‘Germany’ at the time meant the Holy Roman Empire – summed up most memorably by Voltaire as being neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire – which in 1618 comprised a patchwork of semi-independent Central European margraviates, duchies and principalities of varying religions and allegiances.
National integrity? Religious freedom? Self-aggrandisement? Dynastic feuding? Why, yes…to all of the above. One of the most startling facts in here is the revelation that, when all sides met in 1645 to discuss terms for peace, it took them nearly twelve months of debate just to agree on what exactly the previous quarter-century of fighting had been all about. In my defence, it turns out that the causes and motivations of this conflict were rather baffling even at the time – indeed even to those involved. Before I started this, the sum total of my knowledge on the Thirty Years War did not extend much further than being able to guess its duration.
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