As civil war raged in Britain, the heart of Europe was being torn apart by a bitter conflict which lasted from 1618 to 1648. These three decades became a byword for the horrors of war unsurpassed until the world wars of the 20th century.
Every European power apart from Russia, was sucked into the fighting as towns and villages were destroyed while whole communities were decimated by famine and plague as marauding armies committed atrocities and massacres across the continent. The impact on the civilian population was felt for decades after the war; for example more than a quarter of the German population – men, women and children – were killed.
Now British historians increasingly recognize that to fully understand the civil wars in the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland they need to be seen in the context of events on the Continent. We need to ask how the conduct of the civil wars compared and contrasted with the European experience?
To get answers to this and other important questions, Contributing Editor, Professor Andy Hopper, talked with Britain’s leading authority on the Thirty Years War, Peter Wilson, Chichele Professor of the History of War at All Souls College at the University of Oxford.
