The Thirty Years War - the first great pan-European war, and until the twentieth century the most terrible - ravaged Germany, but myth, propaganda and historical controversy have obscured its true nature. Another perspective is provided by the private diaries, memoirs and chronicles of soldiers and citizens who recorded their own experiences. War at the individual level is discussed and described using these sources, which are extensively quoted in their own words.

The Thirty Years War - the first great pan-European war, and until the twentieth century the most terrible - ravaged Germany, but myth, propaganda and historical controversy have obscured its true nature. Another perspective is provided by the private diaries, memoirs and chronicles of soldiers and citizens who recorded their own experiences. War at the individual level is discussed and described using these sources, which are extensively quoted in their own words.

Albrecht Wallenstein was a legendary military commander and generalissimo of the Habsburg forces, yet was eventually assassinated on the orders of Emperor Ferdinand II. This accessible modern biography of Wallenstein for the English-speaking reader dispels the many historical myths surrounding this central character of the Thirty Years War.

As the 400th anniversary of the outbreak of the Thirty Years War approaches, Geoff Mortimer provides a timely re-assessment of its origins. Drawing on recent research, he challenges the conventional view that the war was almost inevitable, a result either of the inexorable growth of inter-confessional tensions in Germany over the preceding forty years, or of the wider international conflicts between Spain, France and the Dutch. Hence he argues that the Bohemian revolt of 1618 was not, as has often been suggested, merely the spark to the powder keg, but the initial substantive cause of the...