E.H. 'A Little History of the World' 30. Terrible Times
Summary
TLDRIn 'A Little History of the World' by Gombrich, Chapter 30 delves into the Thirty Years' War, a period of religious conflict and power struggles in Europe. The war began with the Defenestration of Prague in 1618 and escalated into a brutal conflict involving various European nations. It transformed from a religious dispute into a political and territorial fight, with figures like Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus playing pivotal roles. The war ended with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, leaving Germany devastated and the religious landscape largely unchanged. The chapter also touches on the rise of superstition and witch hunts, contrasting with the scientific advancements of the time, exemplified by Galileo's heliocentric model and the emerging understanding of mathematical laws in nature.
Takeaways
- 📜 The script is from 'A Little History of the World' by E.H. Gombrich, discussing the Thirty Years' War.
- 🔥 The war was a chaotic and brutal conflict between Catholics and Protestants, with motivations becoming increasingly political rather than religious.
- 👑 The Habsburg Emperors of Germany sought to reestablish Catholic dominance but faced strong opposition, leading to the Defenestration of Prague in 1618.
- 🗡️ The war escalated into a massive conflict involving various European powers, with commanders like Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus playing significant roles.
- 🇸🇪 Sweden's intervention under Gustavus Adolphus aimed to protect Protestantism and establish a Protestant empire, but his death in 1632 marked a turning point.
- 🇫🇷 France, despite being Catholic, joined the war against the Habsburgs to weaken their power and elevate France's status in Europe.
- 🔮 The war's brutality and the subsequent witch hunts were fueled by widespread superstition and fear, leading to the persecution and execution of many innocent people.
- 🌟 Amidst the turmoil, scientific progress continued with figures like Galileo Galilei, who faced persecution for their ideas but laid the groundwork for modern science.
- 📚 The script highlights the contrast between the dark superstitions of the time and the enlightenment thinking that began to uncover the mathematical laws governing nature.
- ⚖️ The Thirty Years' War ended with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which largely restored the pre-war religious and political landscape, showing the futility of the conflict.
Q & A
What event is referred to as the Defenestration of Prague and what was its significance?
-The Defenestration of Prague was an event in 1618 where discontented Protestants threw three of the Emperor's Catholic councilors out of a window at Prague Castle. This event, while not causing serious harm to the councilors due to their landing in a pile of manure, signaled the beginning of the Thirty Years' War.
How long did the Thirty Years' War last and what was its impact on the population of Germany?
-The Thirty Years' War lasted for thirty years, from 1618 to 1648. Its impact on Germany was devastating, with barely half the population surviving the war. The survivors were destitute, leading many to emigrate or join foreign armies.
Who was Wallenstein and what was his role in the Thirty Years' War?
-Wallenstein was a poor country nobleman who served as a commander on the Emperor's side during the Thirty Years' War. He was ambitious and skilled in military strategy, leading his armies to capture Protestant towns and nearly deciding the war in favor of the Emperor and the Catholic Church.
Why did Sweden enter the conflict during the Thirty Years' War?
-Sweden, under its ruler Gustavus Adolphus, entered the conflict to rescue the Protestant faith and establish a mighty Protestant Empire under Sweden's leadership. Gustavus Adolphus aimed to counter the Catholic forces and support the Protestant cause.
What was the outcome of the Thirty Years' War in terms of religious territories?
-The outcome of the Thirty Years' War left religious territories largely as they were before the war began. What had been Protestant remained Protestant, and the lands controlled by the Emperor, including Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia, remained Catholic.
Why did France join the war, and what was Cardinal Richelieu's strategy?
-France joined the war not for religious reasons but to exploit the general confusion and weaken the Habsburg rulers, who were the dominant powers in Europe. Cardinal Richelieu aimed to make France the greatest power in Europe by securing German fortresses and towns near the Rhine for France.
What was the role of superstition and witch hunts during the period of the Thirty Years' War?
