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back to the Peking Yona show. Thomas is back part
five thirty years war. How you doing, Thomas, I'm right.
Speaker 2: At some point I want to do a proper analysis
of the war journal of Peter Hagendorf. This is a
fascinating artifact. Peter Hagendorf, he was a pikeman, he was
a mercenary, but he was an officer, and he was
highly literate. He kept a war journal for twenty one
years and all told, because his diary's pretty taciturn. And
he fought for the Catholic League too. To be clear,
he was a Bavarian, but he fought in every major
theater for over twenty years. So all told, he marched
about fifteen thousand miles. And he was at the sacking
of Magdeburg, which was horrific. You know, the kind of
stuff that happened there is the sort of thing that
happened when the when the Red Army approached Berlin. You know,
mass rape and homicide, looting at at at at scale.
Uh the popular about three fourths of population were annihilated.
And uh, mag the Berg had been this Protestant readout,
and that's one of the reasons it was targeted for destruction,
but the officers totally lost control of the men. And
to be clear, uh, and Hagendorf talks about this, you
know most especially as the war dragged on. You had
to live off the land, so you were allowed to loot,
you know, like within reason, like like rape was obviously
a crime, and technically you weren't supposed to kill a man.
It wasn't under arms, even though both those things happened
a lot, but you know, you had to you had
to feed yourself. And there was whole camp followers with
these huge mercenary companies, and some guys even like had
their wives and families with them. I mean obviously they
were you know, like twenty or thirty miles like outside
of like the active theater. But you know, this this
became a way of life because it went on for
so long. And Hagendorf he actually lived to be pretty old.
He lived into his late seventies. He became the mayor
of some town. You know, he was a highly respected guy.
But yeah, he was very he was very candid about
the things he saw go on. And this wasn't discovered
until nineteen eighty eight. And obviously it's it's written in
a German dialect that is hard to decipher, you know, slowly.
But I can slowly get through modern German. I can't
something like that. And if you try and put it
through an AI program, it just like mad mince meat
out of it, because you know, it's not it's not
tailored to translate that sort of dialect. But that's uh,
that's an important bit a documentary evidence that I consider essential,
and that that book by I think Peter Wilson that's
considered the seminal recent history of the Thirty Years War.
It makes a mention of it, but that's about it.
I find it incredible that it's not emphasized more in
English language treatments. But I'm working on finding a way
to translate excerpts of it and moving forward, I'll see
what can be done. In the periphery of the Thirty
Years War was England and Spain, and particularly I think
I think, I think Spanish imperial decline was approximately caused
by the Thirty Years War. Even though Spain wasn't a
major combatant, they essentially bankrolled over to the Catholic cause,
and there were reasons for that are nuanced. You know,
the Spanish habsburgs and the Austrican Habsburgs were distinct lines,
but obviously they had a common interest in the fortunes
of the Empire, especially because the Spanish Habsburgs. Spain was
even at zenith. Spain was a great military power, and
they extracted tremendous wealth from the Americas, but it was
mostly in terms of specie. There just wasn't there wasn't
a highly developed industriousness there. You know, There's a highly
developed banking structure, and the Spaniards actually sold public debt
on early financial markets, which is really interesting. In Genoa
and Savoy there was a lot of this kind of
early financial activity. But some of the Spaniards were really
concerned about was what they viewed as, you know, the
integral reputation of the monarchy as the defender of the
Catholic faith. They retained a crusader's sensibility. I think that
carried over even into the twentieth century. You know, that's
why in the Spanish Civil War, I mean, there was
that sensibility, even though obviously the monarchists were a minority
fiction and those that were under our arms were mostly
carloss And and other minority perspectives. Who represents the minority
perspectives back, you know, for tenders and things. But you know,
and Spain also had the Spanish Hasburgs had holdings in
the Low countries, particularly in the Duchy of Orange, which
was the Protestant heartland, obviously, and the Dutch revolt turned
into this military quagmire from the Spanish Empire and it
became a full blown sectarian conflict. So for the sake
of prestige as well as credibility, you know, obviously, the
Spaniards had to engage. And uh, don't get me wrong,
there was plenty of Spanish UH infantry on the ground
were like actively engaged. But you know, there wasn't there
There wasn't There wasn't the same commitment at mass scale
as you know the UH, as was the case of
the you know, the the Empire. You've got to look
at the Holy Roman Empire is as being the the
the element around which all Catholic military power orbited, you know,
and of course German lands were the dedicated battleground for
the most part. And uh, there was AH during the UH.
