I. "Hunted like the animals of the forest"

"The cause and occasion of my writing this small book is as follows: In the autumn month of November, Anno Domini 1618 a huge comet appeared in the sky. To see such a thing is terrible and amazing and stirred me to take up pen, certain as I was it portended some great event which indeed then came to pass and about which the reader will find ample report here within." [1]

So begins one of the most fascinating contemporary accounts of the Thirty Years War, the "Zeytregister" or chronicle of Hans Heberle, a bonded shoemaker from the small town of Neenstetten, 16 km to the north east of Ulm on the Swabian Alb. Prior to the celebration of peace and thanksgiving in Ulm on 18 November 1648, Hans Heberle repeatedly took flight to the safety of Ulm's city walls, to the woods and forests or to other hamlets and villages with wife, child, livestock, goods and chattels. The chronicler and his family celebrated the peace celebrations in Ulm "with the unshakeable conviction usually reserved for the birth of Christ" and he summed up the foregoing three decades as follows: "In summa such a wretched business might mercifully have been spared a stone to say nothing of a human heart. We have been hunted like the animals of the forest. One of our number was seized and received horrible blows, the next beaten and stabbed, a third even shot dead, while yet another was stripped and robbed of his meagre portion of bread and garments. Wherefore we cannot praise and magnify God enough for the noble peace to which we are witness. For all that we endured during the 30 flights to the city of Ulm alone. One took place in a pitch-dark night and the severest of weather, the other in snow and bitter cold, the third in peril of the soldiers such that we were dispossessed of our last poor belongings on the way, and even of life and limb." [2]

While seventeenth century autobiographical records are hardly representative, certain episodes in Hans Haberle's life nonetheless have an exemplary character. Only two of his ten children outlived him and one of his daughters who also witnessed the end of the great war died in childbed. His parents, four siblings and two of his children fell prey to the great plague of 1634/35. Hans Haberle died in 1677 almost eighty years of age having achieved a modest degree of prosperity as a craftsman and small farmer. And yet "misery and dearth, hunger and death" (1634) - the workaday monotony of years of war - neither robbed the chronicler of his faith in God nor of his sense of humour. Time and again he noted the miraculous signs in the heavens, the rains of blood and flames of fire which filled his contemporaries with terror and dread. Nearly all the chronicles of the period refer to the comet of 1618 and the battle of two warring armies in the firmament in 1630 foretelling the arrival of Gustav Adolf. This and other news was disseminated to even the most remote areas with astounding speed in broadsheets, papers and by travellers. Being able to get hold of reliable information and "news" was a matter of life and death. Such was the general uncertainty that anyone bearing information of any kind, whether itinerant friars or merchants, beggars, messengers or nomadic gypsies, was plied with questions about events in the next town or area. Rumours quickly grew into absolute certainties, stimulated high hopes or plunged their recipients into deep despair. A great deal of time often passed before news from more distant regions in particular could be confirmed or dismissed. "Whether there was any truth in the matter I cannot as yet record. - It cannot be true. - Precisely the opposite is the case": was hog, in 1632, Pastor Johannes Schley8 from the Old Whrttemberg rural parish of Gerstetten commented on the news that "Chursachsen ... is said to have been roundly defeated by the Hungarian King ". [3]

There is no doubt that the seventeenth century experienced a huge expansion in communications no small part of which was due to the Thirty Years War. And yet the inadequate smoke and fire look-out and warning system which linked one village to the next across church towers and hills could above all do nothing to allay the deep-seated sense of trepidation which was the population's daily lot for three endless decades and which often enough cast a mantle of uncertain gloom over even the most cautious glance into the immediate future.

A war that lasts for 30 years has many realities. The war was not fought everywhere. Many areas remained entirely untouched, even flourishing and profiting from the hostilities. The war was not omnipresent, and there were long periods of quiet and recovery in even the most ravaged areas. Neither did belligerent troops always and everywhere behave with intemperance towards the defenceless, subjected rural population. Officers who maintained discipline among their troops had the worst tormentors, those from whom not even the clergy were safe, hanged on the spot or saw to it that young women of good standing who had been abducted were returned home to their parents "with no recompense and with due honour ". [4] Other troops rampaged like the devil himself, and supposed friends often proved to be the worst of enemies. "And so every man wished for the return of the better Swedes " as the Imperial troops occupied Bavaria again at the end of the war. [5] The reality of the great war had many facets, and yet its one underlying constant was perpetual fear, impotence and helplessness.

