30YearsWar: #1 - "Prosperity, Profit, Power" (Patreon)

[PATRONS]

We're back! After running through 17th Century Warfare with a fine-toothed comb, I am finally ready to deliver to you the most exciting series we've ever covered here at WDF Towers. It's eerily familiar, but also breathtakingly different - it sounds like the Thirty Years War!

Our first proper episode of the Thirty Years War begins with a somewhat surprising scene – Hernan Cortez, far away in South America, coming face to face with the Aztecs. Why do we begin our story with such a controversial, pivotal character? Simple – Cortez was, truth be told, an agent of the Habsburgs, or more specifically, Charles V, the King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor. 

Charles was the embodiment of Habsburg power and influence; he was arguably the most powerful man in Europe since the era of Roman Emperors, and he owed his position to the incredible marital policy of his forebears, who married their way out of obscurity in an isolated Swiss castle, to become THE predominant European family by the turn of the 16th century. The Thirty Years War is a story which cannot be told without the Habsburg dynasty, so I hope you’ll join me in this first true instalment of our series to see where this dynasty came from, and where it went next!