-During the Thirty Years' War, superstition and fear of witchcraft and sorcery became rampant, leading to widespread witch hunts. People lived in constant fear of the unknown and magical powers, which resulted in the persecution and execution of thousands of innocent individuals, often based on false accusations and torture-induced confessions.
How did the ideas of Leonardo da Vinci and the Florentines influence the scientific thought during and after the Thirty Years' War?
-Despite the widespread superstition, some individuals continued to uphold the ideas of observation and rational inquiry as advocated by Leonardo da Vinci and the Florentines. They believed in using their eyes to see and make sense of the world, which led to the discovery of mathematical laws governing natural phenomena, a concept that was far more 'magical' and powerful than the superstitions of the time.
Who was Galileo Galilei and what was his significant contribution to the understanding of nature?
-Galileo Galilei was an Italian scientist who made significant contributions to the understanding of nature through the application of mathematical calculations. He observed, analyzed, and described natural phenomena, and was one of the first to understand the 'magical' power of applying mathematics to nature, which laid the foundation for modern science and technology.
What was Galileo's stance on the movement of the Earth and the Sun, and what was the reaction to his views?
-Galileo supported the heliocentric model, which posited that the Sun does not move and that it is the Earth which moves around the Sun along with the other planets. This view was denounced as unchristian and heretical by both Catholic and Protestant priests, leading to Galileo being brought before the Inquisition. To avoid being burned as a heretic, he signed a declaration recanting his views, but it is said that he muttered 'and yet it moves' under his breath.
Outlines
🏰 Terrible Times: The Thirty Years' War
This paragraph delves into the tumultuous period of the Thirty Years' War, marked by religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants. It begins with a reflection on the complexity of the era, where the reasons for fighting became obscured. The Habsburg Emperors, despite their limited power, sought to assert Catholic dominance. A pivotal event, the Defenestration of Prague in 1618, ignited the war. The narrative describes the brutalities of war, with mercenaries plundering and killing, and religious allegiances taking a backseat to personal gain. The paragraph introduces key figures like Wallenstein, whose military prowess nearly tipped the war in favor of the Emperor and the Catholic Church, and Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, whose intervention aimed to protect Protestantism. The war's evolution into a broader power struggle, involving France for political advantage rather than religious reasons, is also highlighted. The paragraph concludes with the tragic assassination of Wallenstein and the continuation of the war, which led to widespread devastation and suffering.
🕊 The Fruitless Outcome of the Thirty Years' War
The second paragraph discusses the aftermath of the Thirty Years' War, which resulted in a peace agreement that essentially restored the religious and territorial status quo ante bellum. Despite the immense loss of life and the devastation of Germany, the war's end saw little change in the religious landscape, with Protestant and Catholic regions remaining largely unchanged. Sweden's influence waned, and France, under Cardinal Richelieu, was the only nation to gain significantly. The paragraph also explores the rise of superstition and the persecution of witches, which intensified during and after the war. It describes how accusations of witchcraft could lead to torture and execution, fueled by fear and superstition. The paragraph contrasts this dark period with the scientific advancements of the time, emphasizing the 'real magic' of arithmetic and the understanding of natural laws, which stood in stark contrast to the irrational fears of the era.
🔬 The Dawn of Scientific Enlightenment
The final paragraph celebrates the scientific enlightenment that emerged despite the dark times of superstition and war. It focuses on the contributions of Galileo Galilei, who applied mathematical calculations to understand natural phenomena, challenging the prevailing religious dogma. Galileo's heliocentric model, which posited that the Earth moves around the Sun, was in direct conflict with the geocentric model endorsed by the Church. His trial before the Inquisition and his forced recantation are recounted, highlighting the personal risks scientists took to pursue knowledge. The paragraph concludes by emphasizing the importance of Galileo's work and the broader scientific method, which has led to modern technological advancements. It suggests that the pursuit of understanding nature's mathematical laws was a form of 'magic' that has profoundly shaped human progress.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Thirty Years War
💡Habsburg Emperors
💡Defenestration of Prague
💡Wallenstein
💡Gustavus Adolphus
💡Cardinal Richelieu
💡Religious Conflict
💡Superstition and Witch Hunts
💡Galileo Galilei
💡Laws of Nature
💡Scientific Method
Highlights
The Thirty Years' War was a dreadful era marked by confusion and violence.
