Hello and welcome history friends, patrons all to episode 60 of the 30 Years' War.

In the last episode, a bit of a while ago, we saw the great and terrible reversals of the

allied cause, as Bernard of Saxe Weimar and his Swedish ally Gustav Horn were soundly

defeated at the Battle of Nordlingen on the 7th of September 1634. This was the triumph that Emperor Ferdinand II had been waiting for.

The Emperor's forces had not triumphed so extensively since the Danes had been trounced at the 1626 Battle

of Luter. After more than four years of creeping Swedish supremacy, indeed with all the cruel

and anxious reverses that had gone with it,

it was probably hard for Vienna to remember what military supremacy looked like.

For Emperor Ferdinand though, it was like riding a bike.

He hadn't forgotten how to make best use of a victory.

It was vital to act quickly and turned that military triumph into a political

one through the detachment of Sweden's major Protestant allies, which at last seemed possible.

This would be done with the peace of Prague formalized on the 30th of May 1635. The road to such a piece

was paved with the death of Swedish ambitions in Germany,

and Axelux and Sterners grim determination to cling on to what remained of Sweden's army,

commanded by Bernhard of Saxe-Vimar along the Rhine and Johann Banner at the Elbe,

who briskly retreated to whole Pomerania, with Johann Banner, surrounded shortly

thereafter by hostile Germans, and Bernhard angling for stark rewards from the wealthiest

paymaster he could find. It was playing to Oxenstierna and, of course, to Cardinal Richelieu,

that Swedish influence in the empire, and its ability to project its power

had been fatally compromised by Norlingen. At a stroke, it seemed, the Emperor had achieved his own

Brightonfeld, and nor was that all. The participation of the Spanish in that battle

...