The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1303: The Thirty Years War - Part 1 - w/ Thomas777

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

54 MinutesPG-13Thomas777 is a revisionist historian and a fiction writer.Thomas begins a series on the 30 Years War, which many historians count as the most important European conflict prior to the 20th century.Thomas' SubstackRadio Free Chicago - T777 and J BurdenThomas777 MerchandiseThomas' Buy Me a CoffeeThomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 1"Thomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 2"Thomas on TwitterThomas' CashApp - $7homas777Pete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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over to the peak canyonez show.com. There you can choose from where you wish to support me. Now listen very carefully. I've had some people ask me about this, even though I think on the last ad, I stated it pretty clearly. If you want an RSS feed, you're going to have to subscribe through substack or through Patreon. You can also subscribe on my website, which is right there, Gumroad, and what's the other one? Subscribe Star. And if you do that, you will get access to the audio file. So head on over to the Pekignonez Show.com. You'll see all the ways that you can support me there.

And I just want to thank everyone. It's because of you that I can put out the amount of material that I do. I can do what I'm doing with Dr. Johnson on 200 years together and everything else. The things that Thomas and I are doing together on Continental Philosophy, it's all because of you and yeah i mean i'll never be able to thank you enough so um thank you the piquignano show dot com everything's there i want to welcome everyone back to the piquanos show we are back thomas is here and we are starting a new series today thomas take it away yeah we're going to be discussing the 30 years war which isn't just

a subject matter of trivial interest historians it was the form of event of the European modern era until World War II and even as recently as the 60s in the Bundes Republic

they pulled university educated people from presumably different walks of life and they said what was the most catastrophic event ever to befall Germany. And worse than World War I, worse than the bubonic plague, worse than even the Weimar starvation years,

was a 30-year's war. And into the Third Reich era, it's interesting, Gerbels, Speer, and the Fuhr himself all referenced the 30 years were consistently in public addresses, okay? All told that it killed between 8 and 12 million people, which was a massive attrition rate, a huge percentage of which were civilians. the battleground was the german kingdoms and it truly was a war fought by it truly was a european civil war by direct intervention and by proxy england famously and significantly sadded out but between 40 and 60 000 englishmen went to fight for the protestant alliance and um Hitler's take on this was interesting, to say the least.

He said that Germany, first of all, it was destroyed and it never truly recovered until the Bismarck era, which I think is an arguable, however you feel about the declarant. He also said that the sort of organic distribution of truly culture-bearing elements in Germany, presumably the purest of the of the Indo-European stratum he said that populations were scattered to the four winds and there was such catastrophic losses which weren't evenly distributed that

historical memory was compromised as well as cultural habit and learning and this is one reason why the Europeans had been set back so much relative to the nascent superpowers, but particularly America. You know, obviously the Habsburg-Austrian, Hitler was going to have a sort of deep historical perspective on these things. But I think that that's an account. of the historical record that needs to be taken seriously whether one accepts or rejects it also there's

this concept and thankfully there's been a lot more intelligent scholarship in the 30 years war even from relatively mainstream historians traditionally the way it was taught to people even at advanced graduate level was that oh well this was just a religious war of sectarian origin that's the wrong way to look at it obviously confessional um aspects can't really be extricated from high politics particularly in that era but something i emphasize in my own manuscript which obviously deals with this conflict because the peace of westphalia it wasn't a single treaty that's why it's called the wespalian peace and we'll get to that that's when the modern state system begins but there there wasn't there wasn't there wasn't the

quote protestant church and this kind of conceptual misunderstanding and dora to this day even when people like e michael jones they'll talk about protestantism like it's a mirror of the roman catholic church or something lutherans and calvinists had nothing in common other than opposition to the papacy. And in some localized theaters, they fought each other. This one Lutheran theologian of the era, he famously said that he basically called us the Taliban. He said that the dragon of Calvinism is as insidious as the Mohammedians.