During the Thirty Years War, the Spaniards made an effort
to settle accounts with the Dutch reformed and Huguenots streamed
in from France to support their coreligionists. And uh this
obviously presented uh a challenge too, because the Spaniards saw
the potential for a house mobilization on the frontier of
you know, the Castilian heartland. H that's part of it.
But you know, and there was uh that was the
primary local uh loci We're Englishmen under arms were engaged
as well. It was in the low trees against Spanish forces,
you know, in Spain, and and Spain and England were
big enemies at that time. Obviously, well you know, one
of the reasons the situation in Ireland is complicated, but
the Gewos strategic imperative in the early modern period for
what England was doing in Ireland, a lot of a
lot of it had to do with the threat of
you know, uh, Ireland becoming a basing hub for Spanish
military aggression against Britain, which is really interesting and that
wasn't unfounded. But you know, the and there was a
there was wild stuff too, a secondary theater in the
the Orient. In Japan, the Dutch began fighting the Spaniards
and uh, you know, various shogunates allied with uh one
faction of the other, which I think is fascinating. So
this was a truly global conflict, such as these things
were possible in you know, early modernity. But for context,
I posit that the zenith of that the packs Romana
of Spain, I guess that'd be the packs Hispania, was
approximately fifteen ten to about sixteen sixty. And like I said,
I but believe that Spanish decline was approximately caused by
you know, the thirty years of war and what essentially
bankrupted the imperial coffers therein, you know. And like I
said it, even though the Spanish Habsburgs were distinct lineage,
their fortunes were bound up with both houses were interstitially
bound up in terms of their historical fortunes and interests
and common intrigues infected both. And uh, you know, Spain
just got too big. And if we accept that the
Spanish Empire was the standard bearer of the Roman Church,
that's one of the things that hurt the Roman Catholic Church.
It it got too big and just became unmanageable, you know,
that was and this happened very rapidly, you know, And
of course they were emboldened I think people forget the
idea of the reconquista, as you know, just these kinds
of a handful of moors on the periphery of the
I of Iberia, you know, who had to be dealt with,
and you know, it was this sort of lesser crusade
and you know, this, that and that that happened over
a couple of decades. The Umia Califate conquered all of Spain.
Spain was h an Islamic domain, you know, and uh,
it was centuries before it was reclaimed entirely for christiendom.
But once it was uh and once the you know, couldcominently,
the Spaniards started carving out huge swaths in the Americas
as their exclusive domain. You know. They they became very
complacent and euburistic and dare I say decadence, you know,
but also the this year scale of those kinds of
interest becomes unmanageable. It just doesn't it just doesn't work.
