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So your point is that you can find Roman infrastructure comparable to Roman infrastructure during the 30 years war ?
When I said you will be hard pressed to find a road network comparable to the Roman one... ah why do I have to explain further ?
When I said you will be hard pressed to find a road network comparable to the Roman one... ah why do I have to explain further ?
Yes of course.
What I meant tho is that "Roman standards" are way above what they could or have build since Roman times.He put Roman standards regarding roads below the standards of 17th century roadbuilding capabilities and standards.
At least thats how I understood it.
Yes, I take your point... but didn't really know how else to say it. As @pithorr says, other areas at least had the remains of a road network built during Roman times, but not Germany.
I don't have any detailed information on 30-Years-War era roads in Germany, but I think 'limited' would be a fair description. They weren't really adequate to sustain the trains of wagons during the wars of Frederick the Great, much less during the religious wars.
Easier to list what they didn't have: modern organizational and administrative functions, food preservation, weatherproof roads, conveyances that didn't consume the body weight in forage and that move faster than a slow walk, decent field sanitation, the ability to grow a massive food surplus... as @gagenater remarks, we can move and sustain large numbers of people today. We've had centuries of practice to refine our techniques and build up infrastructure. They had populations that were about as big as they could sustain, armies bigger than they could control and sustain, and religious fervor.
In "The Mote in God's Eye" the Moties have stories of Crazy Eddie. He's the archetype of the well-meaning person who causes disaster, the guy who leads the sanitation workers out on strike in a city that's just barely moving out enough garbage and sewage to stave off an epidemic. That's the 30 Years' War in a nutshell: Crazy Eddie.
Rome built roads using several layers of various materials topped by flat paving stones, but only a few of those roads remained by the 17th Century, in bad shape where they existed at all. Most of the other "roads" were dirt paths, quickly reduced to muddy tracks during some seasons. The ability to create new "all season" roads capable of handling supply wagons in volume, or to renew the old ones that were slowly breaking apart over the centuries, was close to non-existent. Shipping supplies via road to units in the field effectively hadn't existed since Rome's collapse, rivers were useful but limited, canals only extended their scope slightly, and rails hadn't been developed yet. Basically, one sent an army, fought a battle or two, and when it ran out of supplies, it either had to take them from the surrounding populace,thereby stripping the area bare at least until the next harvest, or else break up and return home by circuitous routes in order to spread out the load on the food supply. Taking over a country by methodical advance with an army being continuously supplied and reinforced still wasn't an option at that time; you fought a series of separate battles, or short seasonal campaigns at most, over a period of a few years until one side was too exhausted or broke to continue.
In the case of the 30YW, each time one side reached the point where it could no longer field a viable force, another country would take up the cause, since they had a common objective. Nobody was willing to throw their own forces, and in particular, their own funds, into the grinder if they could help it, but whenever there was no one else capable of supporting the cause, they stepped in, in turn.
In the case of the 30YW, each time one side reached the point where it could no longer field a viable force, another country would take up the cause, since they had a common objective. Nobody was willing to throw their own forces, and in particular, their own funds, into the grinder if they could help it, but whenever there was no one else capable of supporting the cause, they stepped in, in turn.
The other critical point in the stale-mate of the 30 years war is the role of fortifications. Taking a modern gunpowder fort in the 17th century was a massive and expensive undertaking. You had to assemble, move and supply a large army for an extended period of time as well as maintain various covering forces to keep supply lines open. All the difficulties of moving and supplying armies are magnified when you have to stay in the same place for weeks and months.
This means that it often took an entire season of campaigning to capture a couple of forts, giving the loser of any campaign plenty of time to rebuild and replace losses. As such, actually inflicting sufficient damage to defeat a determined opponent (and there is very little better than religious fanaticism to ensure determinism) is a very slow and difficult proposition, involving maintaining large and expensive armies in the field for years. As such it was the recognition of the inability of either party to inflict a total defeat on the other that eventually led to peace.