Okay. And for example, one of the things Calvinists were prone to, particularly as emotions and confessional passions were at a high because of active warfare, Calvinist partisans, they'd smash icons to say, see, this is idolatry, this object has no power. Otherwise, God's wrath would intervene. Lutherans would never have done something like that. I mean, there's Lutheran churches this day. actively confessional, you know, but even those that place deliberate distance in terms of

their liturgy and ritual between their own congregations and Catholic practices, they revered icons and relics for historical reasons. You know, so you can't, then there was this minority faction in Transylvania and Moldovia who identified as they were this ethnic minority population of

indigenous slabs most of them but they identified as unitarian and not there's nothing in common with like the the faux church of today there were these people who rejected the Trinitarian concept of

God okay they were obviously a player but my point being there was not this binary political or sectarian diet you know um because england and scotland and ireland didn't play a direct role in this i mean they did by proxy and plenty of englishmen irishmen and scotsmen did fight on the continent but i believe because Britain wasn't impacted

that's one of the reasons why and tragically people never truly learned to live together along sectarian line and this didn't resolve until the end of the 20th century in Britain which is speculative

but I think there's also something too that postulate but that's something of a digression but and also finally I don't think people

fully realize the degree of Habsburg power to this day in the present day I mean the Holy Roman Empire it wasn't just a contrivance I know there's the famous

I can't remember who the sources of the statement but the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman Empire was neither holy nor roman nor an empire okay it wasn't just a ceremonial structure it had incredible power in no small measure because the hafsburgs dominated it which meant the hapsburgs dominated europe because the way to think of the holy roman empire is that as the political nucleus of europe was defested from Rome it became

situated in what's now Germany and drawing upon not just their you know the patronage of the Roman Catholic Church but also

aiming to derive legitimacy from an understanding of historical continuity you know, the understanding was that this is the new Rome. This is the new imperial seat. And the Habsburgs also, Spain at that time, the Spanish Habsburgs controlled Spain, which was the closest thing to a superpower in the 17th century.

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Air Credit Card, brought to you by Bank of Ireland in partnership with Air Lingus. Whether you're buying your weekly basics or splurging on a special gift, with Air Credit Card you'll collect avios and unlock even more rewards. The only Irish credit card that gives you travel rewards as you spend. Sign up now by searching Bank of Ireland, Air Credit Card and go from tap to take off. Bank of Ireland, begin. Over 18s only, lending creditors. terms and conditions apply subject to a monthly fee of six euro 50 and government stamp duty of 30 euro bank of ireland is regulated by the central bank of ireland and the spanish hafsburgs and the holy roman havesburgs or the austrian hafsbergs the german havesburgs if you were if you will they weren't formally allied but on all serious matters by politics

they always found themselves making common cause you know so the end of the truly feudal structure there's a reason why the piece of was failure is identified as the beginning of the modern state system and it's not just for structural reasons or because the conceptual bias of biases of Whig historians who can kind of confablet this pastiche of progressive linear development in the historical record. You know, this really was the end of one political reality at what amounted a planetary scale and the emergence of a new one. And it's not reducible to sectarian hostility.

or court intrigues of this Byzantine, you know, arrangement of duchies and principalities and things. Those aspects obviously played into it, but it's more complicated than that. This is an unbelievably massive topic. So I'm going to be jumping around a bit probably, and I always take notes extensively some of my data points are at my immediate disposal,

but I don't write out narratives. jumping around a lot. I forgive me for that. My alibi is it's the nature of the subject matter. The 30 years were again, for context too, and then I'll move on from the kind of hard and fast data record. know parts of uh what's modern day germany as we think of it they uh there was there was as high as 50 percent attrition or more you know so again this was comparable obviously not in terms of the cultural destruction wrought by enduring occupation and you know the you know the

the global political order of the 20 to 21st century. But in terms of raw attrition, this was as destructive as World War II to the Germans as a people. You know, the origins such that there is a single origin point, and I think this is fair, the Bohemian revolt, is cited as

the opening salvos of the 30 years war and the revolt itself started because of the defenestration of Prague for those that don't know defenestration is a fancy word for throwing somebody out a window okay now this begs the question as the who got thrown out the window

on Wednesday, December 23rd, or May 23rd, 1618, a representative of the Havsburg court named Villam Slavata. He and a delegation from the Bohemian Treasury, as well as a Supreme Court. He was a Supreme Court judge and he was president of the Wohenian Treasury. And he spent his entire political career serving the Hasburg dynasty directly.