The Habsburg Emperors' aim was to reestablish Catholic Church sovereignty.
The Defenestration of Prague in 1618 sparked the Thirty Years' War.
The war escalated into a 30-year conflict with widespread massacre and suffering.
Mercenaries and soldiers looted, killed, and terrorized civilians during the war.
Religious faith was secondary to the soldiers' desire for plunder.
Wallenstein was a key commander for the Emperor, leading Catholic forces.
Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden aimed to establish a Protestant Empire.
France joined the war, not for religious reasons, but to weaken the Habsburgs.
Wallenstein's power and ambition led to his murder in 1634.
The war's devastation was immense, with Germany's population and infrastructure severely affected.
The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 ended the war but left little changed.
The fear of witchcraft and sorcery led to widespread persecution.
Despite the superstition, some continued to pursue scientific inquiry and understanding.
Galileo Galilei's work on mathematical laws in nature was groundbreaking.
Galileo's support for the heliocentric model was controversial and led to his trial.
The scientific method and mathematical laws were seen as a form of 'magic' that could explain the natural world.
Transcripts
a little history of the world by eh
Gombrich chapter 30 terrible times if I
wished I could write many more chapters
on the wars between Catholics and
Protestants but I won't it was a
dreadful era events soon became so
confused that people no longer knew why
or against whom they were fighting the
Habsburg Emperor's of Germany ruling now
from Prague now from Vienna had no real
power outside Austria and part of
Hungary they were pious men who wished
to reestablish the sovereignty of the
Catholic Church throughout their empire
nevertheless they did for a while allow
Protestants to hold religious services
until one day a revolt broke out in
Bohemia in 1618 discontented Protestants
through three of the Emperor's Catholic
councilors out of a window at a Prague
Castle they landed in a pile of manure
and so came to little harm nevertheless
this event known as the diffence tration
of prague gave the signal for a dreadful
war to begin which lasted for thirty
years thirty years just imagine if
someone heard about the defense tration
at the age of ten they would have to
wait until they were forty to experience
peace yes they experienced it for a note
for in no time the war had turned into a
dreadful massacre as hordes of ill paid
soldiers from countries far and wide
rampaged through the land looting and
killing the expectation of plunder was
what drew the vilest and most brutal men
of all nations into the ranks of these
armies religious faith was long
forgotten Protestants fought and
Catholic armies Catholics and Protestant
ones friends and foe suffered alight
from their opacity whether they pitched
their tents they did wherever they
pitched their tents they demanded food
and above all drink from local peasants
and if a peasant refused to give them
what they wanted they took it by force
or they killed him in the improbable
patchwork of rags they're great and
they're great plunder their great plumed
hats in their in their improbable
patchwork of rags and they're great
plumed hats
swords dangling from their belts and
pistols at the ready they rode around
burning killing and tormenting the
defenseless peasant
out of sheer wickedness and depravity
nothing could stop them the only person
they would obey was their commander and
if he won their affection they followed
him with blind devotion once that's
cooked one such commander on the
Emperor's side was Wallenstein a poor
country nobleman of immense ambition and
ability he led his armies up into North
Germany to capture the Protestant towns
thanks to his skill and strategy the war
was nearly decided in favor of the
Emperor and the Catholic Church however
a new country entered the conflict
this was Sweden under its powerful pious
Protestant ruler Gustavus Adolphus his
aim was to rescue the Protestant faith
and found a mighty Protestant Empire
under Sweden's leadership the Swedes had
retaken North Germany and were marching
on Austria when in 1632
the 14th year at this dreadful war
Gustavus Adolphus fell in battle
nevertheless many of his battalions
reached the outskirts of Vienna and
wrought havoc there France also joined
the war now you might think that the
French being Catholics would have sided
with the Emperor against the Protestants
of North Germany and Sweden but the war
had long stopped being about religion
each country was out to get what it
could from the general confusion and
because the to have and because the two
Habsburg rulers the Emperor of Germany
