin. The connection with thanksgiving extended to more humble commissions, especially from Catholics. An adjutant and six trumpeters from the von Salis Bavarian cavalry regiment had a votive painting made around 1651 showing them kneeling before the Madonna in thanks for surviving the battle of Allerheim six years earlier.⁸⁶

Celebrations of war can been found in other art forms, though they are now less well known than the apparently more critical works. Wolfgang Helmhard von Hohberg wrote a verse epic Der Habspurgische Ottobert (1664), set in the sixth century but clearly addressed to the seventeenth-century Habsburgs. This offered conventional praise for the dynasty’s heroism in fighting a just war. Conflict was presented as part of the human condition, while peace appeared impermanent. Hohberg had served in the imperial army in 1632–41, rising to captain, and was eventually elevated as baron. His experience was thus different to the fugitive baroque poets for whom the war often brought dislocation and disrupted careers.⁸⁷

Hohberg illustrates how soldiers were not just destroyers, but could be creators and facilitators. Piccolomini and Archduke Leopold Wilhelm were famous patrons, especially of painters. Philip IV’s Buen Retiro palace is another example with its Hall of Realms decorated with vast battle paintings. Officers formed a major proportion of the Fruitful Society members, including General Lohausen who spent his captivity after the battle of Lutter translating foreign literature into German. General Horn also studied while a prisoner and participated in Jesuit theatre. Colonel von dem Werder, a German in Swedish service, translated books, while General Gronsfeld was a well-educated and published author.

Grimmelshausen

A soldier also produced the most famous work about the war. Johann Jacob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen was born around 1621 in Gelnhausen, north-east of Frankfurt. His Lutheran father died while he was still young. His mother remarried and sent him to be raised by his grandfather who was a baker and innkeeper. Johann was still attending Latin school when the Swedes plundered Gelnhausen whose inhabitants fled to the surrounding woods. Johann was later taken to nearby Hanau to escape the aftermath of Nördlingen. While playing on the ice outside the fortress he was kidnapped by Croats and taken to Hersfeld. He was captured by the Hessians soon after, and later witnessed the Saxon siege of Magdeburg and the battle of Wittstock as a stable boy in the imperial army. He was a soldier by 1637 and participated in Götz’s fruitless attempts to relieve Breisach. His colonel discovered that he could read and write and made him regimental clerk in 1639. Johann saw out the rest of the war in that capacity in the imperial garrison of Offenburg on the Upper Rhine. He converted to Catholicism while in imperial service and married Catharina Henninger, the daughter of an NCO in the same regiment. After the war he became a steward on his former colonel’s estates. Grimmelshausen’s family claimed aristocratic ancestry and he assumed the ‘von’ as his fortunes prospered in the 1650s when he enjoyed a comfortable life, acquiring some land, running two taverns and eventually becoming mayor of Renchen, a small town belonging to the bishop of Strasbourg. He ended his days as he began, amid foreign invasion, in this case the French attack on Alsace led initially by Turenne, in August 1676.

Grimmelshausen’s life is worth recounting just as an example of how it was still possible to prosper despite the war. What made him truly significant, however, was the astonishing literary output that began only in the last decade of his life. His first work was his greatest success. The Adventurous Simplicissimus was issued in five parts in 1668, followed by a sixth a year later. Another four works appeared using common characters and themes, notably The Life of the Arch-Cheat and Renegade Courage (1670) made famous as the play Mother Courage by Berthold Brecht, written in 1938 and premiered in Zurich in 1941.⁸⁸

Much of Simplicissimus is clearly autobiographical. The central character’s rustic childhood is abruptly terminated once his family’s farm is plundered. Forced to live in the woods, he is adopted as a fool by Ramsay, the Swedish commandant of Hanau. He is captured by Croats and witnesses the battle of Wittstock. Here the stories diverge, as Simplicissimus rises through the ranks as a daring partisan in the war between outposts in Westphalia, followed by various adventures in France, Switzerland and the Rhineland.