He was married to an heiress, a Habsburg heiress, which made him one of the richest men in the entire kingdom. He was accompanied by another treasury representative named Yaroslav,

Borita, von Martinez, and one other man. And they were seized and quite literally thrown out the window into a ditch below.

And then according to some accounts the men were stabbed when they hit the ground Slavata his sword had not been unbuggled from his belt so apparently he was also stuck with his own sword but incredibly all three of these guys lived

but in those days among other things tensions being incredibly high they're being great concern over looming Protestant revolt, which happened, you know, became the Bohemian revolt that was just mentioned, the initial word that traveled was that all three men had died, you know, and this obviously provoked something of an over-response, arguably by the, by the Habsburgs. ferdinand was for context ferdinand was uh the king of uh bohemia he was the duke of steeria or the prince of stearia i can't remember his exact title but he uh

Styria had been something of a Lutheran stronghold and he'd crushed proxanism within his domain very aggressively and he was on record of saying with time that he'd rather see his kingdom destroyed

than for heresy to be tolerated within its borders he was elected a king of bohemia by the electors in the holy roman empire in the previous may 1617 and ferdinand he declared that he would tolerate prostinate religious freedoms many of which were laid down by the peace of Augsburg, and we'll get into what the implications of that were, but owing to his

record of persecuting Protestants and outright crushing nascent Protestant revolts, there was a great concern over what his tenure would look like. This led to a very

conspiratorial development whereby Protestant nobles the Czech nobility of Bohemia in particular were very very anti-Catholic

and their sensibility they determined like now was the time to rebel they offered the crown to the man who became known as Frederick the first Frederick the Palatine the Czech noble estate chose Frederick primarily because he was the leader of the Protestant Union which was a military alliance founded by his father the charter of which or the the treaty of which declared that all signatories and the kingdoms and duchies the representative would come to the aid of any protestant community under result they'd come to their collective defense and the big of hope was that

when war arrived James the 6th of Scotland and James I first of England King James the hope was that he would come to the aid of the Protestant Union and

you know bring his military might to bear not just for the sake of you know the faith but because he was Frederick's father-in-law. Inflation pushes up building costs, so it's important to review your home insurance cover to make sure you have the right cover for your needs.

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Dublin's most loved ice skating, the finest you'll find. Blanchetstown and Dunleary is where we will meet with family and friends for the best Christmas treat. For last-minute shoppers, we'll save you a chore. Get an ice skating gift card for those you adore. Dublin's favourite ice skating experiences are waiting for you with extended opening hours over Christmas in Blanchardstown and Dunlary

buy tickets and gift cards now at icecating.I.E. In life, you've around 29,000 days and those days can be full of what ifs. Like, what if it doesn't work? But what if it does? What if you really went after it?

Because life is measured in those moments. So go after everyone. Talk to AIB today and let's see how we can turn. your what ifs into what's next a iB for the life you're after allied irish banks plc is regulated by the central bank of ireland this was not forthcoming king james uh advised frederick against taking the crown and uh his notion was um you can't you know a uh a takeover from the habsburgs is going to lead the general state of war, you know, and you can't win that.

James realized coming to the defense of a, coming to the defense of a Protestant coalition on the continent may well lead to, you know, open hostilities with France and or Spain, which are periodically emergent anyway. You know, but the main thing was that it, it was, it was. a it was a quixote crusade you know um

and this uh this led to something of an enduring breached I think between the continent and um in England

you know I'm not I'm not suggesting as any proximate cause between these events and the Germanophobia and the foolishness of people like Vance to Tart centuries later, but England kind of withdrew into itself vis-à-vis the continent. And I think had there been, had there been more of a common front against the papacy that would have been different, but even something short of open military alliance. It was on August 19th, the Bohemian Estates declared that they were rescinding the recognition of Ferdinand's election, you know, concomitally declaring that Frederick was their king. Fernand was subsequently elected

