In the early 1970s a friend dragged me along to watch that film at the cinema (at that time she was conducting a long distance romance with her boyfriend in France) and she reckoned her boyfriend looked like Omar Sharif. So anything with Omar Sharif was par for the course. Sorry to be Debbie Downer but I didn't like the film much (might have been Michael Caine's awful - to me at least - accent). I haven't seen my friend in decades though we swap Xmas cards (digitally nowadays). She is the lady I mentioned who lives in the Alsace and is now married to the boyfriend and has 4 adult sons and some grandchildren (though I don't know how many grandchildren).
Lady,
"her boyfriend looked like Omar Sharif."
you have to admit that he is not a bad looking bloke...I have the feeling, especially for the women...
I saw him in Doctor Zjivago, in Lawrence, with Sophia Loren and in some films I guess I don't recall immediately...
Kind regards from Paul.
Last edited by PaulRyckier on Sun 01 Nov 2020, 17:02; edited 1 time in total
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Part III of III about the campaigns of the Swedish King, Gustavus Adolphus:
I would dispute the statement that Sweden's involvement in the Thirty Years War ended with Gustavus' death, as the Swedish Army continued fighting in Germany until the War's end.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
I saw your film with great interest. The Swedish history is perhaps better know by Nielsen as Denmark as a neighbour had some "interference" from Sweden. And I know Adolphus only from his new warfare and cannon industry. Later the Dutch adopted the new style army and methods I think and later on Louis XIV. Thanks to your film I saw also: "on Renaissance Military Tactics", which was even more interesting to me:
These tactics and forming of armies was later used by the Dutch if I recall it well and also by Louis XIV. The New Army from Cromwell?
Kind regards
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
I saw your film with great interest. The Swedish history is perhaps better know by Nielsen as Denmark as a neighbour had some "interference" from Sweden. And I know Adolphus only from his new warfare and cannon industry. Later the Dutch adopted the new style army and methods I think and later on Louis XIV. Thanks to your film I saw also: "on Renaissance Military Tactics", which was even more interesting to me:
These tactics and forming of armies was later used by the Dutch if I recall it well and also by Louis XIV. The New Army from Cromwell?
For completeness, here is Part II, the Battle of Breitenfeld;
Again, the video has a comment I don't agree with, namely that Count Tilly was inexperienced. Seriously?, Johann Tserclaes, Count Tilly, joined the Army of Flanders as a teenager and was a Field Marshal by the 1620s. He was commander of the Army of the Catholic League and had a string of victories to his credit. BTW he was Belgian, from Walloon Brabant.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
For completeness, here is Part II, the Battle of Breitenfeld;
Again, the video has a comment I don't agree with, namely that Count Tilly was inexperienced. Seriously?, Johann Tserclaes, Count Tilly, joined the Army of Flanders as a teenager and was a Field Marshal by the 1620s. He was commander of the Army of the Catholic League and had a string of victories to his credit. BTW he was Belgian, from Walloon Brabant.
Triceratops,
I saw already this part yesterday too and wanted to also publish it yesterday, but my message appeared already twice. I don't know what happens, many times the message appears someone sent a new message while you were typing, want you to modify or save? And tehn when you save it is your own message which is already sent. Is it because the board is too slow and one receive that screen, when you are waiting? In any case tahnk you for publishing that second part now too.
"Again, the video has a comment I don't agree with, namely that Count Tilly was inexperienced. Seriously?, Johann Tserclaes, Count Tilly, joined the Army of Flanders as a teenager and was a Field Marshal by the 1620s. He was commander of the Army of the Catholic League and had a string of victories to his credit. BTW he was Belgian, from Walloon Brabant." Triceratops, Belgium didn't exist yet and Walloon Brabant either, as it was the Duchy of Brabant part of the Spanish Netherlands, the former Northern Burgundian estates, made in a Kreiz by our Charles V. The Leo Belgicus, the Low Countries as the Brits call it. After the end of the Thirty Years' War the remaining part became the Spanish Southern Netherlands or "the Southern Netherlands" tout court from "Albrecht en Isabella" as we learned at school. And later it became the Austrian Netherlands.
And yes, I saw even this evening during my research that the Britannica used also Belgians for those Southerners of that time. Do they say then the Belgian Peter Paul Rubens...?
Kind regards from Paul.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Thanks for the link Triceratops, I will have a look to it, but just a minute ago I saw by looking on the map of the Low Countries, the 17 provinces, an adjacent map as what Charles V "possessed " before the Thirty Years War. It is a start to look at that war.
Triceratops, I started to read again the book Case Red from Robert Forczyk that you recommended to me in the time in your WWII thread (but now from the beginning )
Regards again.
Vizzer Censura
Posts : 1853 Join date : 2012-05-12
Subject: Re: Bohemian Estates Dutch Republic Habsburgs Sun 01 Nov 2020, 13:59
Triceratops wrote:
Neither Scotland or England were officially combatants, however since Frederick, Count Palatine and King of Bohemia, was married to the daughter of James VI and I, both Governments authorised the recruitment of mercenaries to fight in the conflict.
The official neutrality of the British kingdoms during the Thirty Years War was a seemingly remarkable phenomenon. That is, however, until one appreciates that their primary interest in continental affairs was regarding France. Whatever the French take was on the international situation would always be paramount in then dictating what England or Scotland would themselves do. Away from this, there was also simply no precedent of British military involvement in Germany.
