Spring, Laurence The Battle of the White Mountain 1620 and the Bohemian Revolt

The Battle of the White Mountain and the Bohemian Revolt, 1618-1622 looks not only at the battle of the White Mountain, but also the campaigns and events leading up to the battle, such as the Bohemian Army?s march on Vienna, the sieges of Pilsen and Bautzen and the battle of Zablat. These events are often described using the words of the protagonists themselves.It also examines the armies that took part in these campaigns, the soldiers from which came not only from Bohemia, but also Britain, the Dutch Republic, France, the Holy Roman Empire, Hungary, Poland, Spain, the Spanish Netherlands and Transylvania.However, even before the battle of the White Mountain the seeds had been sewn for the war to last 30 years and such was the Emperor Ferdinand?s Counter Reformation policy that when the sword which executed some Bohemian rebels when on display in the nineteenth century it had to be removed for fear of a public disturbance and has been compared with the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Nazi Germany in 1938.Therefore this book is essential reading to anyone interested in the wars of the early seventeenth century, not just the Thirty Years War.

But even before the Battle of White Mountain, the seeds had been sown for the war that would ultimately last 30 years. Emperor Ferdinand's policy of counter-reformation had such an impact on the consciousness of the Bohemian population that some recent publicists have compared the repression by the Habsburg emperors in the wake of the Bohemian uprising with the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the National Socialists. The book will be of interest to anyone interested in the political and military conflicts of the 17th century, and not to those who want to trace the history of the Thirty Years' War.