Holy Roman Emperor nine days later which made war inevitable if Frederick accepted the bohemian crown in lieu of bowing out with something approaching honor

and he may very well have done that as most of his advice in addition to being snubbed by his father-in-law James almost all of Frederick's advisory cabinet urged him to reject it including the duke of savoy however who he did enjoy backing from was Maurice of Orange and Christian of Anhalt both of whom commanded substantial military forces in their own right and the Dutch at that time they had very full coffers you know and were a juggernaut in maritime trade as well as having a lot of political clout they they basically offer an open-ended guarantee to the Protestant Union to purchase weapons and munitions. And the thought was among the Dutch as well as Frederick that this would facilitate at long last

a wider support in Central Europe in the Protestant lands, if not a general uprising. this was not forthcoming in substantial measure because even people who had contempt for the Habsburgs even people who didn't view the de facto reign and stewardship of the Catholic Church over Europe rejecting an elected holy Roman emperor that was not a line people willing to cross regardless of their confessional allegiance and it placed one on the precarious position. There's no going back from that. You know, and obviously, too, in a sectarian coded war, one can't expect any quarter if they had a been a losing side. But on top of that, you and all your men will be slaughtered as brigands if, you know, your, your, your, your cause is

Balee involved rejecting a legitimate legally elected ruler. It just wasn't done. You know, um, let me find my place here. Now, one of the reasons why this was significant, why the reason why the reason is why we know so much about

the 30 years were the 17th century is kind of viewed as the first media revolution because that's when a media that as we can properly think of it came about even before you know the wide availability of a modern printing press there was just a tremendous amount of documentation about the battlefield situation you know by literate people and at that time still in the continent you know modest theories among other things functioned as as repositories of literacy and record keeping well, pretty much everywhere that became a battle space had a monastery or an abbey in proximity. And because this conflict dragged on for so long, and there was so much punctuated violence in these locales that ultimately became contested, there was just a whole lot of documentation of what was happening. And upon the conclusion of hostilities,

what we can think of as the sort of earliest precursor of the modern newspaper emerged in the form of a report on the piece of Westphalia. And the decades subsequent, the actual written piece of Westphalia, with many, many pages of, a commentary and like in situ accounts of what was underway this became uh the equivalent of an international bestseller you know with uh dozens of editions of editions and i believe that

continued for about a hundred years you know obviously the primary audience was people in academic and stuff but that was basically unheard of other than other than you know the bible if you're talking about uh you know something produced at scale you know mass production wasn't possible then but you know this uh this this was this was um remarkable for all kinds of reasons now something i think is uh very important and isn't really fleshed out enough with a handful of exceptions um there's a couple of books that deal with it but the the hasberg experience of maintaining the continental peace this was very much colored i think uh in a way that was counterproductive in terms of developing a meaningful picture

the strategic situation by the conflicts the haspergs had fought against the turks and make no mistake the uh the ottomans were by no means and decline at the turn of the seventeenth century the successors of suleiman the magnificent weren't um didn't have nearly his mandate nor his power But the Ottomans still controlled a massive amount of territory. They had a mighty military apparatus. They were then the primary geostrategic threat to Europe. And in the first phase of hostilities in the 30 years' war, almost all the Hasbrook officers had cut their combat teeth

in what was called the colloquially the long Turkish war or the 13 years war um yeah 1593 to 1606 you know so the guys who'd been

young officers in the long Turkish war um you know at the onset of hostilities in 1618 you know they they were men in senior commands by that point but But Havsburg lands were, they were, they were cosmopolitan in sectarian terms, okay?

