Monday, February 14, 2022

Reflection on The Ten Year War: Obamacare and the Unfinished Crusade for Universal Coverage by Jonathan Cohn

     I set out to read The Ten Year War because I wanted to know about what I think must be the biggest political battle of my life. I think the first time I became really aware of politics was around the time when I was 14 or 15 and the Tea Party was emerging. A huge part of that was the opposition to Obamacare, and I remember the weeks and months when videos were constantly coming out of these town hall meetings going crazy over "death panels" and the like. So anyway, this book was just what I was looking for and more. In it, Cohn not only deals with the fight to pass Obamacare, but the decades-long prelude to it and the years of Republican attempts to "repeal and replace" the law after it was passed, which ended in defeat when John McCain gave a "thumbs-down" in July 2017. The book starts with one part about the prior attempts to pass universal healthcare, with extra focus on the Clinton years. Part two is about the legislative fight to pass Obamacare, and then part three is about Republican backlash to the law and attempts to change it.

    There was longstanding feeling in both major parties that the healthcare system as it stood in the 1990's and 2000's was inadequate. Primarily, the issue was that large numbers of people, usually the young and healthy or the poor, did not get healthcare and were not purchasing healthcare through their employers. This led to high rates of uninsured, and the uninsured often went to emergency rooms to get care, causing delays for others. Additionally, high costs of healthcare plagued the system. Hospitals regularly charged exorbitant prices to insurers, who could haggle them down, but also charged them to the uninsured, who could not afford them.

    Cohn identifies one of the critical difficulties with the cost of health insurance in a portion of the book I felt should have been much longer. I was interested to read that, "Back in the 1940s, the federal government had made a critical decision: if an employer provided an employee with insurance, the premiums wouldn't be subject to income taxes. The effect was to make a dollar of health insurance more valuable than a dollar in wages, and over the long run, it helped entrench job-based insurance as the primary source of coverage for working-age Americans. But the exception (or exclusion, as it was officially called) gave both workers and employers incentive to devote more money to healthcare--incentive that, most economists agreed, discouraged cost consciousness in healthcare, leading to more spending, eventually leading to higher costs for everybody." So there it is. That's why healthcare costs more in the United States than anywhere else on Earth. But that's not the problem Democrats tried to solve.

    Republicans, on the other hand, were not really dedicating much serious intellectual effort towards fixing the healthcare system. You had some proposals, but by the 90's, Republicans were more focused on stopping Democrats' changes to healthcare. For example, in 1993, John Chaffee, a Republican Senator, authored a bill that was supported by other Republicans that would have expanded healthcare coverage through an individual mandate. Clinton’s, on the other hand, used payroll taxes on employers to fund increased coverage. There was plenty of room for compromise, but as the overall political environment became more polarized and toxic in the 1990's, neither side could compromise. In 1994, the Republican Revolution made Newt Gingrich the Speaker of the House, and he fought the Clinton plan until it was just a smaller expansion of government-run healthcare for children, CHIP.

    After the failure of the Clinton effort, which the book details a lot more than I do, Democrats were not ready to give up. Trying to expand cheap health insurance had been a major goal of the party since the 1940s and 50s. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) pushed candidates hard in 2004 to come up with plans to increase healthcare coverage and lower the cost of insurance. One great irony is that a Republican governor, Mitt Romney, achieved the biggest success in healthcare for the time. In Massachusetts, where he governed with Democratic legislators, Romney had passed a prototype for what would become Obamacare. While Romneycare didn't raise taxes on individuals, it was fundamentally similar to Obamacare. And the reason it didn't raise taxes on individuals is because it got extra money from the federal government to finance the expansion. Critically, the state used an individual mandate, which Romney had said would be a model for the nation, a line that he repudiated in 2011 to clarify that the states should try it on their own. I think that a big unanswered question is that if McCain won in 2008, could Obamacare still happen? It seems to me like Republicans were on their way to a version of Romneycare that would have been fundamentally similar to Obamacare. It is pretty tragic to think of how much time and energy was wasted fighting on Obamacare when in retrospect the disagreements on it are so slight. 

    By the 2008 race, healthcare was a top issue for Democrats. Hillary Clinton had been dedicated to the issue since the 1990s, and Obama adopted it as well. Something that surprised me is how popular in 2008 the individual mandate was as a plan among Democratic elites. It seems like most experts considered that to be the only way to sell the idea to insurance companies and to lower the overall cost of healthcare, because by forcing healthy people to buy healthcare, costs would be lower for everyone else. I guess my surprise is just at how little it was discussed how unpopular that would be, and it seems like Democrats weren't anticipating the level of pushback they would get on that mandate. 

    When Obama became president, then-vice president Joe Biden urged him not to tackle healthcare. The gist of his argument was that it would tank his presidency and be a waste of time for very little gain, and in retrospect it seems like he wasn't entirely wrong. But Obama decided to go for it anyway. Obama also decided not to try to pass the bill through budget reconciliation, which would have gotten around the filibuster and passed the bill with 51 votes rather than the 60 that had become necessary in the modern Senate. The belief at the time was that bipartisan reform would be easier to sustain politically and that reconciliation would alienate more moderate Democrats, who wanted bipartisan cover. I would say that in retrospect this was an enormous mistake for the Democrats. They probably couldn't have known the extent of it then, but there was no way this was going to be bipartisan.

    One critical aspect of Obamacare was the Medicaid expansion, which provides health insurance to those with low incomes. In June 2009, the House Democrats proposed that everyone with an income of 133% of the poverty line would qualify for Medicaid, and that those with higher incomes could buy insurance policies through exchanges. The exchanges idea was based on the plan that Mitt Romney had backed as Governor of Massachusetts, that created an exchange called the Massachusetts Connector. To finance the Medicaid expansion, House leaders proposed increasing taxes on the wealthy and cutting Medicare payments for some industry sectors. The proposal also included an individual mandate, an idea that Obama had rejected during the primaries but had signaled that he would support it in April. Moderate Democrats negotiated to weaken the public option, which would have allowed all Americans to buy into Medicare. Now, those who bought into Medicare would still be able to do so through the public option, but Medicare would have to negotiate prices for reimbursements just like a private insurance plan, making it a more expensive choice. 

    The Democrats knew that they couldn't just craft a good bill. That was only half the work. They needed to draft something that would garner institutional support. In the 1990s, the American Medical Association and health insurance lobbying groups had fought the Clinton administration hard and killed their legislation. But this time, Democrats got pharmaceutical companies to lobby for the bill.

