The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1307: The Thirty Years War - Part 2 - w/ Thomas777

Episode Date: December 18, 2025

54 MinutesPG-13Thomas777 is a revisionist historian and a fiction writer.Thomas continues a series on the 30 Years War, which many historians count as the most important European conflict prior to the 20th century. In this episode he details how war was waged on the battlefield.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.

You know, If you want to get the show early and ad-free, head on over to the Piquinez 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 your site. 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 piccunioness 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.

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Thomas is back. And after a little hiatus due to travel. We're going to continue the 30 Years' War series. So how are you doing, Thomas? I'm doing well. I was very pleased that the first episode was so well received because it's a huge subject matter. And I feel comfortable speaking on historical topics,

but there's so much here. There's deep cultural anthropology here. There's ecclesiastical her. There's military science stuff, you know, so I was worried that maybe I wasn't presenting the material in a way that people found worthwhile, but there's been a lot of effusive praise. And I really appreciate that because I work hard at this to deliver, you know, content that people actually benefit from. You know, there's a few different ways we can go in proceeding. I kind of want to, I realize this. I realize this. I'm kind of dealing in broad strokes, but that's because if I don't, we're on the same subject matter for the next five years.

I've whittled down to what I think is most important. In the 17th century, there was a revolution in military affairs. That's important. And there was a power political paradigm that preceded that, that led to a sort of technological shock when the 30 years war arrived, because it was so different than the preceding paradigm.

Also, when I think of what became Germany in political terms, you know, Brandenburg, Prussia, was utterly devastated by the conflict, but it also solidified its militant, Protestant identity, you know, and that's important, too. But also, the way that the, the way that the modern battlefield developed, I think, is ill understood, especially because the way in which military science textbooks were written then, there was these very, very geometric models presented, and in manuals that dealt with. with things like infantry drill, there was exaggerated depictions of kinesiology and human motion. So for a long time, that led a lot of war college types

to think, oh, well, there was this overemphasis on drill. That's not why. They were, especially when most people weren't literate, they were trying to convey sort of the mechanics of human motion and the difference between the parade ground and the battlefield as well as trying to convey to everybody from NCOs. and battalion-level officers to conscripts and, you know, infantry grunts.

They were trying to convey a concept in visual terms, okay? There was actually a great deal of flexibility in the 30 years' war in terms of how combined arms were oriented. And make a mistake, there were real, combined arms, you know, cavalry infantry and artillery was, it was incredibly complicated to deploy these forces in concert. And there was a technological revolution underway then too, whereby it became clear, particularly with respect to field artillery. Weapons design realized there were certain potentialities to large guns, but there wasn't the materials

and the tools available to make them yet. So there was all these sort of intermediary designs where the bore wasn't quite right for the range desired, but the men making these things knew that this was possible. So military science was kind of overshooting military technology. Usually it's the opposite. So I hold the minority opinion a lot at a lot of subject matters to the point where I'm sure some people are convinced I'm really a contrarian. I don't think that I am, but this is yet another case. I think 30 years more tactics. That strategic orientation was light years ahead of everything before it.

But they didn't have the tools to effectively deploy in total. you know within that complete paradigm also mission-oriented tactics and this becomes important owing to the conceptual biases born in the preceding the preceding military paradigm for one of the major powers you know say like you know the Holy Run umpire or you know Poland Lithuania or a you know the the swedish confederation in order for them to field an army it would cost about seven million gulders just just to raise you know like an army that could you know uh that could uh that could uh you know stand and face uh a peer competitor

and not get slaughtered just out of the gate and then you need to feed and pay these grunts and cavalrymen and artillery men then you need to feed all these animals so this was astronomically expensive so what i'm getting at is that if you want to sustain that level of operational effectiveness you you had to resolve pretty rapidly But also in the 30 years war, the way that it broke down, where, you know, you had adjacent principalities going to war with each other all at the same time, there was, you know, civil wars raging within a common polity, usually with the Protestants as the element in rebellion, but not always. so you had you had bays would amounted to war bands of zealots kind of like christian mujadine as well as mercenaries that were deployed as essentially a counterinsurgency elements you know and then you had the you had you had the arms of the king or the reigning lesser nobility and these guys were like a war band living off the land you know they were not conventional military forces

