The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy, winner of the Distinguished Book Award from the Society of Military History. He has appeared on BBC Radio and has written for Prospect, the Los Angeles Times, and Financial Times. President of the Society for the History of War and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Wilson is Chichele Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford. His work has been translated into Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, and Spanish.
Wilson applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples since 1500, and reported the following:
Page 99 discusses the alleged ‘mercenary’ character of sixteenth-century German and Swiss soldiers which lay at the heart of what made them proficient in battle, but frequently unreliable and insubordinate. Solidarity amongst soldiers enabled them to fight effectively in large, cohesive units, but it equally lent itself to strengthening collective action when bargaining with warlords. However, mutinies were primarily caused by the authorities’ failure to pay soldiers or by requesting them to do something not previously agreed, such as assault undamaged fortifications. Conversely, participation in mutinies entailed a breach of oath, risking soldiers’ personal honour and salvation. Warlords recognised that effective leadership required trust and respect, while fear and the threat of punishment alone were insufficient to instil discipline.Learn more about Iron and Blood at the Harvard University Press website.
The page conveys something about the book and its approach, but certainly not all. The inclusion of the Swiss in the discussion is indicative that the book ranges well beyond modern Germany, the boundaries of which are relatively recent origin and make little sense to frame a discussion covering five centuries. The book is divided into five chronological parts, each subdivided into three chapters to follow key themes across time whilst still providing a narrative. The opening chapter in each part deals chronologically with the relationship between war and politics, focusing on why wars were fought and how far German history was ‘made on the battlefield’. Each part’s middle chapter examines the exercise of command, planning, and intelligence, as well as how forces were recruited, organised, equipped, and trained. The final section of these chapters covers naval warfare with an additional section for that on the twentieth century discussing airpower. Each part’s third chapter examines attitudes to war, soldiers’ motivation, legal status, and their relationship to society, as well as the demographic and economic impact of warfare.
On page 99 we are in the third of the three sixteenth century chapters. Coverage of the sixteenth through to eighteenth centuries is important to the book’s central argument that militarism has indeed been integral to the German past and has shaped how Germans have conducted wars, but that it was neither an end destination, nor a single trajectory of development. Germans have not possessed a unique ‘genius for war’, nor can their military history be read entirely through Prussia’s experience. Today’s Germany was indeed partly forged through violence, but warfare was also significant in shaping Austria and Switzerland in often surprising ways, while the relative significance of conflict can only be gauged when military history is integrated with the wider story of these countries’ pasts.
The Page 99 Test: The Thirty Years War.
--Marshal Zeringue
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