    However, Democrats faced unprecedented opposition from Republicans that was greater than anything they imagined. Republican leaders called the plan a government takeover and suggested that the Democrats' plan would centralize healthcare like in Canada and Europe. Republicans then went on to make false claims that those countries were rationing care. In June, the first conservative invented the ideal of "death panels," when analyst Elizabeth McCaughey alleged that the legislation would make it mandatory for people in Medicare to have a required counseling session to tell them how to end their life sooner. In actuality, the bill only provided for reimbursement to doctors for time spent advising patients who wanted to write advance directives for their end-of-life care. Then, a few weeks later, Sarah Palin coined the actual term "death panel" in a Facebook post.

    Then, conservative groups formed the Healthcare Freedom Coalition, which financed advertisements against Obamacare and bussed people to events. They distributed scripts to individuals that trained them how to succeed at a town hall meeting by spreading out in the front half of the room, and to challenge the speaker's arguments early. Their lobbying and activism were extremely effective, and convinced moderate Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter to announce that he would switch parties, taking the Democratic majority from 60 to 59 in the Senate. The Democrats then seated Al Franken in Minnesota, but this left them with a bare 60 vote majority to pass the bill with every Democrat vote.  In April 2009, 51% approved Obama's handling of healthcare with 26% disapproving, but by July, only 42% approved while 46% disapproved. 

    At this point, Obama decided to assert more control over the process to pressure Senator Max Baucus, who had led the effort so far, to move his bill forward. Meanwhile, in the House, Democrats passed their bill with 220 votes, gaining just one Republican. In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid tried to include a public option in the bill, but was forced to compromise with moderates on creating the public option to buy into Medicare only for those 55 and over. But then, when agreement was allegedly reached on the issue in the Senate, Senator Joe Lieberman claimed that there was no agreement the day after Reid had announced it. Reid decided to go ahead without the public option, because he really had no other choice, but progressives were furious. 2004 presidential candidate Howard Dean advocated for passing the bill through budget reconciliation, but Obama and the Democratic leadership disagreed. I would say in retrospect that this was the next big mistake. After seeing how the next 13 years of American politics played out, it is clear that the Democrats missed a huge opportunity at this junction by trying to pass a bipartisan bill. In reality, the bill would not be bipartisan, and there would be no major bipartisan legislation for years to come, at least through the time I am writing this. 

    In late 2009, Democrats ran into another issue with a moderate in the party, and this time it was Ben Nelson, Senator from Nebraska. Nelson said he opposed Medicaid expansion because it would force states to spend more money on the program. This was true, but the program had the federal government paying the vast majority of the costs. Nelson preferred to make the Medicaid expansion optional, and that in states that did not expand, the federal government would subsidize private insurance for the poor. The problem is that this would cost much more money, because subsidizing individuals did not have the economy of scale that Medicaid expansion would offer. In the end, Reid was able to make a deal with Nelson known as the "Cornhusker Kickback," covering all the expenses of Nebraska's Medicaid expansion. In the end, expansion would be optional anyway, so Nebraska got to have its cake and eat it too. However, the Cornhusker Kickback was an obvious source of major controversy, and wasn't even popular in Nebraska. That absolutely blows my mind that Nebraskans weren't celebrating the guy who got them a ton of free money from the federal government. 

    In the end, the Democrats succeeded with a 60-39 vote in the Senate in December, with the bill being endorsed by the AARP and the American Medical Association. However, in January, Ted Kennedy, who had died in August 2009, was replaced by a Republican, meaning that Democrats would lose filibuster-proof supermajority before they could reconcile the House and Senate bills. The Democrats were forced to pass the Senate bill as it was in the House, and then passed a second bill through reconciliation that featured smaller changes that the House wanted. In retrospect, and I know I keep saying this, it probably would've been smarter for the Democrats to have just used reconciliation to start with.

    The bill was implemented, but Republicans pledged to repeal it. After efforts to repeal it in the Supreme Court failed (except for making Medicaid expansion optional), Republicans led by Jim DeMint (who had left the Senate to lead the Heritage Foundation) attempted to pass an appropriations bill with zero funding for Medicaid expansion. They were aided by struggles in implementation of Obamacare, the crashing of the exchange website on its first day, and the revelation that not veryone could keep their healthcare plans. I still do not understand what exactly happened with the "if you like your plan, you can keep it" failing. Like, what forced people off plans they liked and why? On the other hand, healthcare was improving. Cohn writes that, "nationwide, clinic visits increased by 26 percent in the six years following the Affordable Care Act's enactment, with dental visits (another service many clinics provided) up 43 percent and behavioral health visits up 57 percent."

    Republicans they could only repeal if they won the presidency, which they did in 2016, inaugurating Donald Trump the next January. Unfortunately for the Republican establishment, Trump was not very interested in Obamacare repeal, and in fact, in the past he had supported universal healthcare, which would mean taking Obamacare further. But eventually he came around. Paul Ryan was now Speaker of the House, and he and Trump pledged to repeal Obamacare within the first hundred days of the administration, smartly using reconciliation. Although I will note that by this point, everyone understood where we were at in terms of polarization, and the Republicans didn't have 60 seats in the Senate, so reconciliation was the only serious option. They also planned for the repeal law to be delayed by two years to give them time to come up with a replacement.

    At this point, Republicans faced a huge problem: they were finding out that their voters opposed the "Obama" part of Obamacare, and not the substance of the law. I remember this was a huge part of the discourse at the time. If you polled people on Obamacare, they disapproved. But if you polled people on the individual provisions of Obamacare, they supported them all except for maybe the individual mandate. Now, the House was in the hands of Paul Ryan, who was zealously trying to reduce the size of government, but he faced a political base that didn't want to lose the benefits Obamacare had given them. 

    The Republican plan for replacement of Obamacare called for ending protection of those with preexisting conditions and replacing it with "continuous coverage," meaning a continuation of the Obama policy (basically grandfathering it in) unless it lapsed. It also called for creating high-risk pools, so basically separating sick and healthy in health insurance and then subsidizing the sick. This sems ironically more socialistic to me than the Democratic plan. Finally, the Republicans called for transforming Medicaid into a block grant, which would likely reduce overall spending for reasons I didn't fully understand. Cohn writes that the disputes Republicans were having sounded much like the problems Democrats had eight years earlier, except that the Democrats had already spent decades studying these issues. Republicans split into factions and were floundering.

