The Thirty Years War is overrated. Everyone goes on and on about how it was one of the most gruesome and apocalyptic wars in human history and it killed millions of millions of people and all this cool Warhammer 40K talk. But then you learn that the vast, vast majority of deaths were caused by disease and famine. Like, more than 95%.
The estimate I keep seeing for combat related deaths is 450,000, or a little more than 2% of the population of the Holy Roman Empire, which was about 20,000,000 as far as I can tell. Spread out over three decades, that's an average of 15,000 combat related deaths per year, less than 0.1% of the population at the start. That's less than the percentage of Americans killed by heart attacks each year. Big Macs are deadlier than the armies of the Thirty Years War.
They should just rename the incident to the "Great Plague of the 17th Century with a little bit of fighting going on off to the side." Now the Deluge in Poland on the other hand, that's a real man's apocalyptic pike and shot war of death and destruction.
>But then you learn that the vast, vast majority of deaths were caused by disease and famine. Like, more than 95%.
That's every war prior to WW1.
To that extent though?
Maybe, but that outbreak of the plague probably would have killed a similar amount of people anyway. If memory serves, it was already killing millions of people throughout Europe in the early stages of the war.
>Maybe, but that outbreak of the plague probably would have killed a similar amount of people anyway.
Low IQ take.
>To that extent though?
Yep. If you've read through any of the nu/k/e threads, you may have noticed that the real danger (for the vast majority of people who don't live next to an actual strategic target) is the economic fallout, which could easily result in ten or twenty times the number of deaths as caused by the actual blasts.
It was the same thing back then. If armies and armed mobs are running around pillaging the countryside (armies had to get most of their food locally, because before canning and railroads, logistics was really hard), it becomes very difficult for farmers to tend their crops, much less keep stockpiles of food on hand. And since food (rather, the lack thereof) can be used as a weapon (see: Ethiopia, Somalia), there was a fair bit of deliberate destruction of crops in addition to simple foraging.
The result was that populations began having food shortages and reduced sanitation. These made them vulnerable to famine and disease, which have always been the greatest mass killers (see: Great Leap Forward, Holodomor).
Even in armies back in the day, you know the guys supposed to be doing the fighting. Only around 10% of deaths were battle related. Rest was all camp diseases.
As someone used to an international choice in meals that may be hard to understand. Our modern gut bacteria are very diverse and can thus easy adapt to a new environment. These people then didn't have that choice. Their gut bacteria were used only to the most local variations of food.
So just traveling a little would mean you'd get the runs and indigestion for WEEKS as your gut tried to keep up to adapt to the new diet... severe indigestion while you were also supposed to do hard labor. This will completely frick you up. You will effectively starve even though you are eating. It's why when you look at what the choice in meals in disaster relief MREs is, it will always be stuff that is extremely easy to digest, partly for that reason since they tend to be poorer regions with less choice in diet (meaning less diverse gut bacteria).
That and the process of digestion requires and initial input of energy that only grants you energy a bit later. When you are already starving you can't do that, your body will die in the attempt to digest it's next meal. So these meals need to be able to be digested fast and with little work. This is what killed a LOT of the men liberated from concentration camps that against the advise of doctors would eat bigger meals than recommended.
Tell me more, after my 30 years on Earth I've been struggling with white flour for the last 5 and now my heart beats harder, throat gets more constrict, and stomach starts going sideways, and sinuses start overproducing mucous to the point of gagging over a goddamn half of a chicken sandwich yesterday. Then it leaves me absolutely wiped out and exhausted. A fricking chicken sandwich.
(currently making rice gruel with canned soup)
My man you need to get that diagnosed. That could be really serious or symptomatic if something really serious. Do you have joint pain, particularly in the lower back, or persistent rashes?
It wasn't really the war itself (although it was gruesome) but rather the political ramifications of it. It set in motions a lot of changes that would happen in european politics later on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_War
just go to the end and read "Long-term effects".
It changed the balance of power between great powers (and knocked Russia and Turkey down a peg) which would have strategic meaning for several wars that would come in the future.