But you know, at this time too, there was a
h the Spanish generated it's kind of deep interdependence with Portugal,
and Portugal had this mighty fleet, you know, and they
had claims in Brazil obviously, but also Africa and the Orient,
and those possessions were thinly held, so they got the
force of the Spanish army in Spanish money behind these
these holdings, you know, in exchange for you know, essentially
availing their fleet to the Spanish habsburgs, you know, to
be clear. And there's a the Spanish, like the British,
like empires that work. At least for a time, they
didn't believe in these mass occupations. There was only in
Angola and mosam b there's a couple thousand Portuguese forts
and that's it. You know. In Brazil there was something
like thirty thousand white Europeans, you know, contra two and
a half million or so indigenous Brazilians. You know, and
if you can't manage imperial holdings with that sort of
thin pro and then and then if there was a revolt,
the Portuguese had come and they'd kill everybody. That's how
you do it. You know that the Mongols did it
that way too, you know. And you know you don't
permanently garrison men just for the sake of doing it either,
you know, I know, I know people think that I'm
like an America hater or some thing. I'm not for
the record, but it just the the wrongheadedness with which
America proceeds tag Lea is strategically is staggering. There's just
there's a there's an I literacy there that's somewhat incredible.
So I I'm not trying to insinuate those sort of
conceptual prejudices and every subject matter I deal with, but
I think it's relevant. You know, Spain also around this time,
they were they were suffering a population decline, and Portugal
itself only brought about a million or so new subjects
to the Union with Spain. But it's, uh, it didn't
really make sense. There was there's something going on when
your population starts declining. I mean that's not to say that,
you know, endless population growth is some sort of axiomatic
good or indicator of cultural or racial health. It's not.
But when there begins to be some precipitous population decline
despite the fact that national wealth is increasing and quality
of life is increasing, that means there's something happening, I think,
you know, and that was very suddenly. You know, Spain
just just kind of started dying out, you know, to
the point where they were having problems managing like literally
manning the garrisons of this world empire, you know, like
by the in the at about the midpoint of hostilities
in sixteen thirty one, there was about four million Castilians,
which meant they've lost approximately a million people over about
half a century. I mean, that's staggering. Whenever, and these
people didn't die of like some plague outbreak or something.
You know, there was a you know, like in the colonies,
probably some of that oded disease and and just the
difficulty of living and unfamiliar and untamed environments. But uh,
you know, in in in Europe proper, that wasn't the case.
And even on the periphery, that's not the whole story,
you know. So something was something, Something was happening here,
you know, and at uh and the economic profile, like
I said, Spain was incredibly rich, but it was stagnant.
There wasn't value added innovation going on there. Spanish were
importing a huge amount of gold and silver, a huge
amount of raw material and food, you know, and that
was it. And uh, after the defeat of and in
some critical naval engagements, they modernize their warships in a
way that was impressive. But wartech is its own thing.
You know, I mean I made that point before the
Soviet Union made very good weapons. You know that that's
that exists independently of the the value added economy. It's
a different thing. And it's not it's not just a
spontaneous hurting of the price mechanism, you know, assign the
correct value to inputs. It's it's something it's it's it's
something metaphysical, I think, but that you know, and that's
something too that I think underlay the Thirty Years War.
In paradigmatic terms, there's not economic causes of war, but
national economics is a function of power, political activity. And
the Dutch and other merchant nations that were ruled by
Protestant aristocrats, they began crowding in on spantas colonial trade
and rising white populations of Protestants in the in the
Americas and you know in Asia that played a part
in this two I. The Spanish wanted to crush uh,
the Dutch and the English for that reason also, and
sectarianism is plays into that, as does economic competition and
particularly the sort of zero sum paradigm that characterized early
modern economic activity. You know, it's a perfect storm of
causes and make no mistake. It was Spanish silver was
what was funding a tremendous percentage of Catholic military activity,
and the war effort couldn't have been sustained in critical
capacities without that. And this changed as time went on,
and depending on what combatant faction we're talking about, it varied,
but mostly especially early on in the Catholic side, what
was called the Flanders school of warfare was fairly dominant
in the way the Empire flought as well as the
Catholic League. And this owed the fact that the Spanish
Spanish infantry systems were tried and true in the common
perception of military strategists, in large part because of success
in the Turkish War, which again was where pretty much
every man with common experience said cut his proverbial teeth
by the time of outset of hostilities, you know. And
it was on the one hand, it was highly methodical.