So mission-oriented tactics, some primitive iteration of it just became the order of the day. And this led to a lot of rapine, figurative and literal, brigandry, awful stuff happened, but even basically upright and civilized troops. you know you they had to live off the land you know so you were fighting not just um you know your your day-to-day wasn't just you know in operational terms locating closing with and killing the enemy or if you know you were licking your wounds as a unit you know as a company or a battalion you were basically moving only at night and hiding during the day until you could refit and regroup but and either one of those under either one of those conditions you had to feed yourself you'd starve and especially too in these battle spaces it's not like normal commerce

was was being totally interrupted you know it's not it's not like you could go to a marketplace and buy a bunch of loaves of bread or something, you know, so this, this changed everything. And when I talked about the shock aspect, it wasn't just technological or historical. The way to understand Europe, really for the preceding couple, of centuries but in earnest for the preceding 50 years you know i made the point about the the turkish war that the hapsburgs fought against the ottomans between 1593 and 1606 that was the largest mobilization of military force in hasburg lands since the 1560s and to be clear the ottomans were still a and in comparative terms were still a superpower i'll be at one in decline in the 16th and

17th century and Europeans all view the ottomans as a common threat to christiandom and this did two things what and they were that wasn't just a fiction um that was exploited for um you know political reasons but this Europe needed that external military and a political threat to sustain anything approaching unity between these diverse polities but also the central and eastern european frontier especially you know we got into talking about transylvania and morovia and to a lesser degree uh bohemia in the last episode it was impossible to truly fortify this frontier in a in a linear uh kind of garrison capacity there were a large swasa territory that were just impassable you know because they were a triple canopy forest um populations were concentrated in these scattered towns you know um it uh it didn't uh it lend itself to the strategic thinking was

oriented very much to countering this discreet threat and creating what amounted to a defense in depth by garrisoning lead elements at key junctures, you know, almost like, almost like NATO dated the fault of gap in the North German plane, just because there was only a handful of avenues of assault ingress, okay? And then as a secondary defensive cordon, you know, deployment would be more linear, all right? But this informed military doctrine from top to bottom and pretty much throughout the continent. And at the odds have I still, in 1618 basically every officer in NCO serving in a Habsburg like bearing arms for the Habsburgs had cut his teeth you know in the in the Turkish War so this

fluid and diffuse pattern of combat and deployment that ensued in the 30 years war, which was one part civil war, one part, pretty conventional conflict between adjacent polities. Nobody was prepared for that. you know and so the this the learning curve was a trial by fire you know and the people who are most towards that end to the the people who are kind of unsung and overlooked and I'm sure again people will say this is a conceptual bias of mine towards the Protestant side. But these counts and dukes, like Count Thurn, like Honlobe and Mansfield, they led the Bohemian Rebel element in the Eastern Hasper lands, and they really put a huge amount of hurt on what was viewed as kind of the top.

infantry and cavalry elements of the day and this is this is overlooked in favor of the battlefields farther west where these military science types basically look at their view is basically that

the Spanish style of warfare was deteriorating and becoming obsolete. and that's what everybody abided, including the Habsburgs, then, you know, after about a decade on the Swedes intervened and the Swedes revolutionized warfare. I don't accept that for a lot of reasons, but, you know, this paradigm that wasn't quite unconventional, but also is not at all conventional warfare in the way we think of it, as was extant, you know, before, or after that's uh that's important and uh it's not unlike uh in my opinion what happened uh in the

balkins and on the eastern frontier and world war two um you know and uh and uh and uh so this uh This also had a conceptual aspect to it too, because as innovation in tactics and new ways of fighting and incorporating, you know, truly effective gunpower weaponry as states like what became Prussia, you know, their claim to prestige and their power political ambitions were facilitated by their excellence at warfare almost exclusively i mean yeah i there's obviously the there's a huge amount of culture produced by you know kingdoms like prussia as well um but there but that that was that that was the the singular most significant variable in their ascendancy and the degree to which military considerations either direct or directly or obliquely is sort of coded European development that's a hugely

important point and uh that's one thing that sets europe apart and european people apart you know and uh europeans are kind of the ultimate warrior race you know that i don't think they can be denied you know um but the uh and another way reason this is important And another way, I part ways from a lot of court historians. You know, again, this idea that for really the first decade of the 30 years war, you know, it was a matter of obsolete tactics and strategy and technique being exposed as such. Like, that's not really true either. You know, innovation happened rapidly.