and the king of Spain were the dominant
powers in Europe the French under the
guidance of their exceptionally
intelligent Minister Cardinal Richelieu
hopes to exploit the situation to make
it to make Francis Europe's great to
make France here ups greatest power so
that's why Frances soldiers fought
against those of the Emperor
meanwhile wallenstein as the Emperor's
general was at the height of his power
his army worshipped him and his fierce
soldiers fought for him and for the
fulfillment of his aims rather than for
the Emperor or the Catholic faith being
indifferent to both the effect of this
was that Wallenstein increasingly saw
himself as the rightful sovereign
without him and his troops the Emperor
was powerless so he took it upon himself
to hold talks with the enemy about a
possible peace agreement and ignored all
the Emperor's commands the Emperor
decided to arrest him but in 1634 before
he could do so wallenstein was murdered
by an English captain
would once been his friend however the
war continued for 14 more years becoming
increasingly wild and confused whole
villages were burned towns plundered
women and children murdered robbed in a
bet
robbed and abducted there seemed to be
no end to it the soldiers seized the
peasants livestock and trampled their
crops famine disease and roaming packs
of wolves made westward made wastelands
of great structure of great stretches of
Germany and after all these years of
appalling suffering the envoy's of
various rulers finally met in 1648 and
after interminable and complicated
discussions agreed on a peace which left
things more or less as they had been in
the first place before the 30 Years War
had begun what had the prot what had
been Protestant would remain Protestant
the lands the Emperor controlled Austria
Hungary and Bohemia would remain
Catholic with the death of Gustavus
Adolphus Sweden had lost most of its in
most of the influence that had gained
and only held on to a few strips of
conquered land in North Germany and on
the Baltic coast Cardinal Richelieu and
voyeurs were alone in succeeding to
secure a number of German fortresses and
towns near the Rhine for France which
made the wily French Minister the only
true victor in a war which hadn't even
concerned him Germany was devastated
barely half the population had survived
and those who had were destitute and
many left and made their way to America
while others tried to enlist in foreign
armies since they didn't know anything
about fighting on top of all this misery
and despair a terrible madness began to
infect a growing number of people the
fear of evil spells of sorcery and
witchcraft people had also been
superstitious in the Middle Ages and had
believed in all sorts of ghouls and
ghosts as you remember but it was never
as bad as this things had begun to get
worse during the time of the power and
splendour loving popes the time we know
is the Renaissance when the new st.
Peter's Church was being built and
indulgences were sold those popes
weren't pious but that only made them
all the more superstitious they were
afraid of the devil in every conceivable
form of magic and each of the popes on
the period or in
here and each of the Pope's of the
period around 1500 whose names we
associate with the most wonderful works
of art was also responsible for chilling
decrees calling for witches and
sorcerers to be hunted down without
mercy especially in Germany you may ask
how it is possible to hunt down
something that isn't there and never was
and that is precisely why it was so
terrible if a woman wasn't liked in her
village perhaps because she was a little
odd or made people feel uncomfortable
anyone could suddenly say that woman is
a witch she's the cause of all those
hailstorms we've been having or she gave
the mayor his bad back and in fact both
an Italian and German people still use
the expression witch hunt or witch hurt
when talking about a backache when the
woman would be then the woman would be
arrested and interrogated they would ask
her if she was in league with the devil
naturally she would be horrified and
Inayat but then they would torture her
and torment her for so long and in such
a dreadful way the half-dead with pain
she would admit to anything in her
despair and that was it
now she had confessed to being a witch
and she would be burned alive often well
she was being tortured they would ask if
there were other witches in the village
making magic with her and in her
weakness she might blurt out any name
that came into her head in the hope the
torture would stop then others in their
turn would be arrested and tortured
until they confessed and were burned the
year of the devil and witchcraft were
ripe during the dreadful period after
the 30 Years War in Catholic and
