Published by Jonathan Cape, London, 1956 (first printing 1938).
hardback, 544 pages, $used, ISBN: none listed

The Thirty Years War, which I found in a used book shop, is not a book on the tactics of battles, nor the details of uniforms or weaponry. Instead, it offers an introductory guide to the period, providing a narrative of the political maneuverings of the numerous power brokers during the first half of the 1600s.

No cover, but Large Map (slow: 347K) from inside the cover

The fragmented cacaphony of various German duchies and principalities is enough to test the recall of a photographic memory. The ebb and flow of alliances played out against the backdrop of religious fervor and the constantly shifting loyalties (and paychecks) of mercenary forces, will have your head spinning. Certainly the exploits of King Gustavus, Emperor Ferdinand, Elector Maximilian, Cardinal Richelieu, and King Phillip would be enough to fill a volume apiece, much less adding all the various princes and electors. But it is all packed into one volume.

Yet Wedgewood follows all of this with some elan, at times overwhelming you with information about who was in which camp, but such is the nature of the period. The prose, while it does not sparkle, lopes along at a fair pace, although it is the cornucopia of names that causes you to stop, back up a page or two, and re-read.

The campaigns are placed within the context of the political maneuverings, and while a battle like Breitenfeld rates a page or so, most other minor battles are dealt with in terms of securing real estate for one political reason or another.

Admittedly, I knew very little about the period before I picked up this book. After reading through this, I now understand quite a biot more of the motivations for various military campaigns that took place between 1618 and 1648. This will be a difficult book to find, and I only stumbled across it, but a check of a library may yield results.