In addition to this, King James was also keen to present himself as ‘king of Great Britain’ even though Scotland and England were still separate states. He sought to align the foreign policies of the 2 countries as much as was possible for a joint monarch to do. And since Scotland and England had previously had diametrically opposed relationships with France, (Scotland having its Auld Alliance with France while England having been France’s rival) he had his work cut out in this. Yet James steered a remarkably successful course in this. His 22-year reign in England saw him almost become the first ruler of England in over 600 years never to have gone to war. This record, however, would be blotted in the dying months of his reign when (against his better judgement) he was pushed into war against Spain by his son Charles and his advisor the duke of Buckingham. This included them using high-handed tactics such as impeachment in order to railroad members of the peace party in parliament in order to achieve this end.
The rational for war with Spain was to curry favour with France with whom Buckingham was negotiating a royal marriage for Charles. The prince of Wales had initially intended to marry the infanta of Spain but had failed in this bid and had also felt insulted by the king of Spain in the process – hence the volte-face. The French match was successful, seeing Charles married to Henrietta Maria the sister of king Louis XIII. James and Louis had hoped for a pragmatic joint foreign policy on the war in which France and the British kingdoms would seek to downplay the religious angle on the war but seek to inhibit or minimise Habsburg military and political successes. A tricky balancing act indeed. And so it proved, Louis had expected English action against Spanish forces in the Netherlands while James preferred to use English-funded (but unofficial) mercenaries to go against Habsburg forces in the Rhenish Palatinate. James’ strategy was to try and drive a wedge between the 2 main wings of the Habsburg dynasty, the Spanish and the Austrian, the Austrians themselves having already split in 2. This strategy, however, was not shared by Louis whose main focus at that time was Spain. In the end a compromise was reached which saw the mercenary army sent to the Netherlands where it floundered and suffered defeat at the hands of the Spanish. Mutual recriminations followed and the alliance collapse within less than a year. Worse still, the French and the English then proceeded to revert to form and start fighting each other.
(Henri-Paul Motte’s 1881 depiction of Cardinal Richelieu overseeing the repulse of English ships at La Rochelle.)
By this time James had died and Charles was now king. Henrietta Maria suddenly found herself the object of one of the most ineffective dynastic marriages ever. With her husband and her brother at war, the situation was the exact opposite of what the marriage had been concluded to achieve. And the war went badly for England. By either supreme irony (or design) Louis had swiftly achieved a rapprochement with Spain which resulted in the Duke of Buckingham being defeated by the Spanish at Cadiz in 1625 and then by the French at the Île de Ré in 1627 and again at La Rochelle in 1628. If these were the fruits of intervention in the Habsburg war then it’s somewhat understandable that King Charles and much of the rest of the English body politic were now generally put off any further intervention on the European mainland for the duration.
By a twist of fate, James’ decision to go to war in 1624 was seemingly catching. Within months of his death in May 1625, his former bother-in-law Christian IV of Denmark was also emboldened to take a much more active and interventionist role in the conflict. On wonders just how much of a co-incidence this was and how the seeming promise of British intervention in the 1620s may have caused protestant princes to take decisions regarding the war which otherwise they may not have and thus escalating the conflict.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Subject: Re: Bohemian Estates Dutch Republic Habsburgs Sun 01 Nov 2020, 17:40
Vizzer, I read with great interest your message about the actions of the French and English kings in the Thirty Years War. With all those reversals of alliances, one would at the end "door de bomen het bos niet meer zien" (they translate with: not see the wood for the trees anymore)...
Vizzer, as I just posted on William III in another thread, weren't all those marriage plans with "Catholics" from the continent, not a start for the "Protestant" feelings of the "mob"? some Protestant monarchists? and the Cromwell years? Later a Charles II acting together with the "Catholic" France against a "brother" Protestant Dutch Republic (and with a Protestant William of Orange, wanting back his position of "Stadholder") who used the Protestantism of the mob to come to power again and later to become King in Britain against the Catholic France as the champion of both the Protestant/Anglican Britain and the Protestant Dutch Republic?
Kind regards, Paul.
PaulRyckier Censura
Posts : 4902 Join date : 2012-01-01 Location : Belgium
Starting now at the beginning of the series "The invention of..." from BBC four, I recalled that we had already "done" the "Thirty Years War" overhere. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b015c342
I heard first the episode and read afterwards again this thread.
About the mentioning in the episode about the Scottish mercenaries I already learned, if I recall it well from Triceratops.
What I wasn't aware of, was the resonance the sack of Magdeburg had in European history and especially in nowadays Germany... Is it more a portemanteau, as nordmann calls it, to highlight the "special" atrocity of the war in the Germanophone history? In my opinion in those times it wasn't perhaps not so "extraordinary"? See the "Spanish furies" in the Low Countries even before the Thirty Years War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Fury
Perhaps the 2/3 of the population to die in this war, were more due to the succombing of the resources devastated by the repassing of mostly mercenary armies, again and again, wrecking the coherence of the civil society and the supply of their resources resulting in diseases that killed more people than the war itself?
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" before the Thirty Years War. It is a start to look at that war.