Protestant districts alike thousands and
thousands of people were burned the few
Jesuit priests who protested against the
madness were powerless to stop it people
in those days lived in a state of
constant fear of the unknown of magical
powers and the works of the devil only
this fear can begin to explain the
atrocities inflicted on so many
thousands of innocent people what is
most remarkable however is that at a
time when people were at their most
superstitious there was still some who
had not forgotten the ideas of Leonardo
da Vinci and the other great Florentines
people who went on using their eyes in
order to see and make sense of the world
and it was they who discovered the real
magic magic
lets us look into the past and into the
future and enables us to work out what a
star billions of miles away is made of
and to predict precisely when an eclipse
of the Sun is due and from what part of
the earth that will be visible this
magic was arithmetic of course these
people didn't invent it for merchants
had always been able to add and subtract
but they became increasingly aware the
number of things in nature they're
governed by mathematical laws how a
clock with a pendulum 981 millimeters
long needs exactly one second per swing
and why this is so they called these the
laws of nature Leonardo da Vinci had
already said nature doesn't break her
own laws and so it was known with
certainty that if you take any natural
event and measure and record it
precisely you will discover that given
the same circumstances the result will
always be the same no matter how often
it is repeated indeed it cannot be
different this was an extraordinary
discovery and a far greater magic than
anything this was an extraordinary
discovery and a far greater magic than
anything the poor witches were accused
of for now the whole of nature the Stars
and drops of water falling stones and
vibrating violin strings was no longer
just one incomprehensible tangle that
made people fearful and uneasy if you
knew the correct mathematical formula
you had a magic spell for everything you
could say to a violin string to make an
A you must be this long and this tight
and moved backwards and forwards 435
times in a second and the note the
string made would prove it the first man
to understand the extraordinary magical
power of applying mathematical
calculation to things in nature was an
Italian called Galileo Galilei she was
devoted he had devoted many years to
observing analyzing and describing such
things when one day someone denounced
him for writing exactly what Leonardo
had observed but had not explained what
he had written was this the Sun does not
move on the contrary it is the earth
which moves around the Sun together with
the planets this discovery had already
been
by a Polish scholar named Copernicus
after many years of calculation it had
been published in 1543 not long after
Leonardo's death and shortly before his
own but the theory had been denounced as
unchristian and heretical by Catholic
and Protestant priests alike they
pointed to a passage in the Old
Testament in which Joshua the great
warrior asks God not to let dusk fall
until his enemy is destroyed an answer
to his prayer we read the Sun Stood
Still and the moon stayed until the
people had avenged themselves on their
enemies if the Bible says the Sun Stood
Still people argued then the Sun must
normally be in motion and to suggest the
Sun did not move was therefore heretical
and contradicted what was written in the
Bible
so in 1632 when he was nearly 70 years
old Galileo who had devoted his whole
life to scholarship was brought before
the religious tribunal known as the
Inquisition and made to choose between
being burned as a heretic or announcing
his theory about the movement of the
earth around the Sun he signed a
declaration saying that he was adopted
that he was but a poor sinner for he had
taught that the earth moved around the
Sun in this way he avoided being burned
the fate of so many of his predecessors
nevertheless when he signed the
Declaration he is said to have muttered
under his breath and yet it moves
none of these fixed ideas was in the end
able to prevent Galileo's ideas and
methods and all the discoveries he made
from influencing and inspiring people in
ever-increasing numbers and if today
thanks to mathematical formulas we can
make nature do whatever we want so that
we have telephones airplanes computer
and computers and all the rest of our
modern technology we should be grateful
to all those who like Galileo
investigated nature's mathematical laws
at a time when it was almost as
dangerous to do it was almost as
dangerous a thing to do as it was to be
a Christian in Nero's day and that is
the end of the chapter
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