It didn't leave a lot of room for what we
consider an early iteration of mission oriented tactics, but it
was effective at managing early ranged weapons in a way
that complimented pike infantry, and that, you know, that's another
example I think of the Spanish imprint on the pattern
of hostilities, especially in terms of the practice of infantry combat,
and that's highly significant for a lot of reasons. There's
comparatively massive expenditures, I mean, all throughout the existence of
the Spanish Empire, but by the turn of the seventeenth century,
you know, this exponentially increased, and by sixteen hundred, the
main land element, the main infantry element a Spanish forces
was the Army of Flanders. It had approximately sixty thousand
men under arms, which made it the largest operational army
in Europe. You know, and that when you've got that
many men under arms, when you when you're expending that
much capital, you know, human and material towards military readiness
and wartech, that that that tends towards encouraging hostilities. That's
not just a piece and talking point from you know,
the early Cold War, That's actually true. You know, it
becomes a self fulfilling prophecy in conceptual terms, if you know,
a foot of antipateary mobilization becomes normative. But also it
triggers responses in all kinds of ways that then become
war indicators as perceived by actual and potential rivals. And
I think that's part of it too. Europe was incredibly mobilized.
Then there was an outsized contemplation of military affairs sort
of across the board. And when the leading continental power,
which at that time was Spain, has tens of thousands
of men under arms, importing massive amounts of silver, and
it's primary activity is all things that orbit around military
readiness and innovation, that has a tendency to code institutions
towards hostilities of scale. I think that's not to say
that it's axiomatic. And you know, these things are complicated,
and they got more complicated in the modern age, but
I I believe too that that was one of the
reasons why the Cold War became so dangerous, and the
potentiality of mobilization at scale also itself becomes a difficult
to control variable because potentialities that translate to direct capabilities,
you know, means that any political actor has to behave
with the assumption that you know, he can be destroyed
if he's not consciously hyper vigilant about, you know, sustaining
a potential mobilization timetable that's not gonna disadvantage him relative
the capabilities of an adversary, you know, who can mobilize quicker,
so and that leads the situation of permanent readiness, which
itself then is you know, perceived as a clear and
present threat just by its very existence. And then of course,
you know when human decision makers and become increasingly sidelined,
you know, as was the case in the twentieth century,
and there's these weapons that and weapons platforms that are
very binary in terms of their the outcomes that they
yield in both battlefield and counter value terms. And you've
got conditions where you know, war is always likely, if
not imminent, but that's kind of a aggression also too,
there was there was a naval component in the Thirty
Years War, but not narrowly as scaled as one might think.
And I think I think the reason why it was
to the Spaniards. The Spaniards basically had they they had
the coastal, the literal spaces, and the coastal and contiguous
zones abutting critical battle spaces locked down. They had a
fleet of about sixty large worships by sixteen hundred, and
they were divided into three equal squadrons, you know, patrolling
the straits to the Mediterranean, you know, the coast of France,
the Lisbon Fleet patrolling the Atlantic. They had a small
Pacific squadron that essentially protected silver between Panama or approximately
you know it's now the Panama Zone and the continent,
and that was generally adequate to deter piracy because despite
we seeing the movies, you know, the sixteenth century pirates
weren't going to go up against Spanish warships. But that
there the effect of, like I said, in my opinion,
you know, containing that still leads to an infantry slog
It's a innescent counterfactual to contemplate the alternative. I'm not
I'm not a I'm not a naval warfare nerd. But
it's nonetheless h intriguing the UH And there's also a
concern you know, the Spaniards very much they had a
most integral view of you know, they embody the throne
and altered sensibility. They viewed, they viewed the sovereign mandate
and the favor of providence and religious variables two be
all integral aspects of the fortunes of the of the
nation and the race and you know, the kingdom. And
they were very they were very cognizant of the potential
for decline, you know. And in the fifteen nineties that's
kind of when the first sort of comparative historiography emerged,
and it was sort of the first suggestion by a
storiographers that there's a natural life cycle of states and
nations and races. There was this concern that Spain was
entering its terminal stage. However, you know, this kind of
the sort of Spanish interpretation of that potentiality was, well,
that's because people have abandoned God, you know, so if
we can return to God and we can avail our
mighty armaments in the service of crusading, you know, in
defense of christiandom as we always have, that can reverse
this process, and that can reverse you know, the slow
death of our people, which again was literally happening in
the form of this precipitous population decline. And obviously that
sort of symbolic psychological characterization of paraplutical developments tends towards
sectarian hostilities, or at least a sectarian overlay to these things,
and that in turn added to or contributed to the
the siege mentality of Protestants, particularly Calvinists, who were saying
from you know who they they've been insisting long prior
to the evident hostilities that we're going to be programmed.
