Schmidt, Georg Die Reiter der Apokalypse. Geschichte des Dreißigjährigen Krieges

The famous defenestration of Prague in May 1618 marked the beginning of a massive war that would claim millions of lives and last for three decades. To this day, this unprecedented historical catastrophe is overgrown with myths. Georg Schmidt, one of the great experts on the epoch, presents a comprehensive account of the Thirty Years' War based on the latest research on the occasion of the 400th anniversary. "The horsemen of the apocalypse" - that was war, famine and epidemics that brought death by the millions and devastated large parts of Central Europe. In his great history of the Thirty Years' War, Georg Schmidt masterfully combines political and military events with diary entries, sermons and other contemporary sources, which vividly show how the war was experienced and suffered: as God's punishment, as a struggle for German freedom, as a bloody path to a new peace.The result is a grandiose panorama that at the same time interprets and classifies the events historically: in the great religious struggle of Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the power struggle between the Habsburg monarchy and the imperial estates, the goals of the neighbouring states and the opaque intrigues of Wallenstein.

The result is a grandiose panorama that simultaneously interprets and places the events historically: in the great religious struggle of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the power struggle between the Habsburg monarchy and the imperial estates, the aims of the neighbouring states and the opaque intrigues of Wallenstein.