and immediately and you know it uh those commanders and those elements that couldn't adapt essentially immediately upon first contact with an opposing force they just ceased to exist you know um so there's a flexibility built in to tactical doctrine by necessity that sounds tautological but that there is a there is a tautological aspect to the way military affairs play out at um you particularly at um company or battalion level i i don't think serious people dispute that um you know it's uh Also, too, another thing that changed, brutal as the wars what the Turks were, you know, the Turks basically, the Turks would probe, they'd see what avenues of assault ingress were available. And again, on the frontier, especially in Transylvania and Morovia, these were few. and then they'd exploit those breaches when they had overwhelming force on their side

when they met resistance you know that couldn't be overwhelmed they'd frequently evade and shelter behind fortifications you know in anticipation of in anticipation of the counterattack you know in in in the Hungarian theater though and you know in what became the the Bohemian theater the order of the day was I mean this was in part although not completely you know a sectarian war a holy war even the objective really was to stack of bodies you know um it was a it was a head hunt you know exploit uh like like you know locate close with the enemy and annihilate him as as an end in itself was oftentimes the mission orientation

you know um but this differed by the you know what battle space were talking about There was an amalgam of diverse mission orientations, tactical doctrines, terrains, weather patterns, you know, you name it. It was, there was probably more data, other than in the 20th century, other than the 19th and 20th centuries, and the 19th century, you know, so the American War between the States, the 20th century, obviously, I don't need to elaborately explicate this. but other than those two examples there was more data gleaned on the practical business of combined arms tactics and infantry war fighting and from you know gleamed from 30 years of war than any other conflict paradigm and i'll die on that i'll die on that hill proverbially um another uh another uh And yeah, the technological revolution, too, it's probably like, you know, people, it's probably become somewhat cliche, but, you know, warfare is the mother of invention. You know, even like what we're doing right now, I mean, the internet exists because it was a survival command and control platform, you know, in anticipation of nuclear war. you know, the entire telecombe revolution came out of the Cold War, you know, air power, you know, as we know it, you know, came out of military exigencies, you know, the space program, you name it.

Like, I'm the first person to criticize the rent-seeking and the parasitic nature of the military apparatus. Okay, I mean, I think people who read my content are well aware of that. But this talking point that a lot of both liberals, libertarians are prone to where they say that like Wirtek never produced anything or that it's a worthless expenditure of human energies and capital, that's complete nonsense. There's warfare produces all kinds of innovations that have broad application. and claiming otherwise is just moronic you know um and simultaneously in the 17th century there was just a lot of punctuated innovation particularly on the side of mathematics and engineering and things but um something big that happened between handheld firearms basically appeared in the battlefield between the

1470s and about 1520 or 1530 but they hadn't really been perfected they were largely perfected by the time of the onset of hostilities in 1618 and And that led to the development of a new kind of shock deployment pattern, which is really fascinating. And I'll get more into this as we get into this series, but your firearm infantry, they would deploy basically like a phalanx. the Dutch developed this technique of constant fire even while

retreating where stated simply essentially like the the lead line of the phalanx would fire and then break off

you know and then the second line and then third line and they'd each line would reload, you know, as the line in front of them was finding their target and discharging their weapons. But this, uh, this, uh, your pikemen, thus are, uh, who traditionally had a defensive role, because pikemen in fixed formation, horses will not charge and throw themselves on pikes horses are really smart and war horses are bred for those kinds of instincts among other things but your pikemen essentially need to protect the uh they

they they need to protect the your uh your shot phalanx from enemy cavalry and uh Additionally, when the sort of earliest combined arms, tactical paradigms developed, and some of this endured to the 30 years war, but it mostly didn't. traditionally your cavalry assaults its counterpart you know um your infantry assaults its counterpart you know um having to rush your infantry or having this kind of light cavalry element light in terms of not really being armored but that's loaded down with handled firearms that essentially like zigzags in skirmish formation and then swoops in, you know, to provide extra firepower to a phalanx that's being outgunned or overwhelmed or threatened by cavalry.