The novel can be read as disillusionment with, and even criticism of, religion and the established order. The key scene (Book 1, chapter 4) certainly lends itself to this. It describes in graphic detail how the soldiers systematically plunder the hero’s farm and torture its inhabitants, made all the more effective by recounting it through Simplicissimus’s childlike perspective. Not surprisingly, it is the most quoted section of the book, occasionally surfacing in general accounts that use it uncritically as ‘eyewitness’ testimony. The common interpretation is as an expression of doubt in divine justice: how can God allow such cruelty? It seems that Grimmelshausen despaired of religion providing peace and prosperity. The novel ends with Simpicissimus leaving society altogether and living as a hermit on a desert island.⁸⁹

Such apparent despair sits ill with what we know of the author’s comfortable later life. More importantly, there are relatively few descriptions of violence, beyond the famous farm scene. By contrast, soldiers and military life often appear in a positive light. The characters are modelled on real figures, or openly depict them, such as the Hessian partisan Little Jacob.⁹⁰ Grimmelshausen also defends General Götz against criticism over the Breisach campaign. Much of the social critique reads like the grumblings of the neglected foot soldier against his superiors. A widely quoted passage about military oppression (Book 1, chapter 15) is followed by a lament on the difficulties of getting promoted from the ranks. There is much that is conventional and conservative. Simplicissimus, like Grimmelshausen, turns out to have been of noble birth, a common wish-fulfilment motif. Like his creation, the author also had his eye on the main chance. He wanted a best-seller and packed his story full of eclectic information, travelogue, middle-brow Bible references and classical allusions, alongside rustic folk tales and superstition. The presence of the latter belies the novel’s complexity and its author’s erudition. His account of Wittstock reads like first-hand experience, yet it is based on Sir Philip Sidney’s 1590 novel Arcadia. Large parts are plagiarized from other picaresque novels and courtly romances, while the hermit conclusion echoes contemporary interest in castaways and exploration.

Conclusions

The problems of interpretation underscore the wider difficulty of generalizing about the war’s impact. First, there were wide variations across time and space for its impact on culture, like that for other aspects of life. The war did not immediately halt cultural production across the Empire. Salzburg University opened in 1622. The elector of Mainz built a new riverside palace in his capital after 1626. Such ventures represented the continuation of existing plans associated with the Catholic revival. They redoubled after the war with a flowering of baroque architecture across southern and western Germany.

Some activities continued regardless. Europe’s first opera performance outside Italy was staged in Salzburg in 1614. The subsequent decline of music there stemmed largely from personal taste, as the new archbishop after 1619, Paris Count Lodron, favoured the theatre instead: the university theatre staged at least a hundred productions during the war. Lodron also promoted the construction of the new cathedral, begun in 1613 to replace the earlier one that burned down in 1598. The building was essentially finished by 1622 and decorated in 1623–35, all despite the war. On a more modest scale, schooling continued in Naumburg despite cutbacks in other areas of municipal expenditure. Teachers were still appointed and study grants awarded. Drama and music were also introduced into the school, reflecting a second general point about continued innovation and creativity. The rector of Naumburg’s main school wrote sixteen plays in 1642–6, a prodigious output even in good times, but more remarkable still considering these were the inhabitants’ worst years.⁹¹

Other trends that can be classed as cultural were accelerated by the war, including the use of tobacco that entered the Empire in the 1580s and was spread by troop movements after 1618. Print culture also boomed (see the following chapter). Smoking would probably have spread anyway, and it is important not to let the war obscure the influence of other factors. European culture was already changing rapidly under the impact of world exploration, trade and scientific discoveries, all of which helped free minds from the deadening grip of theology. The conflict furthered this by demonstrating the futility of religious fundamentalism, but this came at a very high price. While creativity and ingenuity still flourished, much was needlessly destroyed. The human cost becomes clearest when we examine the psychological impact of the war in the final chapter.