23
THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE
Personal Testimony
What the war was like for those living through it is one of the most interesting, yet difficult questions. Any answer faces considerable problems in identifying and interpreting the evidence. For post-structuralists and other theorists, these difficulties invalidate the entire concept of experience as an analytical category. This has not prevented it transforming how the war and other early modern conflicts have been studied since the 1990s.1 Recent work overcomes some of the problems by distinguishing between two forms of experience. The first, Erlebnis, is the fleeting experience an individual feels through the constant succession of lived events. This subjective dimension cannot be studied with any real precision for the past. The second, Erfahrung, is the accumulative knowledge an individual acquires from his or her transient experience, involving a process of selection and reflection on life. Experience in this sense can be studied, because such reflections have been committed to paper and preserved.
The approach is still not without its problems. The most important is the relationship of individual to wider, collective experience. This is not just a matter of how ‘typical’ an individual’s experience might have been. It is also a matter of how individuals perceive and record events, since these are filtered through what they already know and think life is like. These problems become clearer when we examine the first-hand personal testimonies that survive in a variety of forms. Letters are the most immediate, since they were generally written closest in time to actual events. Correspondence among princes, generals and other members of the elite has long been staple fare for historians, but letters from humbler folk are only now being used, partly because far fewer of them still exist.2 Next in terms of immediacy are the household record books that contain an eclectic mix of personal statements, prayers and family data. Diaries and chronicles also survive, usually compiled by an individual, but sometimes added to by a relation and continued as a family record. Diary keeping became more common with the spread of printed calendars around 1600, as these encouraged a more chronological sense of time. Hans Heberle, a bonded shoemaker from a village near Ulm, began his in 1618 when he was twenty and kept it until 1672, just five years before his death. The most retrospective form of testimony is the autobiography. These are rather variable for the early seventeenth century. They range from sparse personal details prepared as a basis for a funeral oration, to more extensive recollections. A catalogue published a decade ago lists 240 diaries, chronicles and autobiographies by 226 men and 9 women from the war years that have already been published. The total number is probably far greater as new material is still being discovered.3
Like diaries, autobiographies were influenced by the European tradition of recording events as a chronicle. Seventeenth-century authors generally strove for a detached, impersonal style, placing themselves in what they regarded as their wider context. They generally lack reflection on events, descriptions of emotions or psychological insights that can be found in some sixteenth-century works and which become more common with those written after the 1770s. There were many motives for writing. Some were purely personal, perhaps as a way of coming to terms with difficult events. Others were compiled for the edification of family, friends or a community. The latter was the case with diaries kept by nuns, who form the majority of the few female writers whose works still survive.4
The often mundane character of many of these texts led to their general neglect until the early 1990s in favour of more dramatic, fictional accounts like Grimmelshausen’s novel, or seemingly more ‘reliable’ official records. While there is a risk of myopia in the current fashion for ‘micro history’, recent work has done much to dispel the earlier concern over the reliability of personal testimony. Such sources are useful not so much as an accurate portrayal of events but for how the war was perceived and remembered. Identifying what authors chose to record or omit tells us much about what they considered important or traumatic. The reoccurrence of stock motifs and passages copied from other texts or pasted from newspapers allows us to trace the flow of ideas and information.5
The War as Media Event
The outbreak of the war coincided with new developments in European print culture that were greatly accelerated by the subsequent thirst for news from the Empire. Information still circulated by word of mouth spread by travellers and refugees, as well as hand-written through networks of correspondents maintained by governments, companies, merchants and, frequently, senior military and church figures. These networks were greatly assisted by the development of regular postal systems, of which the most important was the imperial postal service operated as a monopoly by the Thurn und Taxis family after 1490. The service maintained regular routes with riders, and later post coaches, intersecting at major centres like Frankfurt am Main. Relays of horses enabled it to deliver a letter across 100km within 24 hours. The Thurn und Taxis were richly rewarded, acquiring the status of hereditary nobility in 1515, becoming barons (in 1608), then counts (1624) and ultimately imperial princes (1695).
Their service facilitated the spread of regular newspapers by providing the distribution needed to make printed news commercially viable. Papers began in Strasbourg and Antwerp in 1605 and had been started in at least five other cities by 1618. The Defenestration of Prague on 23 May 1618 was already reported in the Frankfurt paper in June. The war’s spread fuelled a rapid expansion with six new titles appearing in 1619 alone, followed by another seventeen over the 1620s and twelve more after Sweden’s intervention. Several folded, or appeared only irregularly, but around thirty weekly papers were running in 1648 with a total distribution of 15,000 copies, compared to only a hundred a week before 1618. Total readership was up to twenty times the distribution figure, because papers were circulated among friends or read aloud to illiterate neighbours. The Empire led the way. There was no French equivalent until 1631, while most other countries had to wait until the later seventeenth century.6
There are substantial differences between these publications and their modern equivalents. Early seventeenth-century papers avoided explicit comment and did not see their mission as shaping opinion. The first editorial appeared in a German paper in 1687. Much, if not all, of the text was filled by printing official pronouncements, treaties, documents and letters. The rest concentrated on diplomatic, military and political events, virtually ignoring local news or ‘human interest’ stories, except for papers like the Viennese Ordentliche Postzeitung based in court residence cities that relayed information about the ruling dynasty. There was a considerable overlap with the related genre of the newsletter like the famous Theatrum Europaeum, begun by the Strasbourg publisher Johann Philipp Abelin in 1633 and continued for a century. This was a high-quality record of events that printed many documents verbatim and included exceptional engravings produced by the Merian family from Frankfurt. The first volume covered the war from the Defenestration, while subsequent ones appeared with less of a time lag.7
The sober tone did not reflect a belief in neutral objective journalism. Truth was not regarded as something standing above or between different viewpoints, but as directly related to singular, definitive legal and confessional concepts. This raises the question of whether print media and other forms of communicating news reflected or shaped opinion. The most overtly polemic form was the pamphlet that emerged around 1490 in Europe’s first ‘media revolution’ following the invention of printing. Pamphlets focused on single issues and clearly sought to both comment and influence. Along with broadsheets combining images with (often) rhymed texts, they were a major feature of the Reformation, cleverly exploited by Luther and allowing him to become the world’s first best-selling author.8
The first imperial censorship law was passed in 1521, the year of the ban on Luther’s writings. The legislation was revised six times by 1570, establishing a censorship committee based in the postal centre of Frankfurt that issued verdicts to be enforced by the relevant territorial authorities. Territorial fragmentation inhibited effective enforcement, but printing required large, heavy equipment. It was fairly easy to punish printers for producing offensive material, encouraging an element of self-censorship as publishers refused to accept dangerous works. The result was a varied media landscape. Publications in cities like Hamburg or Wolfenbüttel generally refrained from extremist views, because these venues wished to remain on good terms with everyone. Those in cities more firmly associated with one of the belligerents were more partisan. A good example is the Viennese Ordentliche Postzeitung where war reporting accounted for 55 per cent of articles, followed by material on the court that composed another third. Nearly two-thirds of articles were decidedly in favour of the emperor’s cause, with a quarter directly hostile to the enemy.9
The authorities quickly appreciated the power of the press. The Antwerp publisher Abraham Verhoeven persuaded Archduke Albert to grant him a licence for a regular paper in 1620 by saying the government would enhance its reputation by publicizing details of its victories.10 However, the official attitude remained ambivalent. There was no desire for transparency, or freedom of information. Public affairs were considered beyond the comprehension of ordinary mortals, reserved as ‘mysteries of state’ for those whose elevated birth supposedly endowed them with superior understanding. Representative institutions might challenge monarchical or princely secrecy but they rarely wished to share the knowledge they obtained with the wider population. Yet there was also a sense of a public that encompassed the living and those still to be born. Rulers craved the social capital attached to reputation. They wanted to project their acts as conforming to idealized virtues, such as justice, prudence and clemency, not merely to assist current objectives, but to leave a glorious legacy for posterity. These considerations shaped how policy was presented, as we have seen with the Bohemian Confederates’ Apologia, Gustavus’s manifesto and Richelieu’s declaration of war.