All these sort of innovations and tweaks to the paradigm, you know, became necessary. you know and uh productive techniques and conventionally uh transylvania was conventionally the um it was almost like crup or the scota armsworks of its of the middle ages in early modern period they built really great siege engines and they built really great artillery the transylvanian saxons you know they they were this uh There were these, you know, Germans who'd settled in Transylvania in, you know, 1,000 AD or even earlier. They were another population that was ethnically cleansed after World War II, incidentally. But productive techniques and metallurgy and things became such that, you know, guns and artillery, you know, they couldn't be mass produced in the terms that we think of it.

but they could be produced at a scale that was there before basically unprecedented. Interestingly, too, and this added, there's nuances of the command structure of armies in the 30 years war and military culture that are not just anthropologically interesting. It's fascinating stuff, but artillery men, the loading of artillery, the loading of artillery, the, the, practice of targeting fighting as an artillery man these guys belong to the same guild as miners because it partook of metals and things and so if you wanted if you wanted the artillery in your in the army you were raising you had to deal with the miners guild I can't remember who their patron saint is. But point being,

so you basically, you had to be on good terms, if you were a prince or a duke or whatever, with the guild under which artillery men, you know, fell. And they'd view their guild as having authority that's superseded that of commanding officers. And to be clear, the gild, old system, it wasn't just some glorified version of the Freemasons or something. The idea was that productive techniques and artisanal techniques and things, this is all part of God's

revelation. This is a sacred aspect to the preservation and maintenance and passing on to this knowledge. It's very deeply theological, and it was taken very, very seriously. You know, so There was a certain prestige and fraternal insularity that attended guys who served in the artillery branch, but it also caused problems. You know, I mean, people think inter-service rivalry and late modernity is like a big deal. I mean, this plus two, when you couple it with sectarian divisions,

you know, like we talked about in the first episode, Yes, there were, you know, the Protestant, the Calvinists and the Lutherans were nominally allied. And you had Lutherans and Protestants serving in common formations, but there was a lot of tension there. You know, they, there wasn't some sort of, there wasn't a very deeply felt, you know, generically Protestant identity, quite the contrary. So there's all kinds of complicated stuff is what I'm getting at that we'd associate with the medieval period. You know, like what mainstream Anglophone history views as the medieval era, but, you know, that was still, that still held significant psychological sway over military organizations and political institutions. you know into the 1600s you know um it's really fascinating and again too like I said there was there was real difficulty with uniformity of ammunition um as well as boars for these guns

because there's all kinds of experimentation going on because like I said these designers they they were experimenting with designs that they knew were possible but there just wasn't the material or the technique perfected to make a battlefield viable yet. So this led to a lot of failures of discrete platforms because the testing ground is literally the battlefield, but also even those that, even those guns that were viable, there was such a diversity of models that, you know, it caused combatability issues, you know, or even if there was plenty of ammunition on deck you know you'd have men who hadn't trained on whatever guns that they you know were able to get a hold of you know and things like that um so it's kind of

amazing things worked as well as they did and like i said it the sophistication on display and um you know these these tactical treaties and stuff is pretty it's pretty incredible but yeah at the same time too it uh there was a self-conscious uh emulation of the Greek phalanx and that kind of drill technique, you know, and a lot of that endures to this day, you know, but it's not merely, it's not merely ceremonial and it's not merely parade round stuff that looks pretty. There's certain, even today, I mean, even as the modern battlefield has become true. fluid and what have you and in a lot of ways you know all prior assumptions

relating to land and particularly infantry combat are are no longer particularly relevant but there's certain there's certain geometric realities that are constant no matter what you know when there's the added benefit fit with some of these techniques and practices that there's the way to tradition behind them, that's the way to understand the aforementioned. You know, like I can't remember we were talking, I was not talking to you or talking to our dear friend, Jay Burton, about the spirit of the bayonet. And how at the end of the day, you know, the, the bayonet or the coal steel blade,

when not affixed to a rifle remains a relevant implement of the infantry and of warfare generally, and that will never change. You know, it's the same, it's the same sort of principle. What this was further complicated, I touched on the presence of pikemen and, you know, phalanx of gunners in the battle space of the 30 years war. Optimizing this combination was incredibly difficult, and even if it could be optimized. in a parade ground exercises and in training you know gun smoke made visibility very very difficult so I mean in the heat of battle trying to shout orders as a battalion commander when you don't have the benefit of you know a clear visual perspective, that means you've got to be able to rely upon regular movements, you know, and anticipating how those movements are going to break down and how they're going to adapt and how they're going to reconstitute in the midst of all manner of configurations of

assault. You know, um, and it's a real. a man who can do that effectively but it also meant that uh you know again these challenges were emerging owing to immediate military exigency you know this wasn't war college uh exercises that were then being parlayed into operational doctrines in the field. You know, these things are being innovated as it happened. The Dutch need to be credited with pioneering a lot of what became Pike and Shot Battlefield Doctrine

