“Ett stort lidande har kommit over oss: Historien om trettioåriga
kriget” is a 600-page book in Swedish on the Thirty Year War (1618-1648). Who would read it? Since its been
published in a paperback edition, probably quite a few. The author, history
professor Dick Harrison, is well known for writing huge popularized tomes about
everything from Swedish medieval history to global slavery. He at least
indirectly inspired Jan Guillou´s popular Arn novels, the plot of which is set
in Sweden and Palestine during the time of the crusades. It seems Guillou was
drawing heavily from “Jarlens sekel”, a Harrison book about 12th and
13th century Sweden, for the historical information in his novels.
If anyone will turn “Ett stort lidande har kommit over oss” into a novel
remains to be seen – a horror story would perhaps be more natural! That said, I
suspect the book will become a classic in the popularizing genre, not least
because of Harrison´s extremely fluent style of writing.
The Thirty
Year War wasn´t a pretty story. Harrison, who is a left-liberal pacifist, is
equally critical of both Catholics and Protestants, painting a picture of an
extremely brutal and many-sided conflict in which the civilians always ended up
on the losing side regardless of religious affiliation. The Thirty Year War was
fought with large mercenary armies, and the soldiers systematically plundered and
laid waste to both enemy territory and “friendly” regions. After three decades
of armed conflict, large portions of Germany were virtually depopulated, and it
took almost a century for the country to recover from the blow.
One thing
I didn´t realize before reading Harrison´s book is how broad in scope the
Thirty Year War actually was. It was really a series of partially interlocking
conflicts fought in many parts of Europe concurrently. And not just in Europe –
the newly minted European colonial powers also took their conflicts to South
America, Africa and Asia, making the Thirty Year War the first “world war” in
human history. I knew that the Portuguese and the Dutch were fighting it out on
the Gold Coast, but I never made the connection to the Thirty Year War before.
It seems you learn something new every day! In Sweden, of course, the war is
mostly associated with our very own warrior-king Gustavus Adolphus (Gustav II
Adolf) who was killed in combat with Catholic imperial troops at the battle of
Lützen deep inside German territory. “The Lion from the North” indeed was an
important player in the war, Sweden becoming a regional great power in the
process, but Harrison broadens our vision…
Despite
being 600 pages long, the book nevertheless feels only half-done, probably
since it contains relatively little analysis, the emphasis being on the mere
facts of the war: the battles, the shifting alliances, the constant war crimes.
The author has tried to combine a perspective “from above”, from the world of
kings, emperors and military commanders, with a look “from below”. How did
everyday life look like during the war for mercenary soldiers, people traveling
in the rear of an army, civilians in cities under occupation, or people of the
wrong faith caught behind enemy lines? I´m frankly surprised anyone survived
this orgy in bloodlust, rape, brigandage, famine, cannibalism and pestilence.
If the author has any theory of history, it seems to be that the chain of
events is propelled forward by a combination of chance and the sheer will of
strong personalities, until everything gets out of hand and the events acquire
their own (often bloody) logic. Only after the Thirty Year War, when strong
modern state institutions emerge, does the role of the individual in history diminish.
In his other books, Harrison seems to reject grand narratives and all-knowing theories
about the “meaning” of history. Often, we don´t really know what happened at
all, due to the paucity of reliable sources. Prestige or ideological conviction
(sometimes fanatically held) plays a more central role than material factors in
the strict sense. But ideological conviction is, presumably, idiosyncratic. In “Ett
stort lidande”, Harrison suggests that the Thirty Year War might have stopped
much earlier than it did, if chance factors had turned out differently or
cooler heads had prevailed.
With these
caveats, I recommend this doorstopper to my Swedish readers. Welcome to the
world of Wallenstein, Ferdinand II, Frederick the Winter King, Cardinal
Richelieu, WIC, VOC, Gabriel Bethlen and, of course, Gustavus Adolphus…
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