    In contrast to the Democratic efforts to pass the bill, Republican efforts to repeal it were highly centralized. Pelosi and Reid had allowed committees to write the ACA, but Ryan and McConnell managed the process much more closely in 2017. When the bill was unveiled, Senators and Representatives didn't know enough about it to answer criticisms. Additionally, since the bill hadn't been workshopped with the industry, the AMA, AARP, and major hospital groups opposed it publicly. Even worse was the score from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) announcing that it estimated twenty-four million people would lose health coverage under the Republican bill. It also shifted subsidies so that some elderly would pay much more while some younger people would pay much less. Despite those obstacles, the bill passed the House by a narrow vote of 217-213. But in the Senate, the bill failed, with McCain famously giving a thumbs down and ending the Republican effort to repeal Obamacare. 

    Looking back, Obama said that he would have pushed single-payer if he could do it all over. He has expressed how the level of resistance from Republicans surprised him. And in retrospect I think that makes a lot of sense. The Democrats went in having already negotiated themselves to a position they thought Republicans would accept, not realizing that there was no position that Republicans would accept. The Democrats went in on hard mode, needing 60 votes in the Senate instead of 50 through reconciliation. And now, no Republicans even care about Obamacare anymore. As soon as the repeal effort ended, the issue disappeared. It is so weird to read about it now, because Obamacare really was the biggest legislative fight of the last twenty years and today you would hardly know it ever happened. I think this is primarily because of changes in the Republican party. By the time Obama was elected, Republicans were losing substance and now they are just running on vibes. Democrats are heading down this path too. It feels like politically the nation is less interested in policy and more interested in condemnations and posting. So, when Republicans tried to repeal Obamacare, the purpose wasn't to actually repeal it, but just to express a position. 

    This leads me to believe that it's no longer worth it in American politics to pursue big plans like this that play out over years. If the Democrats had chosen a more instant policy, they would have been able to at least face the consequences in the 2010 midterms. But in 2010, the law hadn't gone into effect yet. So the system wasn't really working because Democrats were rejected in 2010 because of Obamacare when nobody knew what its impact would be. It feels like a political system where we vote every two years requires us to have short attention spans and pass laws that are impactful in that time. Because we really needed at least five years to evaluate Obamacare. If that had been possible, then people probably wouldn't have been so worked up about it. 

    This book made me want to read something about the debate on the stimulus package used to fight the Great Recession. It loomed in the background here that maybe the real opposition was not to the healthcare law, but to Obama himself (plausible) or to the stimulus law, seen as wasteful government spending. It seems like that's another area where we got the worst of both worlds. In Obamacare, we got acrimonious public debate without a strong policy, only a transitionary, stopgap measure. And in the stimulus bill, we also got the horrible debate and polarization without a stimulus big enough to revive the economy. I read about that in Adam Tooze's book, Crashed, but I would be interested to learn more. I have a feeling that the big trigger for our partisanship may have been more the stimulus than Obamacare's content, because the more I learn about Obamacare, the more I feel like it was a Republican-friendly plan. Or maybe it just seems like that because of how far left the debate on healthcare has shifted in the Democratic party as a result of the failings of Obamacare.

Miscellaneous Facts

  • Harris Wofford is running for Senate in Pennsylvania when he meets an ophthalmologist who says “Americans have a right to a lawyer when they are charged with a crime, so why don’t they have a right to a doctor when they are sick?”
  • Between 2006 and 2008, uninsurance in working-age adults in Massachusetts fell by from between 10 and11 percent to just 4 percent, the lowest in the United States thanks to the Romney health insurance plan, which was a model for Obamacare.
  • In the 2008 campaign, then-Democrat Joe Lieberman, who had been the Democrats' Vice-Presidential nominee eight years earlier, endorsed Republican John McCain. He even spoke at the Republican convention. Democrats had thought of stripping him of his party membership but decided not to at the time. 
  • In 2010, Marco Rubio beat Charlie Crist and Kendrick Meek to become Florida's Senator. In summer 2009, Crist had led Rubio by more than two to one, but then Rubio reversed this in ten months. Crist dropped out and ran as an independent and split the vote with Kendrick Meek, the Democrat, and Rubio won. What I want to know is how the heck did a Republican running as an independent split the vote with a Democrat? Wouldn't you expect him to split with the other Republican?

Thursday, February 10, 2022

Reflection on The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy by Peter Wilson

 Introduction

            Let me just say that while this was an incredible book, I do not recommend it to anyone who unless you are extremely invested in deeply learning about the Thirty Years War. This was a very interesting book, but extremely detailed and I wish I had chosen something half as long. I felt like I was not able to learn as much as I could have because I was just overloaded with so any details it was impossible to keep track of all the characters, the armies, and the places. What follows is my best understanding of the war from the book and a little bit of Wikipedia.

The Legacy of the War

            The Thirty Years War was an unprecedented catastrophe in Germany that would not be matched until the 20th century. I had no idea of this. Wilson writes that Albert Speer, Nazi architect and armaments minister, announced on May 4, 1945, as Germany was laid waste by Allied forces, that “the destruction that has been inflicted on Germany can only be compared to that of the Thirty Years War. The decimation of our people through hunger and deprivation must not be allows to reach the proportion of that epoch.” And for that reason, the Nazis surrendered. Wilson writes that surveys in the 1960s found that Germans listed the Thirty Years War as Germany’s greatest disaster, ahead of the world wars, the Holocaust, and the Bubonic Plague. He writes that Germany was more devastated during the Thirty Years War than any other time in its history, even the calamities of the 20th century.

The Holy Roman Empire and its Organization

            The Holy Roman Empire at the dawn of the Thirty Years War was ruled by Habsburg emperors and 50-60,000 noble families. Most of them were “territorial nobles” who just owned some land under the jurisdiction of lords with imperial fiefs of whom there were 180 lay fiefs and 130 spiritual fiefs. The Habsburgs themselves controlled over 40% of the land in the Empire, governing 7 million of the HRE’s 24 million subjects. This gave them a virtual monopoly over the title of emperor from 1438 until the fall of the empire in 1806, as very few other lords had more than 100,000 subjects.

Questions Unanswered by the Peace of Augsburg

The Peace of Augsburg in 1555 gave lords the right to choose the religion of their lands and laid the legal groundwork for toleration of both Lutheranism and Catholicism. While it was written to be ambiguous, not even using the term “Lutherans,” and speaking in euphemisms, there was no major war for another 63 years after the treaty, with only localized conflicts. However, there was diverging interpretation over three items, known as The Three Dubia.
            First, could there be Protestant bishops ruling fiefs in the HRE? The emperor dodged the issue by calling them administrators instead of bishops, and their rulers were given essentially secular authorities. In the late 16th century, more ecclesiastical territories fell to Protestants, putting pressure on the Catholic majority in the Reichstag, the HRE parliament. The second issue was what to do with ecclesiastical property that was within the jurisdiction of a Lutheran ruler that had not already been incorporated into his territorial church property. It was a point of controversy how much power Lutheran rulers could exercise over those institutions. The third and final issue was what the religious freedoms of the subjects were. This was especially contentious in territories where the lord was Catholic ruling over Lutherans and vice versa. This question also grew more pressing in the late 16th century when Catholic rulers tried to enforce religious conformity to prove loyalty.