Any attempt to trace the everyday life of ordinary town and country folk, of the largely nameless suffering population, can only be tentative given the multifarious nature of the subject. Everyday life during the Thirty Years War embraced unimaginable extremes, from credible eye-witness reports of cannibalism in starving besieged towns and strongholds [6] through to sumptuary laws regulating the "atrocious extravagance in dress which had grown to exceed any tolerable measure" [7], from unbelievable riches in silver and jewellery still to be found in burgher houses at the end of the war to famines in which one "would relinquish a whole field ... for a loaf of bread". [8]

Everyday life is, as Fernand Braudel reminds us [9], synonymous with tiny facts of no very great geographical or historical significance. The workaday world is repetitious and assumes general validity through repetition; it encapsulates society at all levels and characterises customary ways of life and modes of action. It shows us what and how people have eaten, lived and dressed, how they worked and how they coped with illness, dying, death and one another. The everyday life into which the catastrophe of the Thirty Years War broke was a daily round of peace which needs to be grasped if the everyday atrocities of war are to be understood.



II. "... household effects, linen, bedding, clothing and anything of any value whatsoever is taken from the people, sold and scattered about"

What were the everyday dwellings and households with which the soldateska were confronted when they hurled themselves, plundering and pillaging, on a defenceless country village or entered a besieged town? How did the peasants and burghers, craftsmen, merchants and clergy with their families and domestic servants live in the midst, on the fringes of, or far away from the immediate theatre of war? The rural population, who suffered far more abuse at the tormenting hands of the soldiers than the town population behind the protection of their often impregnable walls, sought primarily to save their lives, that of their livestock and their elementary possessions when threatened by an incursion of soldiers. Taking flight to the nearby woods, vineyards and fens was often a survival strategy practised night for night and even for months on end. If larger contingents of troops were passing by, it was usually advisable to flee to the nearest stronghold, whether a monastery, a fortified church, the manorial castle or the nearest larger town. Nor were refugees everywhere welcome, and considering their numbers conditions were often intolerable. Andechs Monastery, the place of refuge for a number of villages was several times "crammed full with over a thousand souls... one leaning against the next". [10] And there was no relying on Christian charity alone in the towns. Refugees were obliged to register and to pay for the protection of "wife, children, horse and cattle". If the town was overfilled, the council required the rural population to return home under threat of financial penalties as happened to Hans Heberle in Ulm in the middle of the winter of 1643. [11]

Prosperous peasant farmers with large holdings on the one hand, and impoverished day labourers and hired hands in wretched cottages and shacks on the other, represented the two extreme poles of rural-agricultural life. And yet despite the huge qualitative and quantitative differences attendant on social standing, rural life nonetheless basically revolved around about the satisfaction of the elementary needs of sleep, food and preservation, a state in which domestic life and work went permanently hand in hand. This was particularly characteristic of the North German hall house which was also frequently found in the cities. The papal envoy Fabio Chigi, usually accustomed to refined Italian luxury, described the situation in Mhnster with amusement and irony: "Here they all live under the same roof: the people, pregnant cows, stinking billy-goats and pigs." [12] Dwelling, stalls and storage space for the harvest produce under a single roof - this living unit extended from a large entrance gate over a threshing floor with stalls on both sides through to the focus of family life and work, the open hearth. The freely escaping smoke dried the grain stored under the roof as well as smoking the ham and sausage hanging above the open hearth. The air, thick with steam from the animal stalls and the pungent smoke provided insufficient warmth in winter, even in the space immediately around the hearth fire. The temperature in the living space near the Flett (the area around the stove) is hardly likely to have risen more than four to six degrees above the temperature outside. [13]

At the same time, the seventeenth century hall house with its built-on chamber had already acquired the characteristics which had long been typical of peasant and burgher houses in central and southern Germany. The parlour, a heated and smoke-free living room, was one of the most momentous innovations in the development of central European living styles. Comfortable and constant warmth from the smoke-free heated oven - something which neither open hearths nor fireplaces could guarantee. As a result, family life in peasant and burgher households spread out throughout the house: in front of the open oven fire in the Flett, in front of the kitchen fire or around the tiled stove in the living room.

