On 23 May 1618, Bohemian Protestants pushed two Catholic governors and their secretary through the windows of Prague Castle, in protest at the anti-Protestantism of Bohemia’s King Ferdinand, soon to be elected Emperor Ferdinand II. The defenestration was only injurious to dignity, and had farcical aspects, a rebel shouting: ‘We shall see if your Mary can help you!’, only to exclaim, ‘By God, his Mary has helped!’ when the men landed in a midden.
This sparked what C. V. Wedgwood termed ‘the outstanding example in European history of meaningless conflict’ — the bloodiest campaign ever waged on German soil. It was long thought that 70 per cent of Germans died during the Thirty Years’ War, particularly between 1630 and 1638 — the ‘years of annihilation’. Recent scholarship favours 33 per cent, but even that equates to 6.5 million fatalities. ‘Fire, pestilence and death my heart have dominated’, Andreas Gryphius repined on behalf of a continent, in Tears of the Fatherland, Anno Domini 1636.
A troubling trace memory persists in German minds, recalled in re-enactments, such as one at the little Protestant burg of Memmingen, where in the summer of 1630 the Catholic field marshal Wallenstein pitched ominous camp; art (by Wouwerman, Callot and others); folk songs like Wenn die Landsknechts trinken (‘When the Mercenaries Drink’) and Das Leben ist in Würfelspiel (‘Life Is a Game of Dice’); and Simplicius Simplicissimus, seen as the first great German novel.
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