The State of Religion Before the Thirty Years War

After the 1555 agreement, Catholicism came under intense pressure in the late 16th century. Nine in ten Lower Austrian nobles embraced Lutheranism as well as 85% of those in Upper Austria, where three in four urban-dwellers and half of the peasants were Protestants as well. 70% of Inner Austria was also Protestant and only five out of 135 Styrian nobles remained Catholic. The Habsburgs, who remained Catholic, were forced to recognize the rights of their lords to be Lutherans and gave them assurances of religious freedom. Nobles were allowed to worship in their own town houses, which became de facto churches. In many regions, nobles paid off Habsburg debts in exchange for assurances of religious freedom, such as the Pacification of Bruck, which seems to come up a lot in the early part of the book. Catholics were a minority in Croatia and Tyrol, but no Protestant religion gained complete acceptance.

As the Reformation went on, everyday life became more divided by the end of the 16th century. You could tell by people’s names: Joseph and Maria were especially popular among Catholics while Calvinists rejected saints’ names and used names from the old testament like Abraham, Sarah, Rachel, and Daniel. Protestant territories spoke Luther’s Saxon dialect of German, while the Jesuits taught High German in the south. Calvinists rejected theater, while Lutherans and Catholics continued to use it in schools. Catholic sermons focused on Madonna and the saints while Lutherans and Calvinists focused on morality. Even calendars were different since Pope Gregory XIII set the date back by ten days on October 15, 1582, making the new year start on January 1 instead of March 25. Of course Protestants were very reticent to follow the new, “Catholic” calendar.

“The Way of War”

            There is a great chapter in this book called “The Way of War,” covering military technology, tactics, and theory at the start of the 17th century. The most interesting assertion Wilson makes is that the pace of technological change had slowed from the mid-sixteenth century onward, as “all the basic weapons had appeared while further developments were restricted by manufacturing problems.” He uses cannons as an example of weak production. Most interestingly, he expounds on how all the major weapons of war for the next several centuries had already been invented in one primitive form or another. Poison gas shells were used in the Netherlands, and firebombs were already invented by heating shot to ignite tightly packed buildings. Shells were using flint and steel detonators and cannons were already being stuffed with antipersonnel round that spread out on being shot, a sort of massive shotgun. Wilson asserts that further developments were just refinements on the basics that were all there, as the modern age of warfare had begun. I won’t go into all the details of this, but they are fascinating.

Prelude to War

A Weakened House of Austria

            Between the 1590s (the start date is controversial) and 1606, the Ottoman Turks and the Hapsburg HRE fought an indecisive conflict that drained both sides’ resources. It was fought mostly in Hungary, then a borderland between the two empires. Although it was a boondoggle for all involved, it had the benefit of weakening the Ottomans such that they would not compete in the Thirty Years War, although the Turks would remain a source of anxiety for Habsburg rulers. On the other hand, the war weakened the Habsburgs so much financially that it may have contributed to the outbreak of the Thirty Years War by weakening the ruling dynasty. The Long Turkish War was the largest mobilization of troops in the HRE in decades, and the soldiers who gained experience as officers became the preeminent generals of the first half of the Thirty Years War. The war did at least manage to end the annual tribute the Habsburgs had been paying to the sultan, so that was nice.

            Wilson writes that “the ensuing ‘Brothers’ Quarrel’ compounded the damage” of the Long Turkish War. Rudolf, the emperor, and his brothers, Matthias, Maximilian, and Albert basically engaged in politicking against each other after the war that resulted in Rudolf abandoning plans to fight the Turks again and relinquishing power in Hungary to Matthias while granting greater autonomy Bohemia (modern Czechia). After the war and the subsequent loss of central power, the Austrian monarch Rudolph II was significantly weakened

The Powerful Spanish Habsburgs

            Meanwhile, the Spanish Habsburgs were at their strongest. They were discovering silver in their possessions in the western hemisphere and conquering territory. However, after the death of Philipp II, the empire was on autopilot under his weaker, less able son, Philipp III. For reference, Philipp II is the uncle of the brothers discussed above and Philipp III is their cousin. Philipp III is also the brother-in-law of Albert, who married II’s daughter and III’s sister. Philipp III also married their cousin from another branch, Margarethe. I know, what the fuck were these guys doing. Anyway, Wilson is a little defensive of Philipp III. He notes that historians have been really critical of him, calling him the laziest ruler Spain has ever had. His own father is quoted as saying, “God, who has given me so many kingdoms, has denied me a son capable of ruling them.” I wonder if Philipp III ever heard him say that. However, Wilson writes that Philipp III attended meetings of council daily from age 15 and retained the final decision on all important matters. It sounds like he was a bad ruler who looked even worse because his father was maybe the greatest ruler in Spanish history.

            However, Spain had a “bleeding ulcer.” Since 1568, the Netherlands, then a possession of the
Spanish crown, had been in revolt. That is ten years before Philipp III was even born. It would end up going on for 80 years, until the end of the Thirty Years War. It drew Spain into continental politics, since the Spanish used a route called the Spanish Road to reach the Netherlands.  The “road” actually started with a journey by sea from Spain’s Mediterranean coast to Genoa, where men marched to Milan, and joined with troops from Spain’s Italian possessions. Then, they crossed through the territories of the Duke of Savoy across the Alps and then along the Rhone River through Franche-Comte. Then they moved north through the Duchy of Lorraine into Luxembourg before arriving in the Low Countries. Sea travel would have been much faster, but the overland route was safer. Wilson writes that Spain sent over 123,000 men this way between 1567 and 1620, as opposed to 17,600 by sea. The map shows Spanish possessions in orange, Austrian possessions in green, and Spanish dependencies in purple.

The Northern Powers

            While Spain and Austria (Austria also controlling most of Germany) were stagnating, Denmark and Sweden were emerging from civil wars and growing stronger, while the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth was entering its golden age.