Parlour rooms served various purposes in the period of the Thirty Years War. While, under certain circumstances, it might be used as a sparingly furnished but warm workroom for a small-town craftsman or merchant, under quite other it might be a leisurely place of retreat for moments of family intimacy with wall decorations, mirrors and furnishings, books, upholstered benches and chair cushions. The furnishings for these usually quite small rooms were as a rule quite rudimentary however. The "diagonal structure", with an oven in one and a table and normally a fitted wall bench in the opposite corner, was established very early on in the "southern German" parlour. Chairs were also to be found in the living rooms of the early modern period, despite widely held views to the contrary; these were usually a wild jumble of high and low, large and small pieces of furniture with a range of diverse coverings.

The oven, fireplace or open hearth fire - despite the various uses to which this warmth was put, these formed the real centre of every house. To sit in one's own smoke and fumes ("eigen Rauch und Schmauch") was the very picture of home ownership; the fire as the place where food was prepared tangibly assured survival and, in a broader sense, represented the actual centre of domestic peace.

It was right to the heart of this domestic peace that the soldateska penetrated again and again. Whenever we are given more detailed information about their robbing and pillaging, we hear how they "smashed the ovens". [14] This was the most brutal way in which soldiers could demonstrate their superiority and power over the peasant in his own four walls. The logical consequence of course was for mortal enmity and hate to grow up between both parties and the peasants defended themselves in their turn against their tormentors. [15] Not only soldiers, even officers were "killed and robbed by the peasants". [16]

What though did the soldiers find to rob and plunder in the houses of the period or, to put it another way, what household effects were there for easing the satisfaction of elementary needs? Even in the more prosperous of homes there was relatively little furniture and this tended to be simple, even coarse and awkward. Numerous pieces of furniture would not be termed such in the modern sense of the word - but were fixed or built in to the wall. This was not only the case for the benches which often ran around whole walls and, as stove benches, were favourite places for sitting and sleeping. Cupboards and chests were also integrated in the walls as indeed were alcove beds. But the "wooden utensils" were not only of comparatively little value amongst all the domestic household goods, neither were they suitable as status symbols. Festive clothing and jewellery as well as food for festive occasions - these were the prestige objects which were used to demonstrate wealth and standing during the peaceful periods of the Thirty Years War.

The most important furniture for storage purposes during the period were chests. There were often a suprisingly large number of cases and drawers, and those with the most valuable contents of linen, clothing, jewellery and the like were almost always kept in the parents' sleeping quarters. In this way the bedroom also served as the family's "strongroom". Interestingly enough, it appears that it was probably the officers of the Thirty Years War who were the first to make use of, if not actually to introduce, certain innovations in chest furniture. The earliest evidence for the use of round-covered linen chests or so-called trunks, later common in northern and central Germany during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is amongst the officer class - evidence which predates by decades any other records. [17] Cupboard furniture other than the southern German Almer was only introduced very gradually in burgher households - and much later still in peasant homes. Wardrobes, already used by town burghers in the sixteenth century, only found their way into rural households in the eighteenth century. This long process was also accompanied by changes in methods of storage. Flat chests, drawers and cases as furniture for keeping linen and clothing required a meticulous folding and rolling technique for items which were stored in flat layers. The strong creases which this method of storage produced were by no means unwelcome. As Plicaturen in tablecloths they were the popular decorative adornments of higher-class table culture as well as being signs of orderliness and extensive possessions of "lying goods" in linen and clothing.

