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Structure
Interesting Questions, Facts and Information
- There are a total of 25 general entries.
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 Interesting Questions, Facts, and Information
 Thirty Years' War
| Having disengaged from their war with the Poles at the truce of Altmark, in what year did the Swedes enter the Thirty Years' War? | Sweden in the Thirty Years' War
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1630. By the end of 1629 the Habsburgs has come very close to achieving hegemony in Central Europe and in the Baltic region. On the 26th July the Swedes landed at Peenemünde in Pomerania and thus began for them a conflict that would drag on for 15 long years. There reasons for entering have been much debated; one of the main reasons was to prevent the Baltic being turned into a "Habsburg lake". Also Wallenstein, an Imperial general had been sending aid to the Poles.
George William of Brandenburg. George William agreed to ally himself with Sweden in 1631, largely it seems due to the sack of Magdeburg earlier in the year. This atrocity was perpetrated by the Catholic Imperial Army against a Protestant town. Protestant Brandenburg would have feared that the same fate lay in store for her if she did not find a strong ally; large areas of George William's state had already been ravaged by armies.
Jean 't Serclaes Count of Tilly. The Swedes won this battle; the first major loss for the Imperial cause and one of the Swedes greatest moments. 41,000 Swedes and Saxons routed 31,000 Imperialists of whom 7,600 are said to have died (Parker).
| It has already been noted that the Swedes were fighting the Imperialists; this is the shorthand name used to describe men fighting for the Holy Roman Emperor; who was emperor at the time of the battle of Breitenfeld in 1631? | Sweden in the Thirty Years' War
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Ferdinand II. Ferdinand II ruled as Holy Roman Emperor from 1619 to 1637; he was a strong supporter of the Counter Reformation and counted a Jesuit, Father Lamormaini, as one of his most trusted councillors.
Lützen. The king fell while engaged in a cavalry charge; shot three times his body was plundered. Among other things, the king's ring was stolen. (The practice of plundering valuables from corpses was widespread at the time, and discipline among the soldiery in the Thirty Years' War was notoriously bad).
f. Gustavus' Army in 1632 is reliably held to have been 100,000 men strong (Roberts), he had aimed to enlarge it to 210,000 by the end of the winter. Though he had 100,000 men under his command he never led them as a unified army in the field. Such a large force in one place would have been impossible to supply at that time.
Axel Oxenstierna. Swedish Chancellor from 1612, his is the personality alongside Gustavus Adolphus that most shaped his country's destiny in the war. He did not though have the legendary charisma of the dead king and suffered from this in the aftermath of Lutzen; many of Sweden's allies drifted away.
| At the battle of Nördlingen (1634) the Swedish armies were commanded jointly; one of the commanders was a German called Bernard. Of what duchy was he duke? | Sweden in the Thirty Years' War
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Saxe-Weimar. Nördlingen was the Swedish army's greatest defeat in the Thirty Years' War; Bernard of Saxe-Weimar and the other commander, Gustav Horn. saw half their army killed and the latter general was himself captured. From the heady heights of Breitenfeld (1631) the Swedes had fallen to an all time low.
| The Swedish war effort picked up again after 1636, with the entry into the war proper by France, a country rapidly on the way to superseding Spain as the greatest of Catholic nations. Which famous man was the power behind the French throne till his death in December 1642? | Sweden in the Thirty Years' War
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Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal-Duke of Richelieu. French aid to the Swedes had long been forthcoming in the form of subsidies; it was with the direct intervention by French armies in Germany that Sweden was able feel that a victory might be possible. Richelieu was an important figure in assuring this aid came; he was one of the great personalities of the Thirty Years' War.
| Upon the death of Gustavus Adolphus his only child was a minor; hence government being taken over by Axel Oxenstierna. In what year did the new monarch reach the age of majority? | Sweden in the Thirty Years' War
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1644. Gustavus Adolphus' successor to the throne of Sweden was of course his daughter Christina, a famously enigmatic character. She abdicated goverment in 1654 and converted to Catholicism. She spent the remainder of her days living in Rome.
