BACKGROUND

In the late 1400's, Feudal Warfare had reached its fullest expression (The War of the Roses and the Hundred Years War). Individual combat, the warrior ethic, and warfare being a privilege of class was being suplanted be more modern methods. Swiss infantry, Swiss imitators and gunpowder was making itself felt, spelling doom for knightly combat. The Swiss system was based on brute force (mass) and the overthrowing of class privilege in warfare. Even the names for Swiss tactical units allude to the idea of mass. (Vorhut = vanguard. Gewaltshaufen = powermass. Nachut = Rearguard).

At the start of the 17th Centuery, Marcie of Orange was trying to develop a method of warfare, based on Roman Warfare, that would be able to withstand the Spanish Tercio and save the Dutch Republic. Gustavus Adolphus refined start and brought the system to full flower. The Swedish system became the new standard for musket and Pike warfare. Gunpowder weapons were cheaper and required less training than the weapons they replaced. (The crossbow in the 1520's, the longbow in the 1560's, and the lance by 1600.) Crude artillery had already overthrown the castles and was being used on the battlefiled with mixed sucess.

Modern forts, the Trace Italianne, were feverishly being built that could be made proof against artillery until the 1800's. The best generals were trying to utilize combined arms for battlefield victories. Gustavus's artillery and infantry advances completed the balance between infantry, artillery, and cavalry. Napoleanic infantry is more flexible, the cavalry is more disciplined, the artillery is more deadly BUT the same rock/paper/scissors tactical decisions are being made on the battlefields from the 1630's on. The Thirty Years War is were the competing systems were submitted to Mars judgement.

DEEP BACKGROUND

16th century Central Europe

The rise of Lutheranism tore at the fabric of European culture. Charles V, the Emperor and leader of the entire Hapsburg dynasty strove mightily against the problems that beset his rule, only one of which was the Lutheran issue in Germany. The commitments were too great even for his genius and empire.

Faced with economic and military exhaustion, Charles formulated a truce that became know as 'The Confession of Augsburg'. It permitted the Lutheran confession and outlawed secularzation of church property, i.e. the princes of Germany could seize church wealth. Without this agreement the Holy Roman Empire would have been destroyed. Charles then retired brokenhearted and split the Hapsburg dominans, creating the Spanish branch and Austrian branch. Charles viewed the entire Habsburg posessions too large for any one man to rule. Both sides of the Augsburg confession merely looked for the day thay a settling of accounts would happen.

The surprising thing is not that the Thirty Years War broke out, but that the truce (The Augsburg Confession) had held for sixty years.

BUT WHY NOT JUST PLAY ENGLISH CIVIL WAR?

The English Civil War, while castings are more readily available to the wargamer, was fought with smaller numbers, with poorer quality troops, using the Dutch or Swedish system perfected in Germany. My rules are quite suitable for the ECW and could cover any war from late medieval/1470 to 1865 (when the socket bayonet replaced the pike).

THE RELIGIOUS QUESTION

"A nation with arms is not a nation in arms. It something to establish the existance of social antagonisms and then another to assume they are the principle cause of the conflict." (Hale) Religion acted as a catalyst and intensified the conflicts.

The Thirty Years War is considered the last of the religiuos wars primarily because during this war religion was no longer a primary factor in the decision to go to war. Although religion was a motivating factor in the English Civil War, The Dutch Revolt, and The Thirty Years War; dynastic ambitions were ulimatlely paramount.

BIRTH OF MODERN WAR

Many modern developments first occured during the Thirty Years War and one of Napoleons' seven great captains (Gustavus) strode like a colossus across the stage Europe, "Theatrum Europaum" if you will.

Other changes that occcured during the war that had an effect on military operations were:

standing armies; strategy; consideration of logistics (contribution instead of plunder ); class privilege for warfare evolving into the aristocracy supplying the officiers for the permanent armies; econmic warfare; the term autarkic first recorded; international law; better finacial and bureaucratic methods to fund war; military academies; the use of lead soldiers for wargames to test theories; and the harnessing of science to warfare in the form of artillery, mathmatics, and telescopes.

No longer could a soldier learn the trade as a youth and become a general as an adult. Warfare was changing during the course of one lifetime and the study of warfare became essential to stay competitive. Micheal Roberts, in his lecture "The Military Revolution ", summed it up this way; "Such were some of the effects of the military revolution: I have no doubt that others could bre distinguished. I hope, at least, to have persuaded you that it was indeed a revolution. Between 1560 ans 1660 a great and permanent change came over the European world... By 1660 the modern art of war had come to birth. Mass armies, strict discipline, absolute submergence of the individual, had already arrived; the cojoint ascendancy of financial power and applied science was already established in all its malignity; the use of propaganda, psycohological warfare, and terrorism as military weapons was already familiar to theorists, as well as to commanders in the field : and the last remaining qualms as to the religious and ethical legitimacy of war seemed to have been stilled. The road lay open, broad and straight, to the abyss of the twentieth century."

More 30 Years War

Introduction
Background
Examination of the Leaders and Their Motivations
The Nations