Major events like the sack of Magdeburg forced papers to provide explanations that inevitably entailed taking sides. Some, like those operating from the safety of Zurich, were able to be openly partisan. However, papers were commercial ventures, as were most pamphlets except those with government subsidy. They also faced practical and technical difficulties, relying on deliberate ‘leaks’, official documents, travellers and unpaid informants for their information, since none maintained its own journalists. In the absence of copyright laws much of the material was simply lifted from other publications. Printers typeset texts as news came in with little thought to layout, sometimes inadvertently including contradictory or blatantly false reports. Few rulers wanted to tarnish their reputations by appearing openly tyrannical and it remained possible to print dissenting views. Around 5 per cent of the Ordentliche Postzeitung’s war reporting was hostile to the emperor, while another 7 per cent actually favoured the enemy.
The same applied to pamphlets that more closely employed stylistic devices to foster sympathy with the author’s views, and were more likely to include sensationalist reporting and graphic descriptions of violence. Protestant commentaries on the Valtellina massacre of 1620 generally labelled it a ‘bloodbath’, while Catholics referred to ‘the extirpation of heresy’. Yet, neither side saw the violence as senseless. The real question was how to judge the participants according to the rival versions of legality. This opened the door to self-criticism. For example, Catholics were concerned whether the perpetrators had sinned by using religion as an excuse to seize Protestant property.11 Confessionally motivated propaganda sought to rally opinion on the basis of faith and to undermine and isolate opponents. It undoubtedly convinced many that the conflict was a religious war. Yet the general trend was secular. The various armies appeared not as Protestants or Catholics, but as Swedes, Bohemians, Bavarians or Imperialists. News about the Muslim sultan appeared alongside reports of the activities of Christian rulers. The prominence given to generals and other personalities further suggested the essentially human, not divine, character of events.
MILITARY–CIVIL RELATIONS
The Military Community
Soldiers existed as a distinct group united by their oath upon enlistment to obey the ‘articles of war’, or military code setting out death and other dire punishments for misdemeanours. The sworn oath lay at the heart of early modern society as the basis of all forms of association. Subjects paid homage to lords and princes on their accession. Citizens and craftsmen swore to uphold civic and guild charters. The ceremony symbolized the reciprocity of rights and duties. The associational element of military life was being eroded by the stress on hierarchy, obedience and discipline. However, official regulation remained only one factor, alongside custom and personal honour, to determine behaviour.
Interpretations of soldiers in the Thirty Years War have been coloured by the pejorative connotations of the term ‘mercenary’. Most military history written in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries rests on the assumption that volunteers or conscripts serving their country in a permanent, professional army were inherently superior soldiers. The recent stress on religious war suggests that faith would have provided motivation and cohesion during the Thirty Years War, yet traditional military historians have concluded that soldiers lacked ideals and simply served whoever paid the most.12 The standard interpretation stresses institutional deficits, such as the lack of permanent regiments, and the apparent absence of national or political loyalty. Early seventeenth-century military institutions are measured against their successors and found wanting. The problems inherent in such comparisons become clear when they are reversed. For example, the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars are often hailed as the birth of modern armies based on motivated ‘citizens-in-arms’, but they were also protracted and destructive, and displayed many of the characteristics found during the Thirty Years War, including high desertion rates.
An earlier survey concluded there was insufficient evidence to generalize about the soldiers who fought in the Thirty Years War.13 Nearly 25 years on, the situation remains one of the most under-researched aspects of the conflict, but enough work has appeared to offer some general insight. There is no compelling evidence to suggest that criminals were disproportionately represented within the ranks. Bavaria stopped condemning men to the Venetian galleys when the war broke out and instead sentenced them to serve as ‘matrosses’ (Handlanger), or gunners’ assistants, to help position the artillery. No more than 200 men entered the Bavarian army this way between 1635 and 1648.14 Most soldiers either volunteered or were conscripted through the territorial militia in the Empire, or through the draft in Denmark, Sweden and Finland. Both compulsory systems targeted men from similar backgrounds: young, unmarried, who could be spared from the civilian economy. Official rules were ignored if manpower was short. Nonetheless, most new recruits were single men in their early twenties. By contrast, four out of five of those transferring from one army to another came with a wife and often a family in tow. They were welcomed nonetheless, since their prior experience was greatly valued by officers, despite the logistical problems of their dependants swelling the numbers of camp followers.
Former textile and building workers formed the largest group taken directly from civilian life. These trades were among those most easily disrupted by the war. They were also urban and there is considerable evidence that a disproportionate number of recruits came from towns, though many of them may well have been rural refugees.15 Rural recruits were largely farm labourers rather than peasants with their own land. Students, former public officials and other educated men formed a tiny minority, though they predominate among those who left personal accounts. The Swedish, and to a lesser extent the Danish, armies were unusual in that they were recruited primarily in Germany and contained relatively few natives. Around a fifth of the French army was foreign, largely Swiss (a quarter of the foreigners), then Irish, German, Alsatian and Italian in that order. The Swiss and Irish were raised as separate regiments by military contractors, but the others usually enlisted because French units were serving in the area. The same applies to the Bavarian army. Units raised in Cologne had a higher proportion of non-Germans, thanks to the proximity to the Netherlands and other good recruiting grounds. Though the elector’s own subjects were a minority in the Bavarian army, only one or two out of every ten ‘Bavarian’ soldiers came from outside the Empire. The foreign element often included prisoners pressed into service after a victory or capture of a town. This practice became common after 1620. The Bavarians pressed 1,494 men taken at Nördlingen in 1634 to make up for the casualties suffered by their infantry, while 2,487 French prisoners were incorporated after Herbsthausen in 1645.16 Captured officers were released on parole, or ransomed. Prisoner exchange cartels were already used in the 1620s and became more common in the 1640s, but generally only officers were involved.17
The impressment of prisoners diluted confessional uniformity. Military codes had followed the general trend of imperial legislation during the sixteenth century in using deliberately ambiguous terms to enable men of all confessions to swear a generic Christian oath of loyalty. Confession assumed greater importance after 1618. Militants felt only true believers could win with God’s blessing. Dissenters were suspect. Wartenberg blamed the defeat at Breitenfeld in 1631 on the presence of Protestant officers in the imperial army. Maximilian preferred Catholics to command his Bavarians, and in 1629 Bishop Ehrenberg of Würzburg insisted the unit guarding his capital be composed only of Catholics.18
Such insistence reflected a desire not matched in reality. The Lisowczycy Cossack cavalry were led by Polish Catholics who declared they were fighting for their religion, yet the majority of the troopers were Orthodox Cossacks and Ukrainians. The Orthodox church in Kiev also opposed Protestantism and the men simply transferred their local anti-Protestantism to Germany, tending to treat all those who could not recite the Ave Maria as enemies. The fact that, while they also served France, Cossacks were not found in Protestant armies does suggest an element of religious allegiance.19
However, confession was only one factor influencing the choice of service. Protestant Scots served in the Polish and imperial armies. Though far more joined the Danish and Swedish forces, these countries were also easier to reach from Scotland. Leading Scots Catholics recruited for Protestant powers, while some Scots Calvinists entered French service. The latter choice may well have been prompted by dynasticism, given King Charles I’s French marriage. Loyalty to the Stuarts was also a factor for those entering Danish, Swedish and Palatine service, all of which could be reconciled with the British monarchy’s political objectives.20 Professionalism was another factor, and it especially attracted men to armies with established reputations, like the Dutch and, later, Swedes. Career security and the hope for better prospects encouraged frequent transfers between armies. Eight Polish regiments led by Scottish and Irish officers entered imperial service after the extension of the Swedish-Polish truce in 1635. Many men converted to the faith of their employer, though not always immediately. There are examples of this happening the other way round too, as in the case of the Englishman Sydenham Poyntz who became a Catholic after joining the Protestant Saxon army. Adherence to the ‘wrong’ religion was not a barrier to promotion, though it did not help. Melander rose in imperial service despite remaining a Calvinist. To an extent, the imperial army stood above confession as it was politically expedient to include Lutherans as well as Catholics. Wallenstein placed ability above confession and promoted several Protestants to senior positions. Far less attention was in any case paid to the religion of ordinary soldiers who made up the bulk of personnel.
