An excellent short history covering a critical period of European history, when monarchs were securing absolute power, religious disputes were boiling over, and rival houses were competing for supremacy and territory...the beginning of the 17th century saw the outbreak of one of the deadliest wars in human history, a war which lasted for three decades and set the tone for future conflicts where entire populations would be mobilized to support war efforts, and in that mobilization, become targets. The Thirty Years War displayed the grossest of human capacity, the destruction of lives and families and infrastructure, and the final fracturing of the power of the Habsburgs...
