Dream of Revenge (2nd edition)

The Ottoman threat and developments in the Netherlands were among the most important events of their time at the beginning of the 17th century, but only until the moment the Bohemian Protestant estates carried out the Defenestration of 1618. This demonstrative reaction in Prague to the Habsburgs’ efforts towards absolutism, centralism, and re-Catholicisation unleashed a massive avalanche of accumulated problems throughout Europe.

Then began the Thirty Years' War – a calamitous conflict about which so much has already been written. Against the backdrop of this pan-European turmoil, a great many dramatic events unfolded. Thirty years of battles, disputes, diplomatic negotiations, intrigues, defeats, and victories took their toll. The daily struggle for survival inevitably marked everyone's way of thinking. Over the course of these unfortunate years, their attitudes were transformed in social, political, economic, cultural, and, not least, military respects. The Thirty Years' War changed Europe. This colourful depiction of an unfulfilled dream of retribution acquaints the reader with the cruel course of the war, the great figures of the constantly shifting conflicts, and the hopes and fates of Bohemian, Moravian, and Silesian emigrants.