Melander’s case and other examples, like the peasant and later Bavarian general Jan van Werth, indicate it was possible to rise from humble origins to the highest ranks. Many junior officers were commoners but nobles did predominate from the rank of captain upwards.21 While some officers were educated men, very few had formal military training. Most learned by experience, serving as a non-commissioned volunteer before joining or raising a company. This placed a premium on personal reputation and connections, and especially on knowing respected men who could write a letter of introduction or secure an offer of appointment. Augustus von Bismarck transferred from the Alt-Rheingraf cavalry regiment to the Schmidtberg infantry regiment within the Bernhardine army when he failed to get advancement. He chose Schmidtberg because he already knew some of its officers, who became godparents to his children after the war.22 The lack of formal education should not be equated with the absence of skill or knowledge. Command of even a relatively small unit required a host of practical skills in personnel management, logistics, accountancy, negotiation and an understanding of topography and the rural economy.
Officers’ higher status and responsibilities undoubtedly set them apart from the mass of ordinary soldiers, but all were part of a wider military community that also included camp followers and civilian dependants. All travelled together and shared a common fate in the success or failure of operations that determined not only whether they would eat or sleep comfortably, but could also mean life or death.
High alcohol consumption was another obvious characteristic. Alcohol was an important part of soldiers’ daily diet, though beer was much weaker than it is today. It deadened the gnawing hunger that came from rarely having enough to eat. Though excessive drinking was condemned as immoral, the authorities derived a significant income from alcohol levies, while German monks were already famed for their beer- and wine-making. Attempts to restrict brewing were often motivated not by morals but the desire to conserve scarce grain and wood stocks. A soldier’s official daily allowance was one measure (1.4 litres) of wine, or two of beer. Soldiers billeted in Augsburg drank one or more measures of wine or beer with a meal, and continued with further drinking in the evening that proved particularly dangerous when combined with the fashion for smoking. Officers ate and drank more, consuming finer wines and, together with their wives, shots of brandy or vermouth in the morning. Officers also held lengthy and costly banquets lasting up to a week. Gallas and Franz Albrecht of Lauenburg emptied sixteen barrels of wine during negotiations in July 1633, while Banér regularly spent the entire day drinking and had his artillery fire 400 shots to accompany one bout. Like the characters in Dumas’ Three Musketeers, officers considered prompt payment beneath them, frequently leaving bills of up to 1,500 fl., equivalent to half the value of a tavern, behind them.23
Plunder
Contemporary art and literature suggest military–civil relations were generally antagonistic. The most common image is that of soldiers plundering villages and torturing peasants, followed by depictions of the latter taking their revenge on marauders. The frequency of these motifs suggests the war was perceived as a violent intrusion into settled existence. It also fits the official presentation from Protestant and Catholic pulpits of the conflict as the scourge of God to punish a sinful people. The perpetrators in tales of violence are overwhelmingly exotic foreigners like Croats, Cossacks, Finns or Swedes.
Detailed analysis of plundering suggests a more complex relationship. A good example is the Hessian raid on Hilden, a village with 700 inhabitants in the duchy of Berg. Advancing from Hamm, the Hessians reached the outskirts of Hilden on 2 August 1648, seizing 17 horses and 54 cows from the meadows belonging to 16 peasants. Livestock was a favourite target, because it could be driven away quickly and either slaughtered for immediate consumption, or sold. An anonymous soldier records how his ‘boy’ (servant) took a horse and ‘a fine cow’ at Durlach in 1634, selling the latter for 11 fl. at Wimpfen nearby. There are also many cases of soldiers harvesting crops for their own use, which required more time and effort than cattle rustling.24 The Hessians also broke into seventeen homes, all on Hilden’s western side where they arrived, taking bread, butter, meat, rye and other food, as well as portable utensils like tin plates, kettles, harness, clothing and bed linen that were either useful or could be sold for modest profit. They ripped open bedding, scattering the feathers, both to steal the linen and to look for hidden valuables. The search for valuables could result in further damage, especially to beds that were usually worth a quarter to a third of the household inventory. Cupboards and chests were also broken open. Furniture, however, was mainly at risk from more prolonged occupation when it was burned as firewood. Raiders rarely stayed long enough to do more damage, unless they set the place on fire. Their haste increased the risk of violence. Torture to reveal hiding places is another stock image from the war. It appears frequently as hearsay. Pastor Martin Bötzinger is one of the few to record being compelled to swallow the infamous ‘Swedish draught, filled with manure, that loosened almost all my teeth’.25 But unlike the 26 families who suffered in Hilden, Bötzinger was a community leader with 300 tlr in cash to hide. The Hilden experience was more common, where the worst that occurred was a beating for those who got in the way or were caught by soldiers frustrated at not finding anything more valuable. The highest single loss was 112 tlr suffered by a farmer, largely through the theft of nine cows. The total loss for the village was 1,178 tlr.
There is little to suggest that plundering became worse or more systematic later in the conflict. Recruits and newly raised units might need to learn how to work together to seal off a community and seize its assets, but it did not take a generation to perfect techniques that were already widespread in the Netherlands and Hungary before 1618. Plundering only worked thanks to the civilian market for stolen goods. Civilians could also participate directly. Servants helped rob masters, sometimes willingly. People settled scores, betraying their neighbours’ hoarded treasure, or diverting robbery from their own door by telling soldiers of allegedly better booty elsewhere. Civilians joined raiding parties, behaving as badly as soldiers. They plundered corpses after battles, often finding looted treasure on the bodies that they then sold on. War eroded neighbourliness, and those still with money could benefit at the expense of the less fortunate. The Augustine nuns of Mariastein near Eichstätt were able to restock their convent after Nördlingen with utensils and other items ‘people pleadingly gave up or sold for next to nothing or for a bit of bread’.26
Negotiation
The civilian interest in the military could extend beyond pure materialism. Travelling from his home town of Leipzig with his father who was taking up a post in Magdeburg, Friedrich Friese recalled how they passed through the city’s checkpoints on a cold night in 1628. While his sisters shivered, ‘we saw musketeers with burning match, that we had otherwise never seen… the smell of match struck us as most wondrous’.27 Likewise, Sister Junius’s diary records considerable military detail, including her opinion on tactics and commanders. This suggests a familiarity with, and even positive appreciation of, some aspects of the military. Certainly, the abstract definition of the enemy in official propaganda soon broke down with actual encounters, as opposing troops could behave well while nominally friendly forces murdered and tortured.