The Dutch had deployed the way we talked about a moment ago with the pikeman flanking musketeers and to be clear too in most European armies

even even handgun infantry were still referred to as musketeers the spaniards in contrast and the imperial infantry you know the holy roman empire they were more conventional they favored the depth elaborate depth within their formations. I mean, because they had to manpower, but also they practice something not only what we consider to be deep battle, you know, like the Soviets did and now the Russians do, albeit in an altered form, you know, which makes sense. I mean, forgive the digression, but, you know, like we've talked about, and like I'm not sure a lot of people know this, you know the reasons why the armed force of the russian federation the reason why they perform a modified goose step you know they were drilled by prussians i mean clausowitz was observing the battle of moscow from moscow you know um russian deep battle uh there's the DNA of uh you know um

some of these imperial infantry doctrines, you know, which admittedly was somewhat at odds with Prussian sensibilities, but you had plenty of Prussian officers who were drilling the Ivins and what amounted to Hapsburg techniques. I find this fascinating. it you know the um the imperial hafsburgs and the spaniards generally could field more musketeers than a lesser force could and you know it if you can if you can overwhelm uh the enemy with firepower, the point of contact, you know, that's always a massive force multiplier. And to be clear, too, there wasn't only one type of cavalry. This evolution of distinct cavalry elements, this preceded the 30 years' war, but not really by as much as you might think. one of the reasons why Calgary was king for so long, it's not just because of the mystique of it

and the fact that Equestrian was the exclusive domain of nobles, you know, in European societies for the most part, but there was distinct, there was basically five distinct roles in Calgary by the turn of the 17th century there was the shock roll there's firepower and reconnaissance there's the mobile

reinforcement element you know and there was the there's the probing element for lack of a better I mean, I guess that would fall, I mean, that they'd fall under the, within the penumbra, the scouting function. But, um, these, these are all very different kinds of roles, you know, um, and the way they train these horses is fascinating. Horses being smart, you know, the, the battlefield is frightening, you know, not just for me.

men but also for beasts especially intelligent beasts like horses and um if horses are amissed dead things they'll instinctively go to avoid them you know like rotting corpses and stuff so the way they'd train war horses the the armies of the day um they haven't performed these charge drills amissed piles of carrion and rotting animal carcasses and bonfires. Like, meanwhile, they have men, like, squeezing shots off. You know, so the horse would get used to, you know, overcome its fear of, of fire and firepower,

as well as become habituated to literally the smell of death, you know, because they'd been exercised and fields full of blazing straw and piles of detritus. You know, And they were also trained to kick out and maneuver in formation without falling over. It's really incredible. But a calorie, a proper warhorse with a amount could technically gallop at about 40 kilometers per hour. with a rider weighted down with armor and weapons i mean it's top speed it'd be considerably

less than that but still i mean that that's insane you know a warhorse with a mounted cavalryman bearing down at you with that speed um at point of contact it will tear you to pieces you know um and uh thus the shock element and that's why the pike developed the pike's a versatile weapon even though it looks essentially just like a great big spear you had to be very very physically strong to be an effective pike man you also had to have very steely nerves but uh and uh even trained and experienced pikemen who'd been in battle before there were times where their nerves failed them and the you know the the pike phalanx had fall apart because um just got of fear you know and a skilled inventory commander or a skilled cavalry commander he could discern when that was going to happen sometimes by literally how shaky you know the pike formation was

you know, in which case you go in and assault it, you know, assume, you know, one of the presumption they'll break ranks. And because horses won't throw themselves on pikes, they'll break off, you know. And the way, the way pikemen were deployed in a fixed defensive phalanx, they were staggered such that, it was essentially a veritable like tightly contained forest of uh of pikes you know um it became an it became an insurmountable obstacle that uh was also mobile you know so i mean there was like any any one of these elements in in of itself is a just an incredible task to coordinate, you know, intellectually and everything else, let alone in, you know, correct Congress with one another. And, uh, and, uh, now, of course, the ubiquity of firepower and, and handled fire on

the battlefield that dramatically reduced the role of cavalry so cavalry became fewer and fewer in absolute as well as relative terms they also became more elite interestingly in the east there were uh hungarians as well as polish uh nobles still with some adaptations obviously to the reality of the of the of the um of battlefield tech they retained a lot of conventional calorie doctrines and uh they called themselves hussars you know the uh the hussars uh like prussian hussars which is actually the toten koff comes from was the death set hussars That is a totally different meaning in German armies. But famously, there's the Polish-Southuanian winged hussars.