            Denmark, although newly stable, was still poor. Wilson calls the monarchy of Denmark at the time a “domain state,” meaning that it was heavily reliant on income from crown lands, which made up 67% of revenue in 1608. The economy was based on barter, and taxes were usually paid in food. Some of the food fed the royal court, and the rest was sold at market for cash.  However, Denmark was entering an economic boom at the start of the 17th century. Revenue rose year after year and Christian IV of Denmark, who would rule until 1648 became the third-richest man in Europe, after Duke Maximilian of Bavaria and his own mother, who died in 1632. This made him the unusual creditor-king, allowing him to maintain the loyalty of his courtiers and subjects through debt. This is the opposite of the usual situation in Europe at the time in which monarchs constantly had to borrow from the nobles. However, the wealth of Christian IV was not very stable because it allowed him to engage in foreign adventures that would impoverish the crown, and could not last long enough to sustain a long war, say one that would last for thirty years…

            Upon the death of his father, Charles IX, in 1611, the seventeen-year-old prince Gustavus Adolphus became King of Sweden. The build-up for this guy in the book is amazing. He is supposedly the ideal king, able to converse with peasant and noble alike without losing his royal bearing yet still seeming relatable. He had a loyal chancellor who was his partner and the two were a sort of John and Paul of their time, making Sweden briefly an extremely important player in European affairs. In their first six years, they focused on getting the country out of Charles IX’s conflicts. Then, they turned to domestic reforms. In 1621, when Gustavus Adolphus was just 27, he went to war with Poland (until 1629), finally intervening in Germany in 1630 before dying two years later as a hero of the Protestant side of the Thirty Years War. He would be succeeded by his daughter Christina, later considered one of the most leaned women of her time. But that is all in the future. What is important at the dawn of the Thirty Years War is that Sweden was making military reforms that would last until the 20th century because they were so successful, and his intervention in 1630 will significantly impact the war.

Factionalism in Germany

            Two paths emerged for the Protestants of the Holy Roman Empire. Saxony (northern Germany) led the moderate path, trying to work within the Reichstag to chart a course for Protestants in the Empire. The Palatinate (southwestern Germany on the Rhine) led a more radical path, pushing for the development of a formal group outside the Empire’s power. In the 1580s, most princes of the Empire preferred the Saxon way. The Saxon-aligned princes included Hessen-Kassel, Wurttemberg, Pomerania, Mecklenburg, and the Ernestine line of the house of Wettin, which controlled much of Thuringia in central Germany. Saxony later extended its alliances in 1614 to include Brandenburg in the northeast.

            With great power in the Saxon elector’s hands, things changed when Christian I took power in Saxony after the death of his father. He opened negotiations with the Palatinate in 1590, resulting in the Union of Torgau in 1591, an agreement intended to unite the two political branches of German Protestantism, and, in Christian I’s mind, make the Palatinate more moderate. But the alliance was fragile, and when Christian I died young and unexpectedly, rumors swirled that he was poisoned by the Saxon Lutheran establishment for getting too close to the Calvinist Palatinate. Christian II ascended to the throne at eight years old, and Saxony became politically passive, as his mother aligned the duchy with the Catholic Habsburgs. One privy councilor wrote in 1610, “politically we’re papists.” With Saxony weak, the Palatinate took a starring role in the partnership.

            The Palatinate was led by the elector Frederick IV until his death in 1610 and then by his son, Frederick V until his own death in 1632. However, one critical player was present throughout the reigns of both electors: Christian of Anhalt. A devoted Calvinist, Christian was a close advisor to Frederick IV, who later made him the governor of the Upper Palatinate. In 1608, Christian organized a Protestant demand at the meeting of the Reichstag that Archduke Ferdinand (cousin of Matthias and Rudolf who will later be Emperor) confirm the rights of Protestants under the Peace of Augsburg. Ferdinand countered by agreeing to confirm the rights provided that Protestants return all Catholic church property taken since 1552, which had been done on a case-by-case basis previously. The Saxon moderates went ignored as the Palatinate countered by making a series of demands, including that the Emperor Rudolf should give toleration to Hungarian Protestants (even though they lay outside of the HRE and in Rudolf’s personal lands). No compromise could be had and the Palatines, with their allies, walked out of the meeting. This polarized things further, and now moderate Catholics were ready to follow the leadership of Bavaria (very rich and powerful) and the militant Augsburg as Catholic leaders. Wilson writes that “the 1608 Reichstag was the first to end without the customary final Recess.” Instead, it ended in constitutional paralysis, as Saxony’s faith in the electoral safeguards proved futile. Christian of Anhalt moved quickly, and at Friedrich of Wurttemberg’s funeral in February 1608 (one month after the Reichstag walkout) proposed to his fellow Protestants that they band together to form the Protestant Union. The map shows the territories of the Protestant Union in purple in 1610 (and remember that Saxony did not join).



            Fourteen months later, the Catholics realized they needed to do the same, now known as the Catholic League. Many of the most powerful Catholic electors and dukes did not want to create a sectarian alliance. Mainz preferred to negotiate with Saxony (a dead end). The electors of Trier and Cologne wanted to include Emperor Rudolf, who had no interest in joining, so that was not going to work. Maximilian of Bavaria didn’t want to join any group for the opposite reason—fear that the Habsburgs would join and he would be overshadowed. But by July 1609, Maximilian had changed his mind, and formed an alliance with the bishops of Augsburg, Konstanz, Kempten, Passau, Regensburg, Ellwangen, and Wurzburg. They envisioned a nine-year defense pact dedicated to defending Catholicism. I unfortunately can’t find a map of the Catholic League territories, but I did find a map of the state of religion in 1618 at the dawn of the war. It shows Lutherans, Calvinists, Zwinglians, Hussites (Czechia), and the Catholics. Protestants are in orange/red, Catholics are in purple. Lands controlled by the Muslim Ottomans are in the bottom right also in red for some reason.



The Return of the Brother’s Quarrel

            Power transitioned from Emperor Rudolf II to Emperor Matthias in two stages: first, Matthias stripped his brother of his remaining power, and then Matthias convinced the electors to accept him as successor. How this happened was honestly very confusing in the book and I had to go to Wikipedia:

In November 1600 at Schottwien the Archdukes Matthias, Maximilian and Ferdinand signed an agreement of concerted opposition against the emperor, in 1606 declared Rudolf insane (document dated 25 April), appointed Matthias as the head of the family, and began to oust Rudolf. It was Matthias and not the emperor who had brokered the Peace of Zsitvatorok with the Ottomans and in 1606 had ended the conflict in Hungary by granting freedom of religion in Hungary and guaranteed the right of Transylvanians to elect their own independent princes in the future.