Military–civil relations were not necessarily asymmetrical.28 The soldiers’ advantages combined the coercive ‘stick’ of an armed body with the ‘carrot’ of their officers’ promise to reduce burdens in return for cooperation. Civilians, however, generally possessed superior numbers, assets and resources, plus local knowledge and the threat of flight. Armies might harvest crops, but they could not grow their own food and a march through a depopulated, barren area spelled disaster, as Gallas’s operations proved in 1644.
Violence cannot be explained entirely by reference to material factors, as some have claimed.29 There were robberies without violence, but also violence without material gain. Soldiers occupied an ambiguous place in society as servants of the authorities who engaged in activities breaching the most basic Christian commandments. The inflation of the later sixteenth century eroded their pay well before 1618 and they were generally despised. Several historians have argued that violence was a means of demonstrating individual or collective superiority in the face of such hostility.30 Even activities that included elements of material gain could have additional psychological motives. Breaking into a town or house to plunder disrupted the tranquil world of the honest burgher. Wanton destruction struck at what others held dear. The theft of clothing humiliated the victims. Soldiers made public figures wear fools’ caps or walk barefoot.31 Captive women included those from a more elevated social status, who could be forced to cook, clean or do other menial chores. Some have explained rape in this context, especially as the act was sometimes committed in public to dishonour the husband who was forced to watch.32 Nonetheless soldiers were not totally detached from society but came from much the same backgrounds as those civilians they attacked. Their behaviour was influenced by wider social norms to which they often conformed, even when not supervised by their officers.
Violence tended to be a consequence of the breakdown of negotiation. This might explain the frequent reference to foreign perpetrators since they could not make their demands understood to the local population. Negotiation relied on information. Communities exchanged news about troop movements to prepare themselves. The appearance of troops was rarely met by open defiance. Instead, community leaders would bargain with officers on the edge of their settlement. As we have seen in the analysis of the contributions system in Chapter 12, officers needed civilian cooperation and were prepared to reduce their demands to obtain it. Relations became easier as people talked, but could break down if soldiers were in a hurry, such as during a retreat. The only time Sister Junius’s convent was seriously threatened was during the Swedish retreat after Nördlingen when the soldiers ignored the orders to spare those who had paid the army for protection. The nuns were saved by a captain who had visited them before and who turfed out the plunderers.33
Flight
Flight was another civilian option, but one fraught with risk. Approaching soldiers forced people to confront what really mattered. Most remained rooted until the last minute through fear of leaving their home or business unattended, an absence of alternative livelihood or connections elsewhere, or through a sense of duty and family responsibility. Martin Bötzinger only left Heldburg in Franconia, where he was a teacher, when his father-in-law was murdered in 1632. He became a pastor in Poppenhausen, but was forced to leave two years later after the war and plague left only nine inhabitants.
Geography was another factor affecting decisions. Mecklenburg had few strong towns, so its population took to the woods, marshes or lakes. Large, active cities were more attractive, but became overcrowded. Strasbourg sheltered 30,000 extra people in March 1636, doubling its population. Confession and language also influenced destination as refugees headed for places where they would both feel more at home and be welcomed. Social status and connections gave some an entrée. Merchants went where they already had business contacts, while clergy headed for houses of the same religious order. Towns were more prepared to accept rich people than the poor. Leipzig responded to the flood of refugees after the sack of Magdeburg by tightening its residence requirements in 1631. The city was almost overwhelmed with those fleeing the plague in 1639 when the 16,000 inhabitants were supporting 2,268 on civic welfare. Five hundred wagon-loads of refugees descended on Hanover’s 6,000 inhabitants when the Imperialists entered the area in September 1635. Many of these people could not support themselves: children composed 40 per cent of those receiving welfare in Hamburg in 1633 and half of them were refugees who had fled Magdeburg two years earlier. Nonetheless, Leipzig relaxed its two-year residency requirement when richer refugees applied for citizenship.34
The better-off often had good reasons to stay put. Their connections to local elites offered some protection. People like pastors, university staff and officials also had salaries to lose. Nobles found it difficult to leave their properties unsupervised. Christoph von Bismarck, the landowner in the Brandenburg village of Briest (population 140), suffered from his proximity to the important Elbe crossing of Werben. Each time troops appeared after 1626 he sent his wife and family to Stendal, but this provided no protection from the plague that killed three of his children in as many days in September 1636. A fourth died a few weeks later, as well as a nephew and a niece. Troop movements prevented him from burying them in the family grave until two months later, while the proper funeral service was held only in March 1637. The family’s frequent absences exposed their estate to robbers. The nuns of the Cistercian convent of Oberschönenfeld near Augsburg made a similarly unpleasant discovery when they returned in 1635 after sheltering for three years in the Tirol. The Swedes had given their house to Colonel Schlammersdorf who had stripped it of its contents and discovered the treasures they had left walled up.35 Thus, the poor were often more mobile than the rich. Many were already used to travelling, such as journeymen, or had experience of setting up in a new town already. Most craftsmen’s tools were relatively portable. Cobbler Hans Heberle fled 28 times from his village to nearby Ulm alone, as well as making other escapes to different towns or into the woods during the war.
Where people could not flee themselves, they tried to protect the next generation. Children were sent to relations or to schools in safer areas. The Catholic church did not benefit from this trend. The late sixteenth-century revival in the number of novices stalled or fell as families clearly hesitated to send children to institutions with an uncertain future.36
Resistance
The poor performance of militiamen in formal battles obscures the strength of popular resistance to soldiers. It was nonetheless a feature from the outbreak of the war. Official attitudes were ambivalent. There was general distrust of popular action, yet the authorities also expected people to participate in official defence measures. These represented a continuation of the pre-war territorial defence structures based on a notional universal obligation to serve, with only a select portion of the population undergoing actual training. Familiarity with weapons was widespread. For instance, every Hohenlohe peasant knew how to handle a gun and many owned one. Aware of the potential for popular resistance, the Imperialists occupying the principality after Nördlingen ordered all firearms to be handed over.37 Militias and armed volunteers often put up stiff resistance when defending their homes, as in Magdeburg (1631), and the Bregenz pass (1647). Both these examples ended in failure, but armed citizens and militia formed the bulk of those successfully defending Vienna, Villingen, Kronach, Forchheim, Konstanz and Prague.
The authorities also expected ordinary people to resist marauders. Duke Wolfgang Wilhelm of Pfalz-Neuburg offered a 10 tlr reward for each dead marauder presented to his officials. Such action often needed no prompting; though the Bohemian Confederates stood down their militia in 1619, both sides encountered peasant guerrillas. Other examples include the resistance of the Westphalian towns (1622–3), the Upper Austrian Rebellion (1626), and the widespread insurgency as the war spread after 1631. Official structures could provide a basis for this, as in the Upper Austrians’ use of the militia system against the Bavarian occupiers. Resistance could also be spontaneous. Neighbours responded when two cavalrymen set upon a married couple in the Westphalian village of Leitmar in July 1622, soon overpowering the soldiers and beating them to death so brutally that their faces were left unrecognizable.38
Soldiers certainly feared reprisals as peasants murdered stragglers and patrols. Monro reports the Bavarians’ response to the Swedish invasion in 1632,
where the Boores [peasants] on the march cruelly used our Souldiers (that went aside to plunder) in cutting off their noses and eares, hands and feete, pulling out their eyes, with sundry other cruelties which they used, being justly repayed by the Souldiers, in burning of many Dorpes [villages] on the march, leaving also the Boores dead, where they were found.