| Which Scottish colonel, wrote the first regimental history in the English language concerned with his time fighting for the Swedes in Germany? | Sweden in the Thirty Years' War
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Robert Monro. The regimental history of Robert Monro is a key primary source for the Thirty Years' War, revealing as it does an eyewitness view of many battles. The fact it is written by a Scot serving in the Swedish army illustrates that many different nationalities fought as mercenaries in the war. In fact, Scottish and Irish mercenaries fought on both sides in the war.
| While Sweden was warring in Germany her old enemy, Denmark, had been making trouble in the Baltic. Upon learning in 1643 that the Danes were negotiating an alliance with the Emperor, the Swedes decided to strike first and invaded Denmark. Which general did the Emperor send to aid the Danes? | Sweden in the Thirty Years' War
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Count Gallas. The Emperor Ferdinand III who had sent Count Gallas to relieve the Danes was outmanouevred by Swedish diplomacy; he was forced to recall Gallas in order to protect his own lands from invasion by the new Swedish ally, George Racokczy, Prince of Transylvania. Gallas was subsequently outmanouevred by Swedish generals while he withdrew and lost, according to one chronicler, 17,000 of his 18,000 men to starvation as he travelled through German lands devastated by prolonged war.
| The Thirty Years' War was famously ended in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia. This peace was in fact made of two treaties, which did the Swedes sign? | Sweden in the Thirty Years' War
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Treaty of Osnabrück. Negotiations for peace began in 1643 and lasted for five years; they were carried out at two seperate places: Münster and Osnabrück. The reason for this and the signing of two treaties was the different confessions of France and Sweden. They each negotiated seperately with the Emperor with their own denominational allies alongside them.
| Sweden, it can be argued, did very well out of the Thirty Years' War and could feel that her goals had been attained. What area of Germany did she NOT receive? | Sweden in the Thirty Years' War
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Eastern Pomerania. Sweden had tried hard to gain Eastern Pomerania in her negotiations at Osnabrück. In the end she had to settle for only the western part as Brandenburg which had legal title to it raised such a storm over its loss.
| At the end of The Thirty Years' War in 1648, Sweden still had thousands of troops in her pay. In what year was the last of her soldiers withdrawn from non-Swedish land in Germany? | Sweden in the Thirty Years' War
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1654. The demobilisation of the Swedish army had been one of the sticking points in getting a peace signed. Sweden, being a relatively poor country, simply could not afford to pay the arrears of her huge army herself. Protracted negotiations were thus necessary in order to gain an indemnity to pay them for her: 5,000,000 thalers was the sum arrived at.
Bohemia. He was born in Hermannitz on September 24, 1583. The ducal title awarded to him later was "Duke of Friedland".
Catholic. As he was fighting for the the Habsburgs and the Holy Roman Empire, he was Catholic, although he didn´t care much about the religious affiliations of his soldiers.
1625. Wallenstein promised to recruit an army of 20,000 mercenaries and demanded the control over all Imperial forces in return. As Ferdinand II had problems in the Danish war at the time, he agreed and transferred the command from Tilly to Wallenstein.
t. His first horoscope was made by none other than the famous mathematician Johannes Kepler.
Schiller. The three plays are:
Wallenstein´s Camp (1789)
The Piccolominis (1799)
Wallenstein´s Death (1799)
A "must-read" for everyone interested in the Thirty Years' War.
twice . In 1606 he married Lucretia Nikossie von Landeck, who died in 1614.
He married Isabella Katharina, daughter of Count Harrach, in 1617.
1634. He was murdered on 25th February 1634 by Imperialist conspirators. He was assassinated in the fortress at Cheb (Eger) in the west of Bohemia.
He suppossedly held secret peace negotiations with the Protestants. His political enemies, mainly from Spain and Bavaria, convinced Ferdinand II that Wallenstein was a traitor, so he was removed from command on 24th January 24 1634. After a second edict from Ferdinand II, which accused him of treason, he asked his remaining officers and soldiers for an oath of allegiance. This led to Oberst Butler, once one of Wallenstein´s officers, planning his assassination. He persuade some Irish and Scottish officers at Cheb (Eger) to kill him. Walter Deveroux, an Irish captain in Wallenstein´s army, was the one who actually killed him.
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