As unrest resurfaced in Hungary and spread into parts of Moravia and Austria, Matthias attempted to utilize this opposition in the power struggle against the emperor. He joined the rebellious Diet of Hungary and the Lower and Upper Austrian estates in Bratislava in 1608 and in Moravia shortly later. In April 1608 Matthias marched on Prague and besieged the city. Although unable to fully win over the Bohemian estates, he forced Rudolf to negotiate and sign a peace treaty in June 1608. This, unsurprisingly, resulted in the redistribution of power. Rudolf kept Bohemia, Silesia and Lusatia and Matthias received Hungary, Austria and Moravia.

Rudolf surrendered the crown in 1611 and was confined to his apartments. At this point, Matthias had Austria, Hungary and Bohemia while his brothers Maximilian and Leopolld controlled some territories. Max had Tirol and Leo was bishop of Strasbourg and Passau. Their cousin, Ferdinand, ruled Inner Austria.

Matthias was finally able to gain the throne in 1612 and found initial successes. The Catholic League dissolved and the Protestant Union was “marginalized and on the verge of collapse” in 1618. The Reichstag met again and was able to recess normally in 1613, and confidence was restored in the Habsburgs. However, the royal family was still relatively weak and vulnerable to attack. While Matthias had once been the more energetic and dynamic brother, it seems that once he gained the throne, he had little energy left to rule. He did not have a head for detail, and critically, he had no heir (the electors actually gave him and his wife a crib as a wedding present). So perhaps it was a good thing that he preferred to spend time with his young wife (half his age), but it meant that he went into the background of imperial politics while his advisor Bishop Klesl entered the foreground. No heir would come.

When the Reichstag met in 1613, the Palatine representative led another walkout when the Protestant demands were not immediately met in full. The remaining delegates managed to grant the Emperor (Matthias) some money for frontier defense and recess to save face. Bishop Klesl decided to delay another meeting of the Reichstag due to the rival alliances. It would not convene again for another 26 years.

Because Matthias could not produce an heir, his succession became a major question, as he was already 55 when he gained the crown. Spain (for a myriad of reasons discussed in the book) decided to back Matthias’ cousin, Ferdinand.  However, it should be noted that there was a sort of phantom candidacy for Maximilian of Bavaria, then the richest man in the world. Christian of Anhalt, the staunch Calvinist even approached the Catholic duke to propose they merge their Protestant and Catholic alliances to kick out the Habsburgs. It didn’t work out. Instead what happened is the Habsburgs cut a deal amongst themselves in which Philipp III of Spain renounced his claims to Bohemia and Hungary, but giving his sons claims over Ferdinand’s daughters, in exchange for a future gift of an Austrian province. However, a secret deal was struck. Ferdinand promised to marry Philipp III’s daughter and to surrender Austrian parts of Alsace to Spain and Ferdinand would be made heir to Matthias and therefore the Holy Roman Empire.

War Erupts in Bohemia

1618

            Wilson writes, “it proved impossible to contain the violence which kept drawing in outsiders. The rapid internationalization of the conflict is deceptive. Europe was not poised for war in 1618, as all the major powers remained afflicted by their own problems. Therein lay the danger. With their rivals apparently preoccupied, each power felt safe to intervene in the Empire. Few intended their involvement to lead to a major war, and no one thought of a conflict lasting thirty years.”

            I would say that one of the biggest things I’ve come to understand from this book is that the Thirty Years War was really a series of different wars that in retrospect make up one pan-European conflict. The Bohemian revolt that sparked it was over in just two years. But things played out like one of my Crusader Kings games, where just as you finish defeating one revolt and are weakened, a rival power declares war on you or another revolt breaks out, taking advantage of your vulnerability.

            The Bohemian revolt was an “aristocratic coup” brought about by a small group of militant Protestants. These militants decided to throw three representatives of the crown out a high window, which was actually the third defenestration of Prague. I don’t know how this keeps happening. But basically, it was a super high fall. Luckily for these guys they all lived, and one of them who kind of slid along a slanted side of the building was able to get them up and to shelter and safety. Protestants claimed that they fell into manure, and Catholics claimed that the Virgin Mary laid out her holy cloak to bring them safely to ground. Who can say what really happened? Most importantly, one of the men who was thrown out the window was made a lord with the dynasty name “Von Hohenfall” (of the high fall) and that is hilarious.

            The Bohemians quickly announced that they no longer recognized the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II as their king, but rather they elected Frederick V, Elector of the Palatinate, and leader of the radical Protestant faction. One really strange thing about all of this is how slow things move. The defenestration happens in May 1618, and from that point, Bohemia is in rebellion. It’s not until August 1619 that the Bohemians name Frederick as their king, and not until 1620 that a decisive battle is fought. It is crazy how slow the empire was moving to stop this. That same month, Gabriel Bethlen, the Calvinist Prince of Transylvania, invades Hungary. So it’s a shitshow. At this point, the Habsburg monarchy is in serious peril. Ferdinand II was in massive debt, and only surviving on subsidies from Spain and the Papacy, so that’s why the response was so slow. This was how Maximilian of Bavaria was able to gain an advantage. Max slowly prepared to revive the Catholic League, ostensibly not led by him, and reactivated it in October 1619 at Ferdinand’s request, providing the legal basis for his future actions. Max used his leverage to get Ferdinand to declare Frederick an outlaw, entitling Emperor Ferdinand to seize his lands, which Max of Bavaria had his eyes on. In an agreement with Maximilian, Ferdinand agreed to give the Palatinate’s elector vote to Bavaria (used to elect emperors). In November 1620, Ferdinand’s troops (led by Tilly and Wallenstein) win a decisive victory against Frederick’s (led by Christian of Anhalt) in the Battle of White Mountain and go on to sack Prague. Frederick V was starting to be called “The Winter King,” as he only ruled for a single winter. He went on the run. In the meantime, Ferdinand negotiates a peace with Bethlen who sees he’s outmatched.

            It seemed like peace was possible in 1621 and that the crisis was over. The Catholic League even voted to reduce its army’s numbers to 15,000. However, Frederick was intransigent. The Saxons mediated talks in which he declared that he would renounce Bohemia and accept Ferdinand as king, but only if Ferdinand confirmed full religious liberty, assume all of Frederick’s Bohemian debts, and refund Palatine military expenses from the rebellion. This was obviously insane, and Ferdinand put the major leaders of the revolt under imperial ban, paving the war to confiscate their lands and titles. Frederick became more inflexible and decided his only hope was to fight on.