An anonymous Imperialist recorded during the 1642 campaign in Westphalia:
I had a bit to drink in the evening and fell behind my regiment in the morning because of a hangover. Three peasants hiding in the hedge beat me up thoroughly and took my coat, satchel, everything. By divine intervention they suddenly ran off as if being chased even though no one was behind them. Thus beaten up, without coat or bag, I rejoined my regiment and was laughed at.39
Contemporaries often noted the involvement of women in resistance. Sister Junius records with approval tales of women at Höchstadt (in March 1633) and Kronach (March 1634) who threw boiling water and stones down at the Swedes. While Höchstadt ended in a massacre of the inhabitants, Kronach held out ‘and the Swedes told us themselves that this hurt more than any shooting or hacking’. She further noted with pride how the nuns stopped marauders entering their convent and ends her diary with praise of having withstood horror and preserved virginity, ‘and the enemy themselves expressed amazement that we, as women, remained living in this exposed spot in such dangerous times’. Male writers also noted the resistance of such ‘Viragoes’ that reflects the contemporary fascination with the concept of Amazons fed by stories from the New World.40
It has been suggested that resistance was an act of final desperation of those with nothing left to lose but their lives.41 However it often seems to have begun well before that stage had been reached, generally once communities had had a taste of military demands, but had not yet lost everything. They fought to preserve their lifestyle and community. Hans Heberle recounts how the village of Weidenstetten near Ulm drove off bands of Bernhardine troops for two days during the summer of 1634, while sheltering their livestock in the churchyard and their belongings in the church. The soldiers retaliated by setting the houses on fire. ‘Once that happened, each one of us went to look after his own property, and common defence collapsed.’42 As we have seen in the discussion of material damage in the previous chapter, soldiers deliberately targeted exposed assets like vineyards to pressure communities into cooperating.
These examples illustrate that resistance had very little to do with the official exhortation to confessional or dynastic loyalty. It was also a form of negotiation, a means to persuade soldiers to go away or moderate their demands. It did not necessarily end in death, though it was more likely to than flight or collaboration. Just as civilians joined raiding parties, soldiers could assist local resistance. Jürgen Ackermann, a former captain, helped defend Kroppenstadt where he had retired as a farmer. The inhabitants successfully repulsed two weak imperial regiments who were demanding quarters. On another occasion he helped neighbours recover a cow stolen by Swedish troops.43
PERCEPTIONS
The War as Defining Event
As contemporaries struggled to understand what was happening they confronted a question central to early modern life: the relative roles of God and people in shaping events. Their responses are revealed through their personal testimonies that indicate how they saw the war shaping their lives. Diary and chronicle entries tend to be fullest when the war directly affected the writer, whereas the text reverts to the more familiar, routine entries as the conflict moved away. Some record months of anxiety as the writers followed events elsewhere with mounting dread as the enemy approached. Others seem to have deliberately omitted the war, or reduced it to a small part of another story as possibly too traumatic to confront in writing.
The war generally assumed a prominent place in second-hand accounts of experience. It looms large in funeral sermons as an explanation for life events, appearing as a direct cause of death, for the advancement or postponement of marriage, moving house, and the loss of relatives. It was also used as a general metaphor for difficult times, and a means of demonstrating the deceased as a good Christian, giving charitably to refugees, or enduring hardship with fortitude. The war thus provided people with a ready explanation of events and a means of linking their own lives to wider developments. The same is true for Jewish memoirs. War and plague constantly intervene in those of Rabbi Reutlingen, influencing his decisions to move and take up different employment. Ascher Levy planned his memoirs in two sections, with the first covering his own life and family and the second dealing with their war experiences, yet he was unable to keep the conflict out of his initial narrative.44
War, and its accompanying horrors of plague and famine, encouraged a sense of living in what one contemporary called an ‘iron century’ of exceptional hardship. The Silesian poet Gryphius wrote of the pointlessness of human existence. The human body was just a ‘house of grim pain’ and an ‘arena of bitter fear filled with keen sorrow’.45 There was a general sense of waste, decline and abandonment, symbolized by grass growing in the streets of empty communities, derelict farms and untilled fields. Many felt society was collapsing, pointing to a rise in prostitution, loose morals, heavy drinking and children swearing in the street. However, such observations generally come from clergy and officials charged with post-war reconstruction and need to be treated with caution.46
Many have noted an apparent lack of emotion among soldiers towards death, even of their own relations. It has also been suggested that the close-quarters fighting denied participants the ability to distance themselves from conflict the way people today can do merely by observing war on the TV news.47 Certainly seventeenth-century combat would have made a profound impact on those participating in it, involving stabbing, hacking, clubbing and hitting the enemy directly. Even distance weapons like muskets had a relatively short range so that it was possible to see their terrible effects, at least until smoke and dust obscured the view. Many memoirs are indeed full of stock references to ‘divine punishment’, or laconic lists of the fallen. But others express regret at the loss of comrades. Much of Monro’s writing implies resentment at civilian ingratitude at the soldiers’ sacrifices. Augustus von Bismarck was clearly an adventurer, pleased that his service had given him an opportunity to see Italy, but he was also conscious of war’s dangers and how few of his comrades had survived.48
Fear
A few expressed what many must have felt in recording their fear of combat. ‘At my first coming before the towne,’ records Thomas Raymond, an Englishman in the Dutch army in 1633,
my courage began somewhat to faile me, and, being younge and never being on such an employment, wrought the more upon me. I remember I had a aurange tauny feather in my capp, and at first I thought that every great gun that was discharge[d] towards our quarters had been aymed at it, the Spaniards not enduring that colour. But within a few dayes I tooke my selfe to be a very gallant fellow, and had noe more dread of danger than if I have been in a fayre.49
Fear and apprehension were all-pervasive and fed by sensationalist reports and rumour. Sister Junius records being almost paralysed by fear after the fall of Würzburg in 1631 and was greatly relieved when she realized the Swedes would not harm them and would let the nuns stay in their convent. She still could not sleep for ‘great fear and anxiety’ while the soldiers helped themselves to vegetables from the convent garden. Familiarity reduced the fear and Junius was much less anxious when the Swedes returned in 1632 as she knew more what to expect.50
Territorial fragmentation heightened uncertainty by placing people of different confessions in close proximity. The Protestant inhabitants of Weikersheim in Franconia believed neighbouring Catholic villagers were preparing ladders to storm their town in 1619. However, the situation was not clear cut, and there are also examples where practical coexistence continued despite the violence.
Fear nonetheless proved debilitating, reducing the quality of life. The early modern world was already a dangerous place. Half the population failed to live beyond their fifteenth year, mainly due to malnutrition and disease but also because of accidents. Adult life was also not without risk. Even in peacetime, most people carried a knife or club if they went out after dark or any distance from home. The war heightened these everyday anxieties. People were afraid to travel, send messages or goods in case they were robbed. The increased uncertainty violated the familiar. Routine activities like going to church or synagogue might become dangerous, or even impossible. Sister Junius notes how the bells no longer rang out at the times of Catholic services but at a different hour to summon the Protestants during the Swedish occupation of Bamberg.
