The Horsemen of the Apocalypse

The Horsemen of the Apocalypse are symbolic of the seemingly endless parade of conquest, war, famine and pestilence that brought death and devastation to large parts of Central Europe during the Thirty Years’ War. Schmidt deftly combines the facts of political and military events with diary entries, sermons, and other contemporary sources to paint a brutally honest picture of how the war was experienced and suffered—as God’s punishment, as a struggle for German freedom, and as the bloody path to a new peace. A fascinating panorama emerges, which both reveals and synthesizes all the factors at play: the great religious conflict of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the power struggle between the Habsburg monarchy and the imperial estates, the goals of the neighboring states and the obscure intrigues of the army commander Albrecht von Wallenstein.