The Palatinate Campaign

            At this point I got lost and had no clue what was happening. So I consulted Wikipedia a bit for this part. In 1620, while Catholics and Protestants were fighting at White Mountain outside Prague, the Spanish decided to occupy the Palatinate while Frederick was gone due to its proximity to the Spanish Road. It happens that Frederick was married to the daughter of James I of England, who threatened the Spanish, but they were able to open up negotiations. Sensing Spanish weakness, the Dutch restarted the Eighty Years War in 1621, and offered military support to Frederick to regain his lands, which could be used to threaten the Spanish Road. The Catholics won this stage of the war too. Ferdinand granted Frederick’s titles, lands, electoral vote, and lands to Maximilian of Bavaria, despite opposition from Protestants in the Empire and the Spanish. During this portion of the war, Britain allowed the powers to recruit from them, and ended up sending huge amounts of troops to fight in the war.

            At this point, the Catholics were ascendant. Ferdinand consolidated his hold on Hungary, and confirmed his son, also named Ferdinand, as King of Hungary in 1625. Catholic influence grew again in Hungary. In Bohemia, the Battle of White Mountain was long thought of as a critical turning point in Czech history, ushering in a dark age for the Czechs. When the Czechs broke from the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, a large crowd gathered on White Mountain battlefield to hear speeches declaring triumph over the shame of 1620. But Ferdinand was not in possession of complete victory in 1625. Frederick V still lived, and his rights were the basis of Danish intervention in Saxony that year. The Empire was still fundamentally financially unsound. Ferdinand was now even deeper in debt and soldiers would not disband their regiments until paid.  He used incomes from his hereditary lands and confiscations of revel lands to raise money and even created waiting lists to gain lands, which individuals could trade positions on for cash; but it was fundamentally the personal relationship of Emperor to subjects that sustained the HRE in this time.

            One fundamental issue for the imperials and Catholics was the disunity of their forces. The Catholics, led by Maximilian of Bavaria, were allied to the imperials, led by Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor. However, their armies were not united, with the Catholic League’s forces led by Tilly and the imperial army led by Wallenstein. The two jockeyed for power and disagreed frequently, and Wallenstein tried to resign six times between February and March 1626 due to Tilly’s refusal to join his troops with Wallenstein’s.

            Another problem for the imperials was that re-Catholicization was not going well. In many regions where the church was restored to power, peasants were now revolting. The Bavarians were able to crush revolt in Austria, but Ferdinand was forced to delay re-Catholicization measures until 1631.

Denmark Invades: 1626-1629

            The period of the war from 1626-29 is marked by an invasion of Denmark by King Christian. Christian asserted Frederick’s rights to Bohemia, but lost in his invasion. It appeared that peace was at hand, but the intransigence of Ferdinand and Frederick got in the way once again. Frederick finally offered a compromise, saying he would renounce Bohemia, accept Maximilian as an elector as long as the title reverted to the Palatinate on Maximilian’s death, and submit to imperial authority by proxy to avoid personal humiliation. But Ferdinand demanded that Frederick submit in person, and a deal was not reached.

            After triumph against Denmark, the powers that be in the Empire thought that the war was over. As a result, the electors voted to reduce the size of the imperial army, as Wallenstein was unpopular already and of course they didn’t like to submit to imperial power. Tilly’s Catholic League army remained strong. Ferdinand became less popular when he granted Mecklenberg to Wallenstein in 1628, the same year that he officially make Maximilian a hereditary elector and gave him much of the Palatinate, upsetting the balance of power in the HRE. Ferdinand further upset the balance of power in 1629 by issuing the Edict of Restitution, setting out his intention to return lands taken by Protestants to the church, which angered the Protestants who had remained loyal and made peace harder to reach, as the rebels had more to lose now if they surrendered. Even the Catholic Habsburgs in Spain opposed the Edict, correctly fearing that it would prolong the war. Re-Catholicization was seemingly a doomed effort. Even when the Catholics succeeded in taking back their churches, they lacked enough monks, nuns, and priests to fill them. The quality of Catholic clergy declined in this era.

            Ferdinand was now isolated from his nobility, and when he tried to remove doubts of succession by proposing his son as his heir, the electors refused until other issues were resolved. Instead, they demanded Wallenstein be dismissed, but failed to accomplish this.

Swedish Intervention: 1630-1632

            Gustavus Adolphus was first and foremost a conqueror. Nominally a Protestant, his chancellor, Oxenstierna later admitted that religion was a pretext for war, and Gustavus himself said that if religion were the cause he would have declared war on the pope. Gustavus Adolphus invaded to secure the security of Sweden, strengthening it on the international stage, and to balance the internal politics of Europe by weakening the Habsburgs. Additionally, the Swedish king didn’t mind picking up all the plunder he could along the way. France made a deal to fund Sweden for five years as it ransacked the HRE so long as it did not touch Bavaria, with whom Richelieu had made a deal to defend Maximilian’s title. Britain also backed the Swedes, as they hoped Gustavus would restore Frederick (related to the King of England through marriage) to his seat as an elector.

            The Swedes used a huge among of German manpower, in fact making up the lion’s share of their army. 46% of the Swedes who landed in July 1630 were dead within six months, largely due to diseases that were unfamiliar to them in Scandinavia. Adolphus lost 50,000 men by the end of 1631, at which point his army contained only 13,000 Swedes and Finns, being mostly German. The annual attrition rate was one in five, with most conscripts from Scandinavia living no more than four years after arriving in Germany.

Despite those obstacles, the Swedes were completely dominant on the battlefields of Germany. Gustavus Adolphus was declaring significant chunks of the HRE liberated as he conquered them in his own name and proved unstoppable for a time. With Wallenstein gone, Tilly could not win against the Swedes and was killed in battle in 1632. Wallenstein was restored as master of all the imperial and Catholic armies, and took inspiration from the Swedes as he instilled greater discipline in his men. Finally, Wallenstein confronted Gustavus at the Battle of Lutzen, where the Swedes won the field, but Gustavus Adolphus lay dead with two bullet wounds. No one realized this until after the battle was over, but it would turn the tide of the war. Frederick V would also die in 1632.

The Latter Portion of the War, and the Point at Which I Became Completely Lost

            So at this point in the book, I have to admit that I took a big defeat. I just could not keep up with all the new names and battles and numbers of men fighting at each battle and it was just killing me. I think the author has been good at including the details but man I did not need this many details. The Holy Roman Empire is just so hard to read about and this is a clusterfuck. I will try to write down what I know and what is important.

            When Gustavus Adolphus died, his sex-year-old daughter, Christina, became queen. His widow was distraught at the news of his death and locked herself and her daughter in her room and blackened he windows. When her husband’s embalmed body arrived, she visited it every day, and when they buried him, she dug him up. Eventually, the courtiers seized Christina from her to be queen and banished her mother to Gripsholm island in 1636. The Swedes started looking for a way to end the war.