Witchcraft
The wider social and environmental problems of the later sixteenth century encouraged millennial and apocalyptical beliefs. The deteriorating conditions tipped the balance between those who saw difficulties as a test of faith and those who sought more immediate scapegoats. The result was a revival and intensification of witchcraft accusations that peaked during the war. The distinct early modern concept of witchcraft originated in the 1480s when existing notions of evil black magic were transformed into an inverted form of Christianity. Whereas earlier practitioners of magic were thought to act alone using powers acquired through ancient learning or experimentation, witchcraft was a supposedly collective activity involving a pact with the devil.51
The belief waned from the 1520s, but revived after 1600. The first witch ordinance in the electorate of Cologne was issued in 1607, followed by a revised and more extensive one in 1629. That appeared during the peak of accusations that followed the Kipper and Wipper hyperinflation. All three confessions participated, but the Catholic ecclesiastical territories suffered particularly severely. Over three hundred people were executed in Ellwangen around 1611, with fifty more dying in Würzburg in 1616–17. Bamberg was swept by three escalating waves of prosecutions (1612–13, 1616–19, 1626–30) that probably claimed a thousand victims. A similar number perished in the duchy of Westphalia in 1628–31.
Some were the outcome of popular fear, such as cases brought by the inhabitants of the lordship of Wildenberg that resulted in two hundred executions between 1590 and 1653.52 Most were promoted by local officials, especially in Bamberg where prosecutions were instigated by the suffragan bishop Friedrich Förner, whose accession triggered the initial wave in 1612. In all cases, prosecutions were facilitated by the Empire’s wider constitutional crisis that inhibited the Reichskammergericht’s supervision of territorial justice. Special witch courts were established outside the existing judiciary, circumventing the normal controls on the use of torture. Since witchcraft was allegedly a communal activity, those accused were tortured to reveal the other members of their coven, rapidly multiplying the numbers of suspects. Victims were not only executed but had their possessions confiscated, adding a material incentive for witch-hunters to continue their work. Förner and his accomplices seized property worth over half a million florins in Bamberg.
Förner’s activities did meet strong local opposition. Around three-quarters of victims were women, several of them were well-connected. Sister Junius’s father, Johannes, the Bamberg mayor, was executed and she was probably sent to the convent for safety, and the Bamberg chancellor, Georg Haan, was executed along with his family after opposing the witch trials. These executions were in defiance of Reichskammergericht mandates to end prosecutions. Förner continued, claiming the victims had already confessed. A special Malefactors’ Hall (Malefizhaus) was built, complete with chapel and torture chambers. Finally, the Reichshofrat intervened, issuing six further mandates and numerous letters of protection for those accused. The Bamberg representative was also pressed on the matter at the 1630 Regensburg electoral congress and the bishop was sent a dire warning to desist and ordered to suspend property confiscation, even if the accused had been found guilty. Supervision was entrusted to another, fortunately still surviving local opponent of the trials who halted further prosecutions. Förner had meanwhile moved his operation to the smaller and less public town of Zeil. The last ten prisoners were found by Swedish troops in November 1631 and released on the condition they swore never to speak of their experiences.53 The dissipation of the ‘witch craze’ around 1631 is certainly no coincidence. The war’s violent intrusion burst the bubble and gave local officials more pressing concerns. It was one of the war’s very few positive effects. Despite the destruction of other assets by soldiers, local inhabitants themselves demolished the hated Malefactors’ Hall in 1634.
Normality
Fear fills the pages of personal testimonies, but it is clear that there were long stretches where, for most people, conflict was either distant, or at least bearable. The sheer length of the war made it an everyday element in the lives of millions. These lives were full of events that had little or no connection to strife. Some diaries barely mention the war or any traumatic experience that might explain its omission. Zacharias von Quetz, tutor to the hereditary prince of Bayreuth from 1622 to 1632, recounts life at a court apparently little disrupted by fighting. He was able to take a holiday to Italy, including a gondola ride in Venice and a visit to Mantua to marvel at the duke’s art and scientific treasures, all in 1629 – the year of the Mantuan crisis.54
Others record attempts to continue life despite the conflict. The Swedish occupation of Bamberg did not stop Junius and her sisters from organizing a nativity scene, complete with crib and four peasant children in their best clothes as Mary, Joseph (with false beard) and two angels. Jesuits brought local children to the convent to sing carols, ‘but today also did not pass without horror’ as a raid by the Forchheim garrison (i.e. Catholics) spread panic.55
Personal misfortune could be due to other, mundane causes. Stephan Behaim from a rich Nuremberg family enjoyed an expensive education at the Latin school and Altdorf University, followed by a stint as trainee at the Reichskammergericht. He squandered this opportunity, wasting his guardian’s money on riotous living until his allowance was cut off. He joined the Swedish army in 1632, but failed to advance and eventually died in Brazil having entered the Dutch West India Company’s service in the hope of better prospects. His relation Hans Jakob also wasted his education at Altdorf, which was cut short because his father could no longer afford to indulge him. He decided to ‘hazard’ his life as a soldier, but had no patience for its hard realities. He later became a lieutenant in the French army, but still expected his father to subsidize a life of wine, women and song that was cut short by a Spanish bullet at the siege of Mardyck.56
Soldiers’ lives were filled with long periods of inactivity, followed by bursts of hectic, often exhausting action. One Imperialist recorded marching for seven weeks without a break during the summer of 1629, then resting two days before moving on to halt for twenty weeks at Lauterbach in Hessen over the winter. He spent the entire winter to May 1631 also in billets. Over the following years, his time in winter quarters ranged up to five months, but just three months of the 1641 campaign saw him involved in eight sieges. In all, he tramped 25,000km from 1625 to 1649. His experience was one of extremes. ‘On Good Friday [1628] we had bread and meat enough, but on holy Easter Sunday we couldn’t get even a mouthful of bread’, while in Baden during 1627, ‘we lay in quarters, guzzling and boozing. It was wonderful.’ Occasionally, soldiers could even afford to be choosy. When his regiment reached untouched northern Germany in 1629 ‘we didn’t want to eat beef any more; we had to have goose, duck or chicken’.57
Fortuna
Sudden changes of fortune became a defining characteristic of the conflict. It engendered a sense of impermanence and the unpredictability of events. Despite the official stress on patience and fortitude, many people clearly lived for the moment, grabbing what opportunities they could. Food reserves and hoarded treasure were at risk from plunderers. As a mobile community without a permanent home, soldiers found it difficult to deposit any riches they might have. General Götz ordered his army to leave its valuables behind in Offenburg when it marched to relieve Breisach. Major von Hagenbach debated with his friend Captain Augustin Fritsch what they should do. Fritsch advised ‘where the head stays, the rest remains as well’, and they both took their accumulated booty with them, only to lose it in the rout at Wittenweier. Fritsch’s loss totalled 5,000 tlr in cash, a sack of silver cutlery, some tapestries, six horses, two servants and a wagon – more than sufficient for a modest man to retire on.58
The precariousness and capriciousness of life were embodied in literature and art as Fortuna, a naked woman balancing on a ball and holding a sail. She was an ambivalent figure, associated both with good luck and sin. Similar attributes were derived from astrology. Jupiter and Venus symbolized good luck, whereas Saturn and Mars were considered ‘bad’ planets, held responsible for the comet of 1618 that had been widely regarded as an ill-omen (and confirmed by what followed). Soldiers were frequently referred to as ‘Mars’ children’. The term ‘soldier of fortune’ had connotations of boldness and enterprise, but was primarily associated with greed and thus condemned for placing greater value on earthly success than on true Christian spirituality.