Linen had, since the sixteenth century, ceased to be an expensive luxury item throughout Europe. As a result, burghers and wealthier peasants had, since the end of the century, been able to build up large stores of uncut linen. These domestic provisions met with a rapid end during the Thirty Years War however. Linen proved desirable booty for soldiers even if they only tore and spoiled it out of pure malice. No less sought after by the soldiers was all sorts of bedding and bed linen which they needed for their retinue, which frequently enough consisted of a "ragged and tattered band of harlots and rascals ". [18]

It is striking that enormous value was placed on bedding in the households of the early modern period. Compared with the relatively low value of other furnishings, "complete beds" accounted for up to a quarter or a third of the overall value of the effects to be found in poorer households. There were however quite radical regional contrasts across Europe as a whole. The widely-travelled Montaigne noted pointedly that the Germans slept and fell ill on mattresses as the Italians did on their featherbeds and the French without bed curtains or open fire. [19] Indeed, sleep was often taken on or under eiderdowns in central European beds. Complete, high-quality beds weighed 50 or more pounds - equivalent to the feathers of 200 geese. Sacks of straw or chaff took the place of feather beds in poorer households which would also no doubt have had far fewer and lower quality cushions, pillows and quilts. Sleep itself was taken in a half upright position, which explains why beds were so short in the past. In the early modern period neither shame nor modesty played any significant role as far as separate sleeping arrangements were concerned. Old and young, children and farmhands, men and women, not only slept in the same room, they seldom slept alone in one bed. Moreover, and until well into the seventeenth century, people usually slept naked, even if not entirely unclothed - night bonnets or sleeping caps continued for a long while to be obligatory.

Neither was there any shame associated with attendance to the vital bodily functions. A separate secret or "discrete closet " only slowly became one of a number of differentiated living spaces. The pot de chambre or "piss pot", as Hans Sachs so aptly called it in his epigrammatic poem "Der ganze Hausrat", remained an indispensable household item. The peasant family answered the call of nature in the stable or in the more extensive courtyard area.

Beds themselves came in a wide variety of shapes and forms. In contrast to wall beds and bunks closed off by curtains or wooden doors, most widespread amongst the peasant populations of northern Germany and northern Europe, was the four-poster bed. While the Durk (alcove bed) disappeared almost completely into and behind the wall, the four-poster bed was often a massively splendid piece of furniture of overwhelming dimensions. Introduced in sixteenth century France from Spain, it spread throughout the whole of Europe in the seventeenth century finally, with some delay, also being adopted by the peasant population. While the four-poster bed functioned as a symbol of patriarchal conjugal and family life, its position in the main family room also emphasised the lack of separation between the various functions of daily life. [20]

A number of other sleeping arrangements during the period of the Thirty Years War also need to be taken into account however. Makeshift beds of straw roughly piled together on the floor, a bench or the table would have been unexceptional for refugees in towns or other villages. And during the nocturnal flights into the forests and moors, the monstrous featherbeds would have been more of a hindrance than a help.

Basic kitchen, eating and drinking utensils were much of a muchness in most households. The wealth or poverty of these families was better indicated by the quality and quantity of such utensils. In towns and countryside, pots and jugs, bowls, plates and spoons were the most important household effects during the period. On the scale from poor to rich, plates and bowls were made of wood or tin, drinking vessels of hooped wood, simple earthenware or more expensive stoneware, pewter or precious glass and silver. Alongside their utilitarian functions, glazed and painted earthen, stone and pewtarware also played an important role as objects for display and as status symbols. Impressive amounts of pewtarware were to be found in the houses of the bourgeoisie. Of a total of almost nine centners, an average of around 230 pounds of pewtarware were kept in seventeenth century houses examined in Braunschweig. [21]

The peasant family ate together from a single bowl, and the custom of eating from separate plates is unlikely to have established itself throughout all ranks of society and for every meal in urban households. The universal eating utensil was the simply carved wooden spoon which, even among the urban population, was suprisingly often made of silver. This was basically another way of caching wealth, similar to that of the more valuable mugs which, in extreme cases, might even be "silver-plated". Knives were used less as eating utensils than as tools for cutting things up in advance and were not as yet part of the cutlery to be found on the "spread tables" of the more prosperous bourgeois homes. Knives were part of everyone's personal property carried safely on the body in a sheath and brought and used at feasts by the guests themselves. It goes without saying that they were also often enough used as weapons, particularly in the period of the Thirty Years War. [22] The fork was one of the last items of cutlery to be added to the eating techniques of the early modern period. In the first half of the seventeenth century forks were often used to serve up choice foods, were often worked in expensive silver and were relatively scarce. During periods of conflict, it was not just lack of leisure which stood in