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Article: The rhetoric of death and destruction in the Thirty Years War.
- Article from:
- Journal of Social History
- Article date:
- December 22, 1993
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1993 Journal of Social History. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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"Anno 1642, all the misery continued just as bad as in the previous year, so that the despair pressed all the harder . . . whoever has not himself seen and lived through such circumstances cannot believe what I note here."(1) This plaint by Lorenz Ludolf, the pastor of the village of Reichensachsen in the principality of Hesse-Kassel, is one of thousands of expressions of misery and despair prompted by the depredations of the Thirty Years War produced in localities throughout Germany. The image of death and destruction created by such plaints has defined the social history of the Thirty Years War to a greater extent than almost any other event in early modern European ...