Deaths from disease and famine would have been a direct result of the war displacing so many people
Think of it as the difference between someone killed by a bomb landing on them, and someone killed by the same bomb exploding next to them
>the vast, vast majority of deaths were caused by disease and famine. Like, more than 95%
The famine was a direct result of the war since mercenaries were authorized to loot in lieu of pay. Also the mercenaries feeding Germans shit water probably didn't help the disease situation.
WWI was an +80M deaths war if you include the Spanish flu
Are you stupid? Talking about how it affected the place as a whole. Regionally it killed 25% or up to 50% of the population.
It was the most destructive war fought on german soil; ww1 and 2 dont even come close to the destruction. Population counts didnt exist back then but the deaths were around 50~70% of the german population.
The first half of the 30yr war was quite 'tame' all things considered, until the complete destruction of Magdeburg (35k population reduced to 500, only 2 buildings left standing) set a prescident on how things will go from there
Yeah, it's kind of shitty I posed that question on PrepHole a long whiles back. Okay, the population got wiped, and the Swedish Drink was gnarly. But other than some wood carvings and a single diary of a Landsknecht, it's just X duke here engaged Y force there shit. Anyone have any other firsthand accounts?
>, it's just X duke here engaged Y force there shit.
>hurr durr
If you're moronic, yes. That's all all history is.
450,000 is a lot of deaths from cold steel and arrows.
that was a fricked conflict with new buttholes jumping in every few years to kill more people in a giant clusterfrick. It wasn't even prods versus caths by the end and the Ottomans almost jumped in even. Fricking shitshow.
If an army sacks a town, burns and steals everything in sight and then turns over all the fields in the country so half the population eats the other half to live do you not think it's metal because the hand to to hand portion only killed 3k guys?
That teenager thinks it’s not hardcore enough
>don’t know what germs are
>die
Woah dude that’s so metal.
This
The 30 years war is just a stupid little sideshow of the 80 years war, which is the true /k/ino conflict
>2% of the population of the Holy Roman Empire,
meds?
>Population declines within Germany 1618 to 1648
>Note; Decline includes factors such as emigration from rural to more secure urban areas and does not equate to Deaths
Man, East Germany with the double whammy of the 30 years war and decades of communism.
Mercenaries were paid by rape and pillage. Also the 30 year war, after it ended, continued in eastern Europe. Th "deluge" as you called it.
And also in France and Spain, and the Baltic Sea. Really, the war didn’t end 1648 so much as it changed locations.
Something you have to realize about premodern wars in particular is that they tended to breakdown the social order. Wars provided a cover for all sorts of depraved activities not usually allowed in peacetime. Anyone looking for a score to settle with someone else or cut out their own little place in the sun would do so. This meant violence spread far beyond the battlefields and regular ranks. Bandits might go around robbing ostensibly using their roles as soldiers to take whatever they wanted. People who lost something or someone to a leader, a common soldier, a brigand, or even the neighbor they feuded with could take it up themselves to kill that person. Wars are not clean affairs. They are very messy, chaotic, and personal. They were even more so before armies were more tightly regulated by civilian governments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwedentrunk
>The Schwedentrunk (German: [ˈʃveːdn̩ˌtʁʊŋk], Swedish drink) is a method of torture and execution in which the victim is forced to swallow large amounts of foul liquid, such as excrement. The name was invented by German victims of Swedish troops during the Thirty Years' War. This method of torture was administered by other international troops, mercenaries, and marauders, and especially by civilians following the Swedish baggage train, who received no pay. It was used to force peasants or town citizens to hand over hidden money, food, animals, etc., or to extort sex from women.
>want to force German woman to have sex with me
>make her drink shit
Ah. Well, that explains a lot of German, ah, special carnal interests.
Zizek is mostly a quack but his observations on Germans and their love of shit are on point
Push of pike sounds pretty horrific to be caught up in
>tfw find out the other side has longer pikes
>illed millions of millions of people and all this cool Warhammer 40K talk. But then you learn that the vast, vast majority of deaths were caused by disease
Buboes, phlegm, blood and guts! Boils, bogeys, rot and pus! Blisters, fevers, weeping sores! From your wounds the fester pours!