Deep and comprehensive. Almost too comprehensive — there's a cast of thousands here, and keeping all the real historical personages straight was very difficult. But a good introduction to an important and overlooked period of history. ( )

Peter Wilson's book is about more than the war that consumed central Europe in the 17th century. To adequately explain the factors that led up to it and influenced its outcome, he describes the context of politics and government in the Holy Roman Empire. This vast, unwieldy, and yet surprisingly effective institution was at the center of the struggle, as Protestants and Catholics struggle to coexist within it in the years following the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. Fragile as it was, this peace was strained by the efforts of successive Habsburg emperors to strengthen their power within the empire, an effort that fueled Protestant anxieties that the Habsburgs would use this power to advance the Catholic faith at their expense.

Yet Wilson makes a persuasive argument that the war was more about politics than religion. Though confessional issues sparked the initial outbreak, the war often led to cross-confessional alliances that set co-religionists against each other. Here Wilson builds upon his extensive discussion of prewar politics to highlight the dynastic ambitions of people like Frederick V of Palatine and Maximilian of Bavaria and their efforts to use the war to advance their interests. Nobody exemplified this better than Gustavus Adolphus, the Swedish king whose intervention reversed the string of Imperial victories. Though his death deprived the rebels of their greatest leader, the war dragged on thanks to the support provided by the French, whose rise to European dominance coincided with the conflict.

All of this is described in an elaborate narrative designed to give the reader an understanding of the factors at work in the conflict and how the war turned out the way it did. The text is dense with the names of people and locations, yet this helps convey the considerable complexity of events. Simply put, this is the best history of the war available, and with remain the definitive source for anyone interested in the conflict for years to come. ( )

Admirably scholarly but just too dense for any but the professional historian. C.V. Wedgewood's book on the same topic is far more accessible. ( )

Winner of the Society for Military History Distinguished Book Award 2011 The horrific series of conflicts known as the Thirty Years War (1618-48) tore the heart out of Europe, killing perhaps a quarter of all Germans and laying waste to whole areas of Central Europe to such a degree that many towns and regions never recovered. All the major European powers apart from Russia were heavily involved and, while each country started out with rational war aims, the fighting rapidly spiralled out of control, with great battles giving way to marauding bands of starving soldiers spreading plague and murder. The war was both a religious and a political one and it was this tangle of motives that made it impossible to stop. Whether motivated by idealism or cynicism, everyone drawn into the conflict was destroyed by it. At its end a recognizably modern Europe had been created but at a terrible price. Peter Wilson's book is a major work, the first new history of the war in a generation, and a fascinating, brilliantly written attempt to explain a compelling series of events. Wilson's great strength is in allowing the reader to understand the tragedy of mixed motives that allowed rulers to gamble their countries' future with such horrifying results. The principal actors in the drama (Wallenstein, Ferdinand II, Gustavus Adolphus, Richelieu) are all here, but so is the experience of the ordinary soldiers and civilians, desperately trying to stay alive under impossible circums ( )

In his book "Europe's Tragedy", author Peter H Wilson skilfully navigates the ever-changing patchwork of lands, estates and religions in the sixteenth century for us. He leaves us in no doubt that this was a very messy period in European history, where allegiances were switched, and sometimes switched back again, on the whim, beliefs or inclinations of the rulers and power-brokers of that day.

Allied to these changes, as well, were developments in military theory and technology, which the author also covers, including the surprising (to me) revelation that poison gas shells were used in the Netherlands as early as the 1590's.

A very comprehensive exposition of the state of Europe leading up to the 30 Years' War is followed by an equally thorough chronology of the conflict itself, from the Bohemian Revolt of 1618-20 to the Westphalia Settlement of 1648.

Finally, an assessment of the Peace of Westphalia is given, and in particular its methods and ideals (rather than the conflicts it resolved, not always successfully), and as a marker for future international development.

Peter Wilson's book is also richly illustrated, and includes a map of Central Europe in 1618 showing the then boundaries of the holy Roman Empire and the patchwork of other empires, kingdoms and territories in and around it.

This is a detailed and scholarly study into this often overlooked part of European history. ( )