It's only a matter of time. And you know, the
Spanish or brutes, you know, who are simply the the
blades and you know, the and the guns of the Pope,
and at their first opportunity, they're going to exterminate us,
you know. And and then those things did start happening.
You know, I'm not that I'm not gonna sit here
and suggest there was some conspiracy to exterminate Protestants, but
you know, there there were there were there were massis.
You know, there was a sectarian hatred that took root,
that went above and beyond fog of war, brutality and things.
And to be fair, Protestants did horrible things to their
sectarian enemies too, but it was there wasn't a monolithic
Protestant church, you know, it was so there wasn't there
wasn't you know, a sort of reciprocal enemy concept, you know,
to like comparable to the to the Vatican. And that's important,
you know, not not in moral terms, I mean in
conceptual ones. And when people think that they're going to
be ex you know, when they when they think that
they're being substentially threatened with racial annihilation or being wiped
away owing to you know, their confessional allegiance, you know,
and again confession is ethnos. That's particularly strongly felt in America,
but that's the case in Europe as well, you know,
and ethnos is is UH is just as important as
as race and and other key core aspects of UH,
the way human identity is structured, and that it's a
fact that absolutely meg deifies hostilities and magnifies violence within
the course of hostilities and renders things possible that and
even normative that wouldn't be in conflicts that aren't you know,
characterized by those factors, you know. And but also to
the the Empire, you know, the Holy Roman Empire, they
didn't have the same concern for what the Spanish called
reputacion lispec to that monarchy. There's this whole complicated sort
of cultural reverence for monarchy the Spanish shad. But what
the Empire did did have in common. They stressed the
majesty of the Holy Roman Emperor. You know, there was
an exalted aspect to this, and that was also something
that's one of the reasons why the Hasburgs were able
to capture this monopoly on the imperial crown, you know.
The Halfsburgs and the Roman Catholic viewpoint, the Halfsburgs were
selected by God to rule. They were put in charge
of the destiny of their subjects and of Catholic people,
you know, and everything that flowed from the sovereign mandate
ultimately could be traced back to providential will. So if
here's some howes didn't radical and you're going around smashing
icons and you're putting priests to the sword, you who
are being recalcitrate and refusing to abide the new order,
you know, Roman Calolics, they're gonna look at you as
being utterly Satanic. That's a perfect storm of variables tending
towards a remorseless brutality at scale. I don't think that
can be disputed, you know. And ultimately there was for
a time, particularly after the Turkish War, there was talk
of a sort of informal union whereby Rome would be
Rome itself as a city state, would be incorporated into
Spain's kind of informal empire, you know, and directly under
its imperial influence, you know, literally becoming the the army
of the pope, you know, and uh, this actually went
back to the ascendancy of the Borgias. I think it
was Alexander the sixth, whoever was pope, and fourteen ninety
two when Spain and Portugal forty ninety four, when Spain
and Portugal essentially I did the new world up by
the treaty that tows the d s, the Pope began
speaking this way as this kind of symbiotic relationship between
the Empire and the Holy See, whereby like I just said,
you know, like the the arms of the hard power
and the army and navy of Iberia would would become
you know, the the arms of the of the Holy See.