They'd wear full armor, including with a faceplate. But they'd create these elaborate wings out of wooden or metal frames. and at a full gallop, one of these hussars, these wings had become volent, and this high-pitched sort of halfway between what sounded like a scream and a hiss would whistle through the apparatus, which is incredibly evocative and just kind of badass, I think. But those are the winged hussars of, you know, of myth and lore. Cavalrymen also, obviously, they had to learn to handle firearms.

They had to learn to shoot. They had to learn to, you know, take down targets at relative range. as well as in close combat and the problem was even even one of the flintlocked pistols of the day they're comparatively long you know and all but the lightest ones generally needed something got a stand or brace in order to be steady but even though it's light enough to manage um the way they'd be holstered for a cavalryman they'd be holstered for a cavalryman they'd be holstered holstered lengthwise on either side, but with the, you'd have to, they'd have to be drawn cross chest because the barrel would be facing opposite the rider. So you'd have to draw one lengthwise

like that. And because most riders are right-handed, they'd have to tip the horse left, then fire to the right, and, like, do all this one-handed, you know, because obviously, like, firing over the horse's head is going to, the horse doesn't go deaf. It's, you know, you're going to, it could be powder burned or injured otherwise. But, you know, they're, in addition to the risk presented by infantry guns in the battle space, you, uh, every, every, every, every calorie men had to become essentially a, like a competent infantry men as well. You know, it was, uh, just, uh, an, an incredibly arduous litany of, skills and this is kind of you know americans one of the reasons americans are romantic about

you know the confederacy and stuff is you had these guys who could fight mounted but it could also were competent you know gunmen and you know had all these were competent in in in all these skill sets, you know, like Confederate officers were, and like a lot of these revolutionary war guys were. But, I mean, that's basically the origins of this. You know, that's where those who could were physically and psychologically capable. I mean, that's where you, you know, these, the 30 years war is when men like that, you know, appeared on the battlefield and i i find that kind of fascinating you know and um the uh the gun the rogue gunfighter the old was gunfighter he's kind of like the ron he's kind of like the

bastard ron and offspring of this tradition too i just i find that incredibly cool you know um i don't know if uh i don't know if other people are grabbed by it that way but um you know the i was going to get into the confessional aspects of this because you know competing varieties of christianity i think that's overstated when people assert it was you know somehow like the proximate cause of hostilities but it was the most significant anthropological element and even were that not the case these confessional identities emerged in true earnest at the same time as this conflict paradigm began taking shape you know um we talked about last week how the haspers and trying to revive the imperial mandate they very much tried to

insinuate their political ambitions into a general catholic revival and that wasn't just cynical i mean first of all a lot of the a lot of the hasberg nobles they were believing catholics and a lot of them are good catholics but uh it's also you know um calvinist and lutheran identity was uh providing a serious challenge to what had been a very integral catholic political ontology and uh but i i that deserves an episode unto itself so we'll get into that next time i hope this wasn't informative and wasn't too scattershot like i said i don't i'm not trying to overly self-conscious but this is a an important subject matter, not just a historical record, but for our people and for Christians,

especially, you know, so I want to make sure I present it properly, and plus I, last time I want to do is waste anybody's time. So, yeah, I, I'm really looking forward to continuing this series, man. Yeah, I think the, uh, the concentration on the different confessions definitely deserves its own episode and this one you know I mean talking about battle and talking just about you know

how much battle after this would be informed by it is is important to to share yeah good deal if you and the subs are happy I'm happy

yeah yes sir all right until the next time I'm going to to ask you to go over to Thomas's substack. Thomas's Twitter disappears and comes back and disappears and comes back. It may not be the best place to get them, but over on substack, you can get, you can connect to pretty much anywhere Thomas is and also, you know, he's got a chat over there and you can

reach out to him there. So please do that. And Thomas, until the next time. Repeat. Thank you.