The constant raiding and campaigning that devestated large parts of Germany were partly caused by the inability of either side to actually occupy and control each others territory. Hence, you send your army to raid and pillage to; pay the cost of the war, deny the enemy supplies and tax from the devastated areas and try to make the cost of the war too high for them to be willing to continue. The end result of these practices continued over a long period of time and over a large area of Central Europe was to render continued warfare too expensive for any side and hence the peace by exhaustion of Westphalia.
This means that it often took an entire season of campaigning to capture a couple of forts, giving the loser of any campaign plenty of time to rebuild and replace losses. As such, actually inflicting sufficient damage to defeat a determined opponent (and there is very little better than religious fanaticism to ensure determinism) is a very slow and difficult proposition, involving maintaining large and expensive armies in the field for years. As such it was the recognition of the inability of either party to inflict a total defeat on the other that eventually led to peace.
The constant raiding and campaigning that devestated large parts of Germany were partly caused by the inability of either side to actually occupy and control each others territory. Hence, you send your army to raid and pillage to; pay the cost of the war, deny the enemy supplies and tax from the devastated areas and try to make the cost of the war too high for them to be willing to continue. The end result of these practices continued over a long period of time and over a large area of Central Europe was to render continued warfare too expensive for any side and hence the peace by exhaustion of Westphalia.
From what I know of the conflict I've always considered the Thirty Years War a (admittedly pyrrhic) Imperial victory. The HRE was kept together under Hapsburg rule and Protestantism, while not totally extirpated, was confined to northern Germany and the Netherlands.
Strange, I've always considered it a Habsburg defeat. Recovering Bohemia was a success but the Catholic League signally failed to achieve any of the war goals it adopted after that.
Only Bavaria stayed predominantly Catholic. Many Princes in Swabia and Baden continued to be protestants and so did then their subjects.
Well yes, if you ignore the biggest wargoal that kicked off the whole thing...
Securing Bohemia (and creating the extra Wittelsbach vote) meant securing the Imperial title for a Catholic until the dissolution of the HRE.
War goals changed a lot so I'm not sure anyone can be called a victor in any sense, but at the beginning of the 30 Years War the Catholic League at least would have loved to wipe out Protestantism completely (politically anyway), with the help of the Emperor, I'm fairly sure. They obviously failed at this. The Habsburgs also failed at increasing their influence within the HRE, which is one of the reasons they turned to look eastwards. They permanently lost the Netherlands and Switzerland as part of the HRE, too.
Meanwhile, the Protestants cause seemed to mainly be a defensive one. And for some it worked out, especially in Northern Germany, while for a lot it didn't, like in the Habsburg lands and in Southern Germany. It's true that the Palatine lost their original vote but that only truly would have mattered if they had kept the Bohemian one, too. Otherwise the Catholics had a majority with or without that vote. I'd agree that the Palatine-Wittelsbacher clearly were a loser of the war, while the Bavarians achieved a victory, but I'm not sure I'd translate that to the entire Catholic/Protestant sides.
Meanwhile, the Protestants cause seemed to mainly be a defensive one. And for some it worked out, especially in Northern Germany, while for a lot it didn't, like in the Habsburg lands and in Southern Germany. It's true that the Palatine lost their original vote but that only truly would have mattered if they had kept the Bohemian one, too. Otherwise the Catholics had a majority with or without that vote. I'd agree that the Palatine-Wittelsbacher clearly were a loser of the war, while the Bavarians achieved a victory, but I'm not sure I'd translate that to the entire Catholic/Protestant sides.
the only real losers of the 30YW were denmark and spain (also the palatinate and bohemia)
denmark for the last time lost it's grip on northern germany and had to deal with a rising sweden
spain lost it's chance to open the spanish road which lead to it losing the netherlands
catholics continued their dominance in the HRE, protestants were tolerated
france weakened the HRE, sweden continued it's influence in northern germany, austria kept bohemia and the empire
denmark for the last time lost it's grip on northern germany and had to deal with a rising sweden
spain lost it's chance to open the spanish road which lead to it losing the netherlands
catholics continued their dominance in the HRE, protestants were tolerated
france weakened the HRE, sweden continued it's influence in northern germany, austria kept bohemia and the empire