            However, the Empire was not about to let the Swedes gain peace while they still held power in Southern and Central Germany. They sent Wallenstein after Swedish forces. Wallenstein was successful, and I could not tell you how because I was totally lost at this point. But what I did figure out is that he was too successful, and spawned jealousies and a plot to murder him. Soldiers had grievances and blamed him, and the nobility never liked how he was able to centralize military power. So they killed him. And by the way, in 1636, Emperor Ferdinand II died and was succeeded by his son, Ferdinand III. I will just say that at this point, about 20 years into the war, almost none of the major players from the beginning are left. This was really a generational struggle and it must have been easier to negotiate for peace at this point as all the war-starters were dying. The only major character I see left by the time negotiations begin is Maximilian of Bavaria.

            I will also say that by the 1640’s, this is really not just one war, but several. There are the rebellions in the Empire, the Dutch Revolt against Spain, French invasions of Germany, Spain, and Italy, the Swedish invasion of the Empire, Polish incursions to protect their own interests, and so many more disputes. The war has just become a black hole sucking every polity in Western Europe into its lightless maw.

Peace Negotiations

            Peace negotiations began in 1643 and lasted five years until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. During that time, fighting continued, and the powers sought to win victories in the field so that they could win victories in diplomatic meetings. In fact, the Swedes arrived at the gates of Vienna to threaten the young Emperor Ferdinand III in 1645. Certain disputes and powers were excluded. These included tensions in the Baltic and the Balkans as well as the English Civil War. Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and some minor Italian states were also excluded.

            But despite those exclusions, the congress that occurred in Westphalia became one of the most monumental events of all time. It blew my mind. There were 194 official participants, with 178 coming from within the Holy Roman Empire. The other 16 participants were European states like Spain, Sweden, France, Denmark, and Poland. Wilson writes that this was the first truly secular international gathering, and that makes it hugely significant.

            The powers agreed that all kings had the title of “majesty” and that all royal and electoral amabssadors could be addressed as “excellency,” and could arrive in a six-horse coach. The model of this congress was used for hundreds of years thereafter, at Utrecht (1711-13), Vienna (1814-15), and Paris (1919), until eventually its form was standardized in the United Nations.

            Critical to the people who lived through the war was that the final settlement allowed freedom of religion to princes, but forbid them from imposing their own theological beliefs on their Catholic, Lutheran, or Calvinist subjects. Jews, Muslims, and other heretics were excepted. Religious tolerance was not complete, or anywhere near what it is today, but people were able to return to peace after the war. Some places, like Augsburg, were split down the middle, and practiced segregation based on religion, with guilds, taverns, and pigsties organized by who was Catholic and who was Protestant. But in other places, like the village of Goldenstadt, Catholics and Protestants agreed to share a church. Wilson writes that this should not be considered progress but a return to the pragmatism that existed before the war. Mixed marriages also resumed in many places.

The Political Results

            The Habsburg dynasty was surely weakened after the war. The Spanish Habsburgs were weakened by prolonged conflict, and Spain was now in decline from its early/mid-17th century peak. At the end of the century, the death of an heirless monarch would plunge Europe into the War of Spanish Succession. The Austrian Habsburgs were now the predominant line, but they too were weakened, as the Holy Roman Empire was now more decentralized than before the war. Eventually, the Habsburg rule in Germany would weaken enough that they became a purely Austrian house as the Prussians conquered the Holy Roman territories. That said, the Empire survived another 150 years until Napoleon, the greatest military mind in almost two millennia, dismantled it.

            It seems like the war is mainly a stalemate, but that if anything, resulted in more of a Protestant victory and a Catholic defeat. Wilson writes that the public on all sides was relieved that the war was over above all else, but that Catholic celebrations were more muted than those of the Protestants. Catholics seemed to sense that Protestantism was here to stay and that the role of the Catholic Church would not return to its old predominance.

The Cost of the War

            It is very difficult for experts to say how many died in the Thirty Years War. In fact, it is very difficult for experts to even know how many people were alive in Europe at the time. However, the best estimates suggest that there was a 15 to 20 percent decline in population due to the war. This is immense. For scale, a 15 percent decline would make the Thirty Years War the most destructive conflict in European history. For reference, the Soviets lost 12 percent of their population in World War Two. So even by low estimates, the war was a horrific disaster.

Conclusion

            The Thirty Years War is well-understood as a war of religion, but people should be careful not to take that characterization too far. Religion was certainly the major if not greatest aspect of the war. However, it was not the only aspect by a long shot. Throughout the war, Catholics fought in Protestant armies and Protestants fought in Catholic armies. Wallenstein even promoted several Protestants to high positions in the Imperial army, which discriminated much less than others. No one seemed to care what religion the ordinary soldiers were. And remember that most soldiers in any army were not of the “nationality” that they fought for. The French army contained a minority of Frenchmen, the Swedish army hardly any Swedes and so on.

            All in all, this was a really informative book, and I feel like I just took a class in European history. I do not plan on reading anything like this for a long time. Lol.

 

Miscellaneous Facts:

  • The Jesuits were founded in 1540 with the mission to “extirpate Protestantism” in Wilson’s words. Jesuits were more political than other Catholic priestly orders, and they worked at the top of the political hierarchy, in the belief that winning over the elite of territory would lead to the rest of its society rejoining the church. Protestants have seen this as a papal conspiracy, which it sort of was, since the plan was to put Jesuit advisors in all the courts of Europe and have the elites send their children to Jesuit schools.
  • Not really a “fact” but something I found very interesting was how the author compared Sweden in the 17th century to Prussia in the 18th century. Both were led by dynamic young kings who were military geniuses (Gustavus Adolphus and Frederick the Great), both states used paid professionals as a significant part of their armies, and both were poor states with agrarian economies that leveraged their manpower where they lacked gold.
  • The low countries were the center of the European arms industry at the beginning of the 17th century.
  • Rene Descarte was an observer at the Battle of White Mountain.
  • When Duke Maximilian took control of the Palatinate, he appointed as governor Heinrich von Metternich, an ancestor of the Clement von Metternich who negotiated the “concert of Europe” after the defeat of Napoleon.
  • Wallenstein commissioned Johannes Kepler to do his horoscope in 1608 and 1625. Wallenstein was obsessed with astrology.
  • Rape was rarely prosecuted in the Renaissance/Reformation era. Official papers record rape only five times in Munich in the first half of the 17th century and three times in Frankfurt in between 1562 and 1695.
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