The Thirty Years' War

This chapter in the edited volume  A Companion to the Reformation World focusses on the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), which has always occupied a special place in historical memory. It was remembered as the “war of wars” in more than one sense: a war composed of many wars, and one that stood out from all other wars for its extraordinary length. This cumulative and distinctive meaning can be integrated into a typological one: the succession of wars in Europe became so dense that it was perceived at its height as a single war. This “prototype” of early modern “densification of war”, so the author, facilitates the study of the epochal origins of war per se. The chapter explains the Thirty Years' War on two levels: First as a war of religion, whose militancy has become increasingly apparent after a recent discovery and new access to sources; second as a European war of state-building, or rather a German constitutional war. Afterwards, the chapter addresses the recent historiographical attention to the wartime experiences of the populace in this seemingly unending war in order to show how the Peace of Westphalia ultimately managed to solve both the religious and political conflicts.