In Our Time: Religion - The Thirty Years War

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war in Europe which begain in 1618 and continued on such a scale and with such devastation that its like was not seen for another three hundred years. It pitched Catholics against Protestants, Lutherans against Calvinists and Catholics against Catholics across the Holy Roman Empire, drawing in their neighbours and it lasted for thirty gruelling years, from the Defenestration of Prague to the Peace of Westphalia of 1648. Many more civilians died than soldiers, and famine was so great that even cannibalism was excused. This topic was chosen from several hundred suggested by listeners this autumn.

The image above is a detail from a painting of The Battle of White Mountain on 7-8 November 1620, by Pieter Snayers (1592-1667)

With

Peter Wilson
Chichele Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford

Ulinka Rublack
Professor of Early Modern European History at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of St John’s College

And

Toby Osborne
Associate Professor in History at Durham University

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Published on Thursday, 6th December 2018.

Available Podcasts from In Our Time: Religion

Subscribe to In Our Time: Religion

We are not the BBC, we only list available podcasts. To find out more about the programme including episodes available on BBC iPlayer, go to the In Our Time: Religion webpage.