COMMEMORATION
Peace Celebrations
The literary and artistic critique of fortune chimed with the broader interpretation of the war as divine punishment. This was expressed in sermons and proclamations throughout the conflict and was re-emphasized during the official celebrations of the peace. The Westphalian congress raised expectations of peace. Daniel von Campen, a district official in Brunswick, built the new village of Friedenswunsch (Desire for Peace) in 1646 on the edge of the former settlement of Ildehausen that had been burned to the ground by the Imperialists twenty years earlier.59 Many were not convinced the peace would last after 1648. The Swedes scheduled public celebrations in the areas they occupied for New Year 1649, but most communities waited until 1650 when demobilization and the return of refugees raised confidence.
Festivities were held in over 200 locations across Europe, 180 of them in the Empire, underscoring the Central European character of the war, especially as the Spanish-Dutch Peace of Münster was celebrated in only Brussels, Antwerp and six Dutch towns. These celebrations provide a valuable insight into how the survivors regarded the war and tried to come to terms with their experience. By examining how these events were transformed into annual commemorative ceremonies, we can trace the passage of the conflict into collective memory.
The celebration of peace resembled that of victory in being instigated and organized by the authorities. The events followed a common format, starting with the tolling of the church bells to summon the inhabitants. Those of the city of Cologne rang for an hour to celebrate the major imperial victories. The population then gathered for a service of thanksgiving, generally processing through their town beforehand. Having withstood the Swedes throughout 1633, the Forchheim garrison celebrated the enemy’s evacuation of the surrounding area by firing all their cannon and playing trumpets and kettledrums.60 Martial noise was an integral part of the peace celebrations too.
Peace celebrations were relatively muted in Catholic areas, suggesting that many regarded the war as a defeat. Militants especially felt they had been cheated of victory, having beaten the Protestants both by 1629 and again by 1634, only to be forced to concede their demands by foreign invasion. Bishop Wartenberg stayed away from the relatively low-key festivities accompanying the signing ceremony in Münster in October 1648. Nonetheless, Catholics generally welcomed the peace, and major Catholic rulers had much to celebrate. Bavaria celebrated with a Te Deum in the principal church, a special mass and a procession through Munich led by the Jesuits accompanied by the obligatory gun salutes. Similar events are recorded for Cologne, Salzburg, Vienna, Prague and other Habsburg towns. Those in Prague were especially important as they took place in the city where the war had started. The inhabitants’ heroic resistance against the Swedish siege of 1648 was swiftly woven into a myth of Catholic and dynastic loyalty to smother the earlier stigma of rebellion. St Barbara, the patron saint of Catholic artillerymen, was popularly believed to have saved the St Henry Church by catching a Swedish grenade during the bombardment. The grateful emperor richly rewarded the city councillors, who were ennobled along with students who had helped to block the Charles Bridge and save the New Town. The city received a new charter in 1649 giving it a privileged place in the Bohemian diet.61
Catholic celebrations centred on the mass which was traditionally used for thanksgiving. The Protestants’ rejection of the mass obliged them to stage their events somewhat differently. They drew on the Reformation jubilees of 1617 and 1630, as well as the days of prayer and penance that had been observed since 1532 during imperial campaigns against the Turks and which were revived after 1618. Unlike with the Reformation jubilees, however, electoral Saxony did not provide coordination across Lutheran Germany, leaving it open to other territories to organize their own events. Nonetheless, these proved very similar and the Saxons used both jubilees as templates for their own ceremonies, even recycling some of the earlier sermons.
Celebration focused attention on the relative role of God and people in the war. Dynasticism assumed a more prominent place than in the Reformation jubilees. The Saxon celebrations in 1650 were held on the electress’s name day, not the anniversary of the peace treaties. Peace was presented as a gift from both God and the authorities. Congregations were asked to pray for the welfare of the dynasty and of the Protestant imperial Estates in general as the guarantors of tranquillity. Members of the Fruitful Society contributed to the events in Coburg and Weimar that contrasted the horrors of war with Concordia, the baroque ideal of mutual understanding that at least contained the potential to reach across confessional boundaries. Numerous broadsheets appeared across the Empire presenting it as a common, imperial peace: the female figure of Germania was shown marrying ‘Peace’.62
The theological content followed the pattern established in the days of prayer and penance that had also been used in times of natural disaster. Celebrations took place over one or two days, beginning with prayers and sermons to set the appropriate tone and to inculcate the official interpretation of the war as divine punishment. War, like flood and fire, was thus not ‘natural’, but a product of divine will. Catholic sermons delivered a similar message, and had also used regular days of prayer to ward off evil during the conflict.63 Lutherans added a second element – the conflict as a test of faith, equating enemy occupation with the Babylonian Captivity of the Israelites. Pastors also drew on the Book of Revelation, arguing that God had entrusted his sword to the evil-minded to wreak punishment, but could sheath it again if the population displayed true faith. The length of the war was used to argue how easy it was to stray from the proper path. The population were encouraged to redouble their efforts to lead morally upright, thrifty and productive lives to retain divine favour. The emphasis on future good behaviour was reflected in the prominent place given to school children in the Protestant processions. Peace was to be celebrated as a God-given chance for Lutherans to prove themselves worthy of His grace and to show the misguided Catholics the true path to salvation by their good example. Though distinctly Lutheran, the emphasis on sin also lessened the confessional polemic. The war became a product of the population’s own failings, not the aggression of their Catholic neighbours. Such a message not only suited the need for harmony within the Empire, but fitted the social-disciplining agenda of post-war reconstruction. Confessional antagonism was being sublimated by obedience to the authorities. Rulers were able to dodge responsibility for the war, while appearing instrumental in mitigating its worst effects and assisting in hastening the peace.
The stress on penitence and sobriety sat uneasily with the more secular elements of the festivities like feasting, drinking and lavish public displays, including the first recorded use of fireworks in Hamburg’s celebrations of 1650. Concussion from the 370-gun salute during Nuremberg’s ceremony caused 3,000 fl. worth of damage to the city walls. The discrepancy was not lost on poets, novelists and broadsheet writers who parodied the excessive praise of peace and unrealistic expectations of a post-war paradise.
The presence of such satire casts doubt on claims that religion helped people cope with the conflict, and helped avoid widespread protest or the collapse of the social order.64 Many people certainly put their faith in God. Four-year-old Johanna Petersen admonished her elder sister for not thanking God that they had not been spotted escaping their manor house during a raid.65 Such evidence requires caution: Petersen was later prominent in Lutheran Pietism, and clearly was very devout.
A more representative example is the bewilderment felt by the inhabitants of Rottweil during the French siege of November 1643.66 An all-night prayer vigil was held to seek divine assistance to save the city. Many people thought they saw the statue of the Madonna change colour and move her eyes heavenwards. Even those who later confessed to seeing nothing still believed the miracle happened, attributing an apparent failure to notice it to their poor eyesight, or to their having been at the back of the church. Yet, the event did not stiffen the defenders’ resolve and the city surrendered a week later. Later, especially in centenary celebrations staged by the Jesuits, the church tried to link the miracle to the imperial victory of Tuttlingen and Rottweil’s subsequent recapture. Those who were in the church were far less certain. For some, it reinforced their conviction that Catholicism was the sole, true faith. Others were terrified, interpreting the statue’s apparent loss of colour as a foreboding of death. Some Lutherans in the city also believed the statue had moved, despite their own church’s condemnation of such beliefs.
