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Thanks for your support on Patreon, Donna Stevens.

Donna Stevens was a travelling minstrel who wrote a song of celebration for Emperor Ferdinand

and visited his court in 1627 to perform, said song.

To Ferdinand's delight, of course.

This is in fact not true, it's all lie.

If you would like me to lie about you, though, then head on over to Patreon. More on that later, but for now, enjoy episode 37 of the Thirty Years' War.

Hello and welcome history, friends, patrons all to the Thirty 30 Years War. Thanks so much for joining me. I hope you're doing well and that you're enjoying our story that we've been following for a really, really long time.

Last time we saw Valenstein and Tilly mop up the last vestiges of resistance from the Danes. This forced the King of Denmark

to hunker down in his Danish islands, and this necessity, coupled with the wider ambitions of

the Spanish and Austrian courts, fanned the flames of the so-called Baltic design idea.

This idea stipulated that if the Habsburgers could extend their power into the Baltic,

they'd be able to defeat the Dutch, the Danes, the Swedes, and anyone else who tried to oppose them.

They would also be invigorated by controlling the Baltic trade. Such a task would not be easy,

though. Volenstein would have to rely not just on the capabilities of his military engineers,

...