And in turn, you know that the monarchy would would
have the direct mandate of Heaven, you know. And uh,
that's a lot of Protestant propaganda even into the twentieth century,
you know, would talk about they talk about the pope
as the Pope as a Roman dictator, you know, And
and the Catholic Church is it's this, it's this pagan
imperium that you know, has always wanted to you know,
wipe out pious Christian dumb in favor of of of
this holy you know, anti Christ and mandate like that
that's where they get that from, you know, I mean
it runs somewhat deeper than that, like even I mean
the point uh John Jay, he's my favorite of the
founding fathers, him in Hamilton and him, and he was
something of an acolyte of Hamilton's. But Jay and Hamilton,
they both wrote in the Federalists that we you know,
we being Americans, we're in Anglo Saxon p people that
were liberating ourselves from this Latin oppressive you know, uh,
monarchy that's the alien to our people, which is really interesting.
But I mean that that runs deep in Protestant sensibilities,
particularly obviously dissenters. You know that like Anglicans are their
own thing. There there are reformed who uh abide aspects
of the Anglican rite. And I don't have a problem
with that. I wasn't raised in that, but I don't.
I'm not one of these people. I'm not like one
of these primitive Baptists who who claims that that's satanic
or something. But it's it's very much a different thing, obviously,
and it's I h, I don't offend Anglicans on deck,
but it has a very different source, you know. But
this this understanding of the Americans as a people as
this Germanic element that was subjugated by a latinate overcast
that's deeply coded into dissenter Protestant sensibilities, you know, and
always has been. And I find that really interesting. But
you know, all this, all this stuff has to be considered,
and the Thirty Years War, and I think the War
the War three Kingdoms too. I think the direct line
between the War three Kingdoms and the War between the
States and America, and I think the Worth three Kingdoms also.
It was kind of a microcosm of what happened on
the continents, because what happens in Britain often is a
microcosm what happened on the continents.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: At some point, maybe we'll discuss that and then and
then discuss Cromwell's ascendency in lordship, which has related to
this constellation of historical variables of the Thirty Years War
and beyond. Obviously, the perception of a Catholic power play
emergent from the Holy Roman Empire and from the Spanish Empire,
and Protestants, particularly Calvinists, believing that they were going to
be exterminated. That was another factor that very very much
contributed to the severity of hostilities. You know what. The
the Lutheran experience is somewhat different, although that it depended
on locale and theater too. There was definitely there were
definitely sectarian massacres between Calogs and Lutherans on both sides.
But yeah, it's important. Yeah, I forgive me if that
was a bit scattershot. I I'm not feeling well at
the moment, but that's all I got for today. I
promise I'll be more on the ball next time, and
I'll see what I can I'll see I'll see what
I can do about finding them the direct testimony of
of Peter Hagendorff. Like I said, I'm actively working on
finding a correct translation of some of these excerpts, but
I think that'd be worth getting into.
Speaker 1: Awesome, awesome, No, and I don't think it was scottershot
at all. It seems to be linear, So yeah, great,
all right, I encourage everyone go over to Thomas's substack
real Thomas seven seven seven dot substack dot com, and
you can connect to him, uh pretty much everywhere from there,
And maybe one of these these days Astral will remember
that so that he can tag in the Inquisition episodes,
which I think he did. He dropped the message saying
he actually did. He repaired that, Thomas, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Wasn't trying to get in my feelings be a dick.
I just like I said, I was starting to think
you guys were embarrassing yourself because it's happened like a
couple of times, like why do I never appear on.
Speaker 1: These Hey that's astral That may all right.
Speaker 2: I know you guys are my friends. I don't really
think that you're embarrassed to be associated.
Speaker 1: With me, all right, Thomas, till then next time.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Yeah, thank you. Bady