Scotland and the Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648
Scotland and the Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648

Author: Steve Murdoch

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-07-26

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 9004475672

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This volume deals with the entanglement of Scotland in the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), discussing both the diplomatic and military aspects of the conflict that led to Scottish involvement in the heart of the Holy Roman Empire. To the Scots, the war was linked to the fate of the Scottish princess, Elizabeth of Bohemia, rather than the politics of central Europe per se. In three sections, the 12 authors have illuminated the political processes that led to the participation of as many as 50,000 Scottish troops in the war. The official alliances of the Stuart regime, the independent diplomacy of the Scottish Parliament and the actions of numerous well placed individuals at various European courts are all shown to have had a bearing on this important episode of European history.

The Age of Wars of Religion, 1000-1650
The Age of Wars of Religion, 1000-1650

Author: Cathal J. Nolan

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2006-04-30

Total Pages: 1232

ISBN-13: 0313086745

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The Age of Wars of Religion saw navies, armies, armed merchant companies, and mercenaries battle one another and local potentates in many lands and along numerous shores. Wars of religion were fought in and between all the major religions and civilizations, from Europe to China, in Africa, and in the isolated Americas, mixing motives of knightly idealism, mercenary greed, and competing claims of divine sanction. This unparalleled work traces the extraordinary upheavals of the period in military technology, competing theologies, and civilizational change that were brought about by, or impinged upon, military conflict. It offers nearly 2,000 discrete but cross-referenced entries on cultural, military, religious and political history, as well as geography, biography, and military literature. Close to 2,000 entries offer detailed information on the major events, places, battles, figures, technologies, and ideas one must know to begin to make sense of the past six centuries of global conflicts. Though especially ferocious and intense, the Wars of Reformation and Counter-Reformation fought by Europeans from the 15th through 17th centuries were hardly unique in world or military history. The Byzantine Empire, bastion of Christian Orthodoxy, staggered to the tortuous end of its long conflict with the Ottoman Empire, the Great Power of the Sunni Muslim world. The Ottomans, in turn, were still engaged in an equally ancient intra-Muslim war, between Sunnis and Shi'ites. In India, the Hindu Rajputs and Marathas, and also the Sikhs, organized armies around religious communities to throw off the Muslim Yoke (Mughul Empire), and also fought against Christian invaders from Europe. As for the isolated Americas, ideas of divine kingship sustained by powerful priesthoods and religious warfare also prevailed, as exemplified by the Inca and Aztec empires.

Peacemaking in Early Modern Europe
Peacemaking in Early Modern Europe

Author: Derek Croxton

Publisher:

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13:

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In 1648, after five years of negotiations. France signed the Peace of Westphalia. The treaties not only ended a long war with the Holy Roman Empire, but also transferred large parts of Alsace and Lorraine to France. This book is the first full-length study of the French negotiating position: who formulated it, why, and how it changed over time.

The Anglo-Portuguese Alliance and the English Merchants in Portugal 1654–1810
The Anglo-Portuguese Alliance and the English Merchants in Portugal 1654–1810

Author: L.M.E. Shaw

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 1351894919

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The alliance made between Cromwell and John IV in 1654, cemented by the Articles of Marriage between Charles II and Catherine of Braganza in 1661 lasted for 156 years. Together, they provided a guarantee of Portugal’s independence and formed a framework for an expansion of trade between England, Portugal and its overseas possessions. The Inquisition had ruined the ’New Christians’ (Sephardic Jews) who had been Portugal’s principal middlemen, enabling the English merchants to play a dominant role in that expansion once they had overcome their French and Dutch rivals. They held that position until Pombal succeeded by 1770 in breaking the hold which foreigners had established over Portuguese commerce. This book is the result of many years of research into Portuguese and British archival sources. It interweaves politics, economics, religion and commerce to portray what life was like for English merchants in Portugal in the period.

The Thirty Years War
The Thirty Years War

Author: Peter H. Wilson

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2019-08-20

Total Pages: 1038

ISBN-13: 067424625X

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A deadly continental struggle, the Thirty Years War devastated seventeenth-century Europe, killing nearly a quarter of all Germans and laying waste to towns and countryside alike. Peter Wilson offers the first new history in a generation of a horrifying conflict that transformed the map of the modern world. When defiant Bohemians tossed the Habsburg emperor’s envoys from the castle windows in Prague in 1618, the Holy Roman Empire struck back with a vengeance. Bohemia was ravaged by mercenary troops in the first battle of a conflagration that would engulf Europe from Spain to Sweden. The sweeping narrative encompasses dramatic events and unforgettable individuals—the sack of Magdeburg; the Dutch revolt; the Swedish militant king Gustavus Adolphus; the imperial generals, opportunistic Wallenstein and pious Tilly; and crafty diplomat Cardinal Richelieu. In a major reassessment, Wilson argues that religion was not the catalyst, but one element in a lethal stew of political, social, and dynastic forces that fed the conflict. By war’s end a recognizably modern Europe had been created, but at what price? The Thirty Years War condemned the Germans to two centuries of internal division and international impotence and became a benchmark of brutality for centuries. As late as the 1960s, Germans placed it ahead of both world wars and the Black Death as their country’s greatest disaster. An understanding of the Thirty Years War is essential to comprehending modern European history. Wilson’s masterful book will stand as the definitive account of this epic conflict. For a map of Central Europe in 1618, referenced on page XVI, please visit this book’s page on the Harvard University Press website.

The Winter King
The Winter King

Author: Brennan C. Pursell

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-05-15

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 135188042X

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Elector Palatinate Frederick V - the Winter King - would be an insignificant figure in the history of Europe were it not for the tremendous conflagration that he helped to ignite. Frederick’s conflict with Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II over the throne of Bohemia plunged Europe into thirty years of savage violence, fiery devastation, and terrible privation during the first half of the seventeenth century. More than simply a biographical study of Frederick, The Winter King provides a fresh and compelling study into the causes of the Thirty Years’ War. Examining the early stages of the war through the locus of Frederick, it reconciles the forces of confession, conscience and constitutionalism that affected Frederick’s decision making at critical junctures throughout the crisis. By placing constitutionalism rather than religion at the centre of events, it offers a subtle yet convincing new account of the conflict. Drawing on political and personal correspondence, backed up with a wealth of archival and secondary sources, Dr Pursell presents Frederick’s choices and alternatives and interprets his words and responses to them. Considering the war from Frederick’s perspective he argues convincingly that the war is best understood not simply as a struggle between Protestant and Catholic powers, but rather as an extended constitutional conflict, entwining religious and political factors, fought within the Holy Roman Empire.