And particularly on the frontier in places like Transylvania and really Moldovia, La Chalachia, and Transylvania. you know the experience of the hasburg's ruling these territories there's a basic stability even amidst cultural distance and periodic tensions between these populations okay and this ode to the fact of the common menace of the ottomans um the internal politics of transylvania i mean to be it clear, like, it was a piss, it was a patchwork of four major populations. There was a minority of Turkish peasants and Eastern Slavs, who, both of whom were sort of outside

of the reigning political culture. But the main populations were Orthodox Romanians, Calvinist Magyars, Lutheran Saxons, the Transylvanian

Saxons. and some self-governing indigenous Slavic elements who are nominally Catholic but probably abided some sort of folk belief system and the Prince of Alachia was a or the Prince of Transylvania was basically able with a handful of exceptions

to maintain these kinds of brokering agreements between groups, particularly the three nations of, you know, the Magyarnobles, the Saxon, you know, the Saxon German Lutherans, and these Orthodox Romanians. Inflation pushes up building costs, so it's important to review your home insurance cover to make sure you have the right cover for your needs. Under-insurance happens where there's a difference between the value of your cover

and the cost of repairing damage or replacing contents. It's a risk you can avoid. Review your home insurance policy regularly. For more, visit Understandinginsurance.I.E. forward slash under-insurance. Brought to you by Insurance Ireland. Ice skating.I.E. has Christmas in mind. Dublin's most loved ice skating, the finest you'll find.

Blanchets Town and Dunleary is where we. will meet with family and friends for the best Christmas treat. For last minute shoppers, we'll save you a chore. Get an ice skating gift card for those you adore. Dublin's favorite ice skating experiences are waiting for you with extended opening hours over Christmas in Blanchardstown and Dunlary. Buy tickets and gift cards now at ice skating.i.e. In life, you've around 29,000 days and those days can be full of what ifs. Like, what if it doesn't work? But what if it does? What if you really went after it?

Because life is measured in those moments. So go after everyone. Talk to AIB today and let's see how we can turn your what ifs into what's next. AIB for the life you're after. Alad Irish Bank's PLC is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. You know, and the... This balance was somewhat enshrined. by what is known in the historical record as the Torda Agreement,

not Torta, like a Mexican sandwich, Torda, T-O-R-D-A. That extended, as a matter of law, equal rights to Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, and the situation of the Orthodox was complicated because some were in communion with Rome, some weren't, but, you know, regardless, it was a chart of religious freedom that was basically observed. And, you know, the Hatsburgs looked westward, and they saw sectarian warfare being the norm and lands managed by their dynasties. And I believe they convinced themselves that their sort of progressive sensibility about sectarian

intolerance or confessional tolerance and you know they're kind of enlightened political ethics is what you know generated stability in these frontier territories and not again you know the geostrategic reality of um you know the ottoman threat um it uh Now, over time, too, has became enshrined when the Transylvanian prince converted to Calvinism, and he did so because an overwhelming number of Protestant nobles embraced the Calvinist faith. well uh the population the peasantry especially were overwhelmingly catholic or orthodox and the burgers and the the the commerce oriented populations and the towns almost who were led by the the saxons they were overwhelmingly Lutheran you know um so this idea you can have a

you can have a you can have a you can have a protestant principality that's of a calvinist uh reformed orientation you know presiding over a lutheran business class and in a roman cab like a nox peasantry you know the idea that this is workable oh and must oda you know the hapsburg system you know which wasn't um which was which again wasn't nothing to be extrapolated from these kinds of outlier kingdoms you know and to be clear the uh Transylvania was so called because it's dense woodland. It's probably triple canopy. My research indicates it's comparable to the herdskin forest, if not even more dense.

And only about a fifth of that lay under cultivation. So the population was concentrated in these isolated pockets. that was largely cut off from the ability to reinforce, okay? So you had this kind of, the people had to take on this kind of warrior-yeomanry sensibility, counter the Turks, who were a real threat. And, you know, they showed no quarter to the infidel, you know. that's the reality in the Balkans and on the frontier like this it's not there's this moronic neocons you try and make a whole narrative out of this which is nonsense but that what

