More than three and a half centuries have passed since the Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years' War (1618-48); but this most devastating of wars in the early modern period continues to capture the imagination of readers: this book reveals why. It was one of the first wars where contemporaries stressed the importance of atrocities, the horrors of the fighting and also the sufferings of the civilian population. The Thirty Years' War remains a conflict of key importance in the history of the development of warfare and the 'military revolution'.

The Revd Professor Richard Bonney is Professor of Modern History and Head of the Department of History at the University of Leicester. His books include The European Dynastic States, 1494-1660 (Oxford, OUP, 1991); (ed. and contributor), Economic Systems and State Finance (OUP/ESF, 1995); The Limits of Absolutism in ancien régime France (Variorum, 1995); (editor and contributor), The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe, c.1200-1815 (Oxford University Press, 1999); joint editor and contributor with W.M. Ormrod and M.M. Bonney, Crises, Revolutions and Self-Sustained Growth. Essays in European fiscal history, 1130-1830 (Shaun Tyas, Stamford, UK, 1999).