AHC: Make the Thirty Years War even worse

The Thirty Years war was already one of the nastiest wars ever. Is it possible for it to have been worse? Or was it already as bad as it could get?
 
You can add more foreign interventions :

- Poland could seek to turn Prussia Pommerania and Branderburgian Marches east of the Oder in polish provinces...

- France could seek borders on the Rhine...
 
While I doubt you could up the intensity of the Thirty Years War in Germany, there were no more towns to sack and the only people left were very fast runner and very good at hiding by this point you can expand the area where the worst occurred. Have even more serious fighting across the Low Countries and maybe even Eastern France.
 
Really, large swaths of the HRE was largely untouched by warfare even by 1648. Bohema had not seen any invasions between 1621 and the brief Swedish invasion of 1648. The northwest and the Rhineland were also relatively unharmed and the ancestral lands of the Habsburgs in Austria were never touched. Bavaria suffered a few invasions, but not as bad as central Germany and Pommerania which bore the brunt of the warfare.
 
The 30 Years War, horrific as it was, could certainly have been even worse. The 'easiest' way to make it worse probably is to extend the geographic area it covered. An obvious move would be to have the Deluge (1648-1667 Poland) happen twenty years earlier, so that it coincides in time with the more destructive second half of the 30 Years War. On a per capita basis, the Deluge was at least as bad in Poland as the 30 Years War was in the Germanies (estimates are that the Deluge resulted in a Polish population loss of about 30-35%, even greater proportionately than the 25-30% that the Germanies had suffered). The Swedes were heavily involved in both blood-lettings as well, which works both for and against the two conflicts happening at the same time -- they might be too ever-extended to sustain heavy fighting in both regions. Although one reason they were so destructive to the population was their practice of living off the land, at the lethal expense of the inhabitants (Pomerania, for example, which was occupied by the Swedes for almost all the 30 Years War, suffered up to 70% population loss during that time), so perhaps the Swedes could have managed it.

On a side note, I would not be surprised to find out that the Scandinavians (Swedes and Danes both) caused more death and misery, on an absolute basis, during the years they were involved in the Germanies and Poland (1625-1657) than they did during the entire Viking period. Not that they were the only culprits by any means.

Another terrible, destructive war that was loosely connected with the 30 Years War was the War of the Mantuan Succession (1628-1631), which according to the one estimate I have read, killed about 25% of the population of northern Italy. Again, some of the same Powers (France and the Hapsburgs) were involved in this war as in the 30 Years war. It already coincides in time with the 30 Years War.

Off the top of my head, England, France and Spain would also endure grinding civil wars, religious conflict and struggles for independence in this same time period. I would think that it would not need too much for all these conflicts to end up part of a generally recognized Great Pan-European War.

So basically, it would not have been impossible for the 30 Years War to turn from a mainly German war (at least from the point of view of the civilian casualties, the combatants were from most of western Europe) into a pan-European war, with similar population losses as were suffered in Poland, northern Italy and the Germanies in OTL, but even more wide-spread.
 
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In no particular order, any or all of the following:

Poland intervenes on the Catholic side to counter Sweden.

Wallenstein revolts and proclaims himself king in opposition to both the emperor and the protestants.

Turkey invades. The siege of Vienna comes early. Its Crimean vassal attacks from the east.

Denmark re-enters the war in 1630 to forestall Sweden. Two squabbling protestant powers simultaneously fight imperial troops and each other, and the German rulers are placed in an impossible position knowing who to back at any one time.

A plague epidemic in Germany.
 
If we could end up with France and Spain at war with each other, and England together with Portugal in war against Spain too, we could expand this horrible war even further.
 
The war itself could be merely "phase 1" in a pan-European conflict. "Phase 2" could arise after a decade of relative peace, but then start as a backlash against the Catholic Church and its perceived contribution to the war, and a shift towards Nationalism. This means that a strong movement to unify Germany (that is OTL Germany, Austria, German Switzerland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Flanders, etc) will come into conflict with established powers which will obviously oppose this. A strong movement to unify Italy is violently resisted by the Papal States and Spain. Similar nationalist conflicts plague the Balkans and Central Europe. England is plunged into a four-way civil war which culminates in a Puritan regime which is the most efficient police state in the pre-modern era.

Meanwhile most overseas colonies either whither away or quietly declare their independence.
 
The war itself could be merely "phase 1" in a pan-European conflict. "Phase 2" could arise after a decade of relative peace, but then start as a backlash against the Catholic Church and its perceived contribution to the war, and a shift towards Nationalism. This means that a strong movement to unify Germany (that is OTL Germany, Austria, German Switzerland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Flanders, etc) will come into conflict with established powers which will obviously oppose this. A strong movement to unify Italy is violently resisted by the Papal States and Spain. Similar nationalist conflicts plague the Balkans and Central Europe. England is plunged into a four-way civil war which culminates in a Puritan regime which is the most efficient police state in the pre-modern era.

Meanwhile most overseas colonies either whither away or quietly declare their independence.

I think it's 150-200 years to early to speaking about nationalism.
 
Too much of the Thirty Years War was because the Habsburgs uniting Germany as one state was opposed by the powers within the empire, why would they suddenly stop being particularist?
 
Typhus is a given... probably relapsing fever too... plague... smallpox... typhoid... Add in cholera, and one of the nastier strains of influenza, though, and the war could have been even worse.
 
In no particular order, any or all of the following:

Poland intervenes on the Catholic side to counter Sweden.

Wallenstein revolts and proclaims himself king in opposition to both the emperor and the protestants.

Turkey invades. The siege of Vienna comes early. Its Crimean vassal attacks from the east.

Denmark re-enters the war in 1630 to forestall Sweden. Two squabbling protestant powers simultaneously fight imperial troops and each other, and the German rulers are placed in an impossible position knowing who to back at any one time.

A plague epidemic in Germany.
If you have read the 1632 series, that is where Eric Flint has things. Wallenstein is independent in Bohemia and is trying to grab Southern Poland. Poland and Sweden are at war. England is on the side of france (!) and is sinking into Civil war early. And the turks are on the march North to Vienna.
 
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