"Good book on Thirty Years War tactics?" Topic

Any suggestions for warfare in the Thirty Years War?

Google is your friend.

In English? In English there really isn't anything in print that can be considered "good". Authors in general don't use primary sources but rather rely on secondary works so you basicly get diffrent versions of Michael Roberts "military revolution" version of events. (I.e Swedes &Dutch innovative, Catholic Germans & Spanish backwards and inefficient.)

There is an Osprey on "Pike & shot" tactics, you can find my review and a discussion of it here.
TMP link

A very usefull source in English is Dr. Pierre Picouet's website about the Spanish tercios which covers Spanish tactics and organisation in a fair bit of detail, what emerges from the sources he has used is a very diffrent story comparde to the "traditional" one.
tercio1617.0catch.com/home.html

In German the best books on the subject of tactics is Pavel Hrncirík's "Spanier auf dem Albuch" as study of the Spanish army and the struggle for the Albuch hill at a tactical level and Pavel Hrncirík & Peter Engerisser's joint work "Nördlingen 1634" which expands the previous study to cover the entire battle as well as the events leading up to the battle. The drawback is that the focus is very much on the Spanish and to a slightly lesser extent on the Swedes and the formations and tactics used in this particular battle but Hrncirik effectivly disproves the theory that the Spanish were using huge and deep formations and includes examples take from events well before 1634.

The essay "Tilly: Eine Karriere im Zeitalter der Religionskriege und der "Militärischen Revolution" by Marcus Junkelmann does not have tactics as it's main subject but Junkelmann does challenge the "traditional" view of Tilly's tactics as part of his study of Tilly's military career.

Thanks for the link but my computer found the website to be untrustworthy. I have always been interested in the evolution of the colunela to the much larger tercio. I hear what you are saying about "good vs. bad" generalizations. I read a lot of the same thing in column vs. line Napoleonic writings.

I am waiting for the book by Daniel S, a massive amount of what I have been interested in about the TYW has been answered by him on here!

Tally Ho!

I second nick!

I have recently purchased two books by Gregory Hanlon, a Canadian Historian. They are "1636, The Cemetery of Armies" and "Hero of Italy, Odoardo Farnese, Duke of Parma, his Soldiers and Subjects in the Thirty Years War" both by Oxford University Press. Both have extensive bibliographies from regional archives as well as 17th century sources as well as more modern studies. I realize that most people don't think of Italy when they hear Thirty Years War, but these books look like they have an exceptional amount of information about war and warfare during the period.

Thank you LtJBSz for the mention of Hanlon's Italy 1636: Cemetaty of Armies. I have looked at Hanlon's book on the Duke of Parma and found it to have some useful details. I'll see if I can get the other book on inter-library loan. The price is a bit steep to buy it sight unseen.

davebenbak,
I've never encountered any issues with the website, not even a varning from the protection software I'm using. I suspect the warning is due to it being hosted on a "free" website provider i.e you get pop-up ads and the like. There is an older version on oocities which may be more to your computers liking though it lacks the last 7 years of updates.

I have always been interested in the evolution of the colunela to the much larger tercio.

I am not aware of any work handling that, though there may be something in Spanish.
I assume that the service and battles fought by the Spanish forces together with the Landsknechts in the 1520ies plays a role for the size of the Tercio, though.

Just one point… from the website:

The permanent staff was an innovation in 1534-1536 when the Tercios were created.

Walther Lammers gives a detailed account of the staff used by the "Black Guard" shortly before the battle of Hemmingstedt, back in 1500, naming many of the same offices given here.

Without looking for sources I would bet that the "staff" both with the Landsknechts and the Tercios goes back to Burgundian tradition.

That said, I rather stop here because I sadly cannot add anything to the TYW-era.

LtJBSz,
Thank you for the tip about those two books, I've read Hanlon's earlier work "Twilight of a Military Tradition" and found it a very interesting view into a much overlooked subject. (The part played by Italian aristocracy in the early modern wars.)

Of the new titles "Italy 1636: Cemetery of Armies" sounds very interesting but of course it is the one I can't access through ILL…

I went over to Google Books and was able to pull up the introduction for Italy 1636. The author mentions war-game writers as being some of the first to deal with the question of tactics in the study of military history. Interesting.

Another forthcoming study that might be useful is Warwick Louth, The Arte Militaire: The Application Of 17th Century Military Manuals To Conflict Archaeology. In the Amazon page it states Louth makes use of "examples taken from recent investigations at sites such as Edgehill, Lutzen and Lostwithiel."

The mention of Lutzen hopefully means that this study will not only examine elements of the ECW but will also look at the TYW.

Thanks for the link but my computer found the website to be untrustworthy.

Some lazy protection software labels all sub-domains on free hosts unsafe or untrustworthy if they find one sub-domain to be suspect. This is about as useful as "may contain traces of nuts".

Druzhina
Byzantine Illustrations of Costume & Soldiers