I'm describing was the reality and um conditions like that are wonderful at keeping the peace between sectarian and elements and ethnic groups who otherwise would be at odds. You know, I mean, clearly, I think. So I think the Habsburg had a sense owing to this kind of frontier experience not so much that they were immune

to some sort of sectarian revolt but that their system had some sort of built-in mechanism whereby you know a general

state of civil war would be kind of unthinkable and another thing that kind of aggravated this you know the hasbergs uh they uh i think people have this view of them in this era kind of like they i mean don't be wrong i think franz joseph was a great man and a real hero but you know by the 19th century the spanish habsburgs were a mess um and uh the austrian havesbergs

admirable as franz joseph may have been you know it was there was There's something clearly out of time about them and very reactionary. But, you know, in the 17th century, they were probably the best of European royals. You know, these were learned people who excelled at military command and commerce and all the other things that a leadership cast. of a people should you know be adept at but they saw the writing on the wall in some sense that the world was changing you know and particularly the politics of the continent were changing and this sort of complex balance of futile interests and this interplay between

what Dumazzo called defunctions, you know, those who work, those who fight, those who pray, that wasn't going to endure in perpetuity and there was already cracks being to show. So the leading members of the Hasbrook Dynasty they became convinced that their posterity and the survival of the system itself depended upon restoring Catholicism

as the basis of political loyalty as well as of kind of communitarian life. And that wasn't entirely unrealistic, you know, not just because even accounting for places where there was a Catholic minority in the ruling of states like in Transylvania

you know there wasn't Protestantism was a house divided like we just talked about and also you know you had a deeply religious peasantry and even in places where, you know, the emerging

Mergantile class was majority Lutheran. You know, there was still a reverence for the historical aspects of the Roman church. You know, and there was this belief, too, that ultimately cooler heads will prevail among the noble estates because they've got to understand that

if we go to war with each other, it's just not manageable anymore. You know, you can't have the leadership element at loggerheads and survive as a discrete polity. You know, so I think there's understanding that, you know,

any reasonable man understands that their real business at government is, is placating the peasants and devising a and sustaining a, a communitarian ethos that's coded into the culture, you know, and, um, and on top of that, too, there was a basic understanding only to the politics of the holy see and i mean that's not i'm not saying something bad about the roman church just the reality was among other things after the ever the ringean era the pope became the de facto emperor of europe as it were because nature of bores a vacuum you know i'm not saying the vatting it didn't

want that role but it was also by necessity you know i think there was an understanding within the minds of the hapsburgs that you know a warring states uh paradigm will you know bring everything down um why when the cycle of violence truly kicked off in earnest the ottomans didn't assault that's an interesting question i'm not going to get into that this episode but um be that as it may um Inflation pushes up building costs, so it's important to review your home insurance cover to make sure you have the right cover for your needs. Under-insurance happens where there's a difference between the value of your cover and the cost of repairing damage or replacing contents. It's a risk you can avoid.

Review your home insurance policy regularly. For more, visit Understandinginsurance.I.E. forward slash under-insurance. Brought to you by Insurance Ireland. Skating.I.E. has Christmas in mind. Dublin's most loved ice skating, the finest you'll find. Blanchettstown and Dunleary is where we will meet with family and friends for the best Christmas treat. For last-minute shoppers, we'll save you a chore. Get an ice skating gift card for those you adore. Dublin's favorite ice skating experiences are waiting for you with extended opening hours over Christmas in Blanchardstown and Dunleary. Buy tickets and gift cards now at ice skating.I.E.

In life, you've around 29,000 days. And those days can be full of what-ifs. Like, what if it doesn't work? But what if it does? What if you really went after it? Because life is measured in those moments. So go after everyone. Talk to AIB today, and let's see how we can turn your what-ifs into what's next.

AIB, for the life you're after. Al-Aid Irish Bank's PLC is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. the uh and it's common too and obviously considering my own heritage i might not be truly objective on this matter there was a tendency this was faded somewhat at least in mainstream accounts from the mid to later 20th century. In particular, I've got this book. It's a really good book. It was published in 1963.