At its height in the 1630s, the war clearly threatened the established order. A decade later the situation was not as bad in many areas, dampening any protest. The war nonetheless left people traumatized. Though patchy, there is evidence of what today would be called post-traumatic stress disorder. Survivors experienced flashbacks, nightmares, mood swings and other psychological problems.67 The widespread yearning for stability undoubtedly encouraged acceptance of the official disciplinary agenda after 1648.
Commemoration
The protracted peace implementation helped transform one-off celebration into annual commemoration. Many areas already marked the signing of the peace with thanksgiving services at the end of 1648. Additional events followed in 1649 with the ratification of the treaty and the start of the troop withdrawals, while the conclusion of the Nuremberg congress in 1650 prompted further, generally more elaborate festivities. Saxony chose not to repeat these, concentrating instead on renewed Reformation anniversaries: the centenary of the Peace of Augsburg in 1656, and the 110th anniversary of Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses in 1667. Other Lutheran territories chose to incorporate these with commemoration of Westphalia. Elsewhere, commemoration also continued by combining it with other events; in Hohenlohe, the Westphalian anniversary was moved to combine with the harvest festival.
This transition to annual commemoration had multiple causes. One was the territorial state’s continuing agenda of discipline and obedience, for which commemoration was well-suited. Another was the desire to reinforce communal solidarity. The latter was especially marked in bi-confessional Augsburg where the Protestant citizens celebrated each 8 August – a date with no connection to the peace but which had been the day in 1629 when the Lutheran pastors had been expelled under the Restitution Edict. Their festivities carefully avoided any reference to the Catholics, as if their city were entirely Lutheran.
Commemoration kept the war in popular consciousness. It peaked in the centenary year of 1748 that also saw the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle that concluded the eight-year struggle of the War of the Austrian Succession. Leutkirch, for instance, staged two weeks of celebrations that included the usual sermons, processions and fireworks, but also an examination for school children to test their knowledge of the Westphalian settlement. Participants received a commemorative coin. The Hamburg festivities were graced by a cantata specially composed by Telemann. Interest waned thereafter, but Coburg continued to mark the anniversary until 1843, while 8 August is still a public holiday in Augsburg.
What was being commemorated also changed over time. The Peace of Westphalia became woven into the Protestant narrative of German history. The IPO and IPM were still fundamental charters of the Empire at their centenary. A century later the Empire had gone and the peace was celebrated as completing the Reformation by securing Protestant political rights. Festivities assumed an increasingly folkloric character. Augsburg children no longer processed dressed as the emperor, electors and imperial eagles, but disguised as ‘Swedish’ soldiers. Far more than religion, the passage of time overcame the trauma of the conflict and allowed it to pass into history.
Most of Europe has had the good fortune of almost a lifetime of peace since 1945, spared the horrors of foreign invasion, violence and destruction. The succession of European conflicts through the seventeenth into the twentieth century sustained an oral folk tradition from the Thirty Years War that has now faded. In contrast to the historicization of the war through commemorative pageantry, folk tales ‘pre-remembered’ incidents from the war for future use.68 Stories of atrocities and harm to civilians offered advice on possible responses should these circumstances reoccur. The basic tales could be transposed to other communities and times. Stories involving the Swedes or Croats from the Thirty Years War became mixed with Russian Cossacks from the Napoleonic period or even soldiers from the home country. These tales persisted in parts of Europe into the later twentieth century. Though they are now largely silent, the voices from the seventeenth century still speak to us from the innumerable texts and images we are fortunate to possess. They offer a warning of the dangers of entrusting power to those who feel summoned by God to war, or feel that their sense of justice and order is the only one valid.
1. The Defenestration of Prague: Martinitz disappears head-first out of one window, while Slavata is bundled out of the other. The terrified Fabricius, seized in the centre of the room, will be next.
2. The ‘Persecution of Christians’. This Protestant German broadsheet from 1622 links hostility towards Catholics with xenophobia through its depiction of the ‘Spanish Inquisition’.
3. The imperial city of Nördlingen, a typical example from Merian’s Topographia Germaniae.
4. The village of Friedenswunsch in the duchy of Wolfenbüttel. The manor house (right), church (centre) and boundary fence are clearly visible.
5. The coat of arms of the imperial city of Buchhorn over the door of its district office at Eriskirch (seep. 19).
6. Rudolf II as he wished to appear: detail from his imperial crown of 1602.
7. Ferdinand II. A good likeness despite the idealized engraving which shows him wearing the Order of the Golden Fleece.
8. Matthias and his wife Anna in an early example of Habsburg baroque piety.
9. Musketeers from a Swiss drill manual of 1644. Most soldiers during the second half of the war would have looked like these.
10. Mounted arquebusiers perform a caracole from a Spanish drill book of 1630.
11. Archduchess Isabella with her country retreat of Mariemont in the background.
12. Gustavus Adolphus sketched during his invasion of Germany.
13. Axel Oxenstierna, Sweden’s great chancellor.
14. Maximilian of Bavaria strikes a martial pose.
15. Frederick V painted as king of Bohemia, 1619.
16. Christian I of Anhalt, a key figure in widening the war.
17. Probably the most accurate portrait of Tilly, painted by an anonymous artist around the time of his victory at White Mountain.
18. Execution of the Bohemian rebels by the Prague Blood Court, 1621. Note the regiment of infantry drawn up to overawe the onlookers.
19. The ‘Mad Halberstädter’, Christian of Brunswick, wearing armour blackened to prevent rust.
20. The Battle of Stadtlohn, 1623. Christian’s army disintegrates as Tilly attacks from the right of the picture.
21. The Dutch town of Breda (centre) surrounded by Spanish entrenchments during Spinola’s costly siege of 1624–5.
22. Elector Johann Georg of Saxony joins Gustavus (foreground) in this Protestant propaganda print of 1631.
23. Wallenstein depicted as imperial generalissimo in 1626.
24. Gustavus receives the sword of divine justice as his troops disembark in Pomerania. Protestant print from 1630.
25. Gustavus at Lützen: the king is about to meet his death as an imperial musketeer fires the first of several fatal shots.
26. Wallenstein’s letter stained in Pappenheim’s blood (seep. 510).
27. Queen Christina of Sweden, aged eight.
28. The Eger Bloodbath, 1634. Captain Deveroux runs Wallenstein through with a partisan.
29. Ferdinand III, a more pragmatic and ultimately more successful emperor than his father.
30. This rather unflattering portrait of Amalia Elisabeth of Hessen-Kassel nonetheless conveys something of her steely determination.
31. Dutch boats rescuing drowning Spanish sailors at the Battle of the Downs, 1639.
32. Maximilian Count Trauttmannsdorff, chief Habsburg negotiator at the Westphalian Congress.
33. Dedication of the Marian Column in Munich, erected to commemorate White Mountain. Singers and musicians perform in the tent to the left.
34. Votive painting commissioned by the six Bavarian cavalrymen shown in the foreground as thanks for having survived the Battle of Allerheim, depicted in the distance.
35. Hans Ulrich Franck’s ‘Memento Mori’.
36. Peasants’ revenge: a cavalryman is waylaid in a forest.
37. Soldiers plunder a village.
38. The flag of Captain Concin’s company of Count Hardegg’s imperial infantry regiment, 1632, showing ‘Fortuna’ balancing on a ball.
39. The Swedish fireworks display celebrating the implementation of the Peace of Westphalia at the Nuremberg congress, 1650. The emperor held his own rival display.
40. Gerhard te Borch’s celebrated depiction of the signing of the Peace of Münster between Spain and the Dutch Republic, 15 May 1648. The artist looks out from the left of the canvas behind the man holding a hat.