30YearsWar: 17th Century Warfare Episode 13
When Diplomacy Fails Podcast
Zack Twamley
4.8 • 773 Ratings
🗓️ 20 November 2019
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This is a tale of two sieges! We examine the siege of St Martins on the Isle of Re by the ENglish, and the siege of Mantua by the Imperials and Spanish. These two sieges in the late 1620s were pivotal cases where the Thirty Years War hung in the balance. Unrelated though these theatres were to the main war in Germany, they each created ripples which had a profound effect on the outcome of the war. But these sieges did more than that - they also provided us with an ideal opportunity to focus our warfare obsessed microscope, and investigate what's really going on on the ground.
What did the practice of a siege mean for the defenders and attackers, particularly when the defences were strong, or when the besiegers weren't very well led? Here is where we investigate! You may never have heard of these campaigns before, but this just goes to show that the war which housed them is full of surprises, so I hope you'll join me for this fascinating story. Thanksss!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and |
| 0:02.0 | Hello and |
| 0:18.0 | Hello and welcome history friends patrons all to the 17th century warfare series, episode 13. |
| 0:25.8 | Last time we dropped some interesting bombs on you guys, |
| 0:29.1 | as we got to the bottom of how the Habsbergs managed to transform their control over their hereditary lands, |
| 0:35.4 | not just to make absoluteest to rule easier, but also |
| 0:38.5 | to make raising an army in the name of the Holy Roman Emperor easier as well. |
| 0:44.5 | This latter point in particular interested us, because it meant that, upon the end of the |
| 0:50.1 | conflict in 1648, Ferdinand III, the Emperor, was not as restricted as his father |
| 0:56.0 | had been when it came to making war in the Austrian-Hasburg name. There would be no independent |
| 1:01.0 | contractors, no mercenary captains stealing potential recruits, and most importantly of all, |
| 1:07.0 | no annoying opposition from the assemblies of Austria or Bohemia would be able to halt the recruitment drives in the future. |
| 1:13.8 | From now on, the power to raise an army would be in the Emperor's hands, and thanks to the presence of Wallenstein's hulking force when these rulings were originally adopted, |
| 1:24.4 | the trampling upon centuries worth of traditions and privileges was |
| 1:28.1 | accomplished with surprisingly little fuss or bloodshed. |
| 1:32.6 | It could almost have seemed like an afterthought, and it is entirely likely that |
| 1:36.9 | Wallenstein did not approve, since he was wholly against the Edict of Restitution, which was |
| 1:42.0 | passed around the same time in 1629. |
| 1:45.0 | Yet as a loyal soldier, Wallenstein aided his emperor's quest for greater powers and control over his lands, |
| 1:51.7 | with the result that by Ferdinand II's death in 1637, he had left the Hausberg family in an unparalleled position in its hereditary lands, |
| 2:02.4 | and ready to carry the fight to its enemies for the final stretch of the conflict. In such a way did massively significant watershed |
| 2:09.5 | moments come to pass, almost unnoticed by his rivals, and mostly unmoorned at home by those subjects |
... |
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