Excuse me. The author claims that, well, not putting blame on the Calvinist, he views the Calvinist participation in, these sorts of rebellious efforts within

Hasper lands to be the proverbial kerosene on the fire because it prevented it from being a clean-cut issue. You know, and like I said, there was, I think I mentioned at the outset, there was one Lutheran partisan writer who said, quote,

the Calvinist dragon is pregnant with all the horrors of mohammedeanism you know there was a certain fanatical fervor that calvin has brought to the table and to the battlefield and uh led to things frankly like throwing representatives of the hasburgs out the window um that uh it had the trappings of a militant cult that was being propagated for, you know, as an instrumentality of rejecting the rule of law and the legitimacy of duly elected kings and emperors. And, you know, that's, that raises alarm as it should. You know, but again, I'm with a bully, and don't get me wrong, you know, again, I'm not, I'm not saying that the perspective I just described is, which places a substantial, not blame, but causal emphasis on Calvinist extremism as, at least an aggravating factor.

and intensity of hostilities and it's not totally wrong but I think it's important to acknowledge that this this wasn't a this wasn't a purely sectarian conflict you know and I I don't think there are any such things

as purely sectarian conflicts that's always an aspect of a greater or lesser causal relevance but it's never an exclusive

causus belly and I object to it when people dismissively refer to religious wars there's you know

no such thing and speaking of which the Calvinists for their part after the deforestation of Prague

the propaganda that was so sort of strongly tailored against them you know they're reformed they came to characterize

the Habsburg response as a Vatican crusade against them you know and Calvinists are fond of pointing out that idolaters as they view it will always assault the true elect

well you know the crusades on the continent were essentially always directed against pagans some of whom were engaged in in truly demonic activities and things So this kind of narrative developed its own momentum. I mean, first of all, a crusade wasn't declared against the Calvinists,

even those who were in open revolt. But secondly, nobody suggested, I mean, there was Lutherans apparently who claimed that, you know, they were in dragon, like the Mohammedians, or pregnant with the menace, the Mohammedians. But nobody that I know have claimed that they were worshipping the devil or were pagans. but there was you know there wasn't the minds of some of these Calvinist partisans were about to be programmed

and as the war went on that that did happen I mean it happened to Catholic people too who unfortunately found themselves you know a sectarian minority on the ground but you know I

it's another kind of typically tragic case of potentialities in the public mind becoming immediate realities owing to fear, you know, and um it's a

fascinating story, you know, um, that's about all I got for my introduction. And frankly, I'm kind of exhausted, but I'll get into the, this has been a very hectic week. So forgive me for being abrupt or

what have you, and forgive me if that was too scattershot. But I one of the things I'm going to do during my downtown on the road is break down the some of the military aspects of this. And it's kind of a fascinating era, man.

You know, I think. And it's what became the pike and shot era. And the pike being the primary edged weapon You know, that's

I got into a conversation One of the fellows the other day We were talking about firearms Because I was talking with the buck one twenty-nine Which has become my favorite blade But uh And we were talking about the transition of infantry From blade of weapons to firearms

And I'm like, you know In the Pike and Shot era firearms were viewed as like if you were a real infantry man you killed people with a pike you ran them I mean running somebody through the pike I mean that's that's pretty like their blood will splash in your face

it's no joke but it's interesting how that kind of slow transition to the rifle becoming the the infantryman's stock and trade i guess it worked i mean one of the the the british always made a big deal you got to retain the bayonet i mean bayonets are useful you know uh to this day and uh i know the marines and the army brought back the bayonet after a brief hiatus and uh

in gusuf hasford's book the short timers one of the chapters called the spirit of the bayonet but it that's that's that's the legacy of what we're talking about is uh you know you got a the eardrement has to be he's got to be trained and capable of killing with cold steel and he's also got to understand the spiritual significance of that you know um i find that profound you know um and i'm not at base a military hound or something i just i just i think it's significant but yeah no that's uh i hope this wasn't formative and uh if not in lightning i don't promise in lightning but i hope i hope i convey information in a way that is useful all right good intro and uh you know i guess we'll

probably pick this up back uh after you get off the road um everybody go to thomas the substack it's real thomas seven seven seven seven dot substack dot com and you can connect to him from anywhere into all other places from there that's his uh center of operations so um yeah that's the conspiracy begins that is that where it happens that's that's what originates at least online yeah no thank you man I'll I'll only be gone uh I'll only be gone like four or five days so it won't be like a marathon trip like the last like a Thomas tour but no I really appreciate it man and I'll um yeah I'm looking forward to this series as it gets underway absolutely all right thank you so I'll soon a couple days

Thank you. Thank you.