Invasions to the Czech Lands during the Thirty Years' War

The Thirty Years' War, a conflict for power and religion, which involved most of the European states from 1618 until 1648, affected the Czech Lands mostly in the initial and final phases. The so-called Bohemian War (1618–1620) involved campaigns and fights between the Bohemian estates and the imperial and the League armies. The fate of the Bohemian Revolt was sealed by the defeat of the Bohemian-Moravian armies at the White Mountain on 8 November 1620, which changed the political, religious and economic circumstances in the land and produced an unprecedented wave of exiles. After that, Bohemia stayed free of enemy raids until an invasion by the Saxon army (1631–1632). From the Peace of Prague (1635), which was followed by an increased Swedish pressure against Central Europe, until the end of the war terminated by the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the Czech Lands experienced all sorts of war atrocities due to several enemy invasions.

The Battle of Třebel as of 9 August 1647. In: Matthäus Merian, Theatrum Europaeum. Wikimedia Commons. Accessible here. [verified 28. November 2020].

References

Klučina, P.: Třicetiletá válka – obraz doby 1618-1648, Praha-Litomyšl 2000;
Fukala, R.: Třicetiletá válka. Konflikt, který změnil Evropu. Opava 2001;
Matoušek, V. – Janata, T. – Zimová, R. – Chlíbec, J.: Krajina českých zemí v době třicetileté války v díle Matthäuse Meriana staršího. Praha 2018;
Semotanová, E. ‒ Cajthaml, J. a kol.: Akademický atlas českých dějin. Praha 2014, 2. akt. vydání 2016.

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War conflicts and their consequences

The military and the maps make a significant “alliance” in particular during the wars – in preparations to their strategically long-term objectives and the overall idea of the planned military operations and in the use of tactical methods in each war. This is because the simplified map illustrations of the attacked (but also defended) ground represent navigation aids, which point at the relations between its objects. This situation often heavily affected the war logistics and thus the final outcome. From the 15th century to the 20th century, this “alliance” experienced a huge development as regards the form and contents. The outcome is the understanding that for the military “clash of the wills” presented as interaction between two or more military forces, maps of various types (i.e. military topographic maps of various types and special focus, specific maps, the so-called atypical maps such as planimetric maps, aerial maps, photo mosaics or map graphics of joint air-ground operations) are extremely important. Cooperation between historians, geographers and cartographers (and thus the history, historical geography, interdisciplinary historiography exploring transformations of geographic space in the time, historical cartography, interdisciplinary disciplines dealing with the processing of historical events and processes on the maps) has always been important for the development of military maps per se, but also for the understanding of the facts and contexts of the wars and their consequences as the permanent components of the human history, mainly in the form of reconstruction maps such as the Wars and their Consequences, which are the results collective sets of findings on wars against the Hussites, battles of the Thirty Year War and wars for the Austrian and Bavarian heritage on the Czech territory. Similarly, a complex view of the complicated 20th century burdened with the wars is presented, based on detailed analytic probes into complicated and hitherto unprocessed themes of the First World War and Second World War (e.g. the POW camps).

Zlatica Zudová-Lešková

Subchapters:

• Hussite Wars
• Thirty Years' War
• 18th c.
• 19th c.
• First World War
• First World War – POW camps
• Second World War

Contemporary plan of the Battle of Čáslav on May 17, 1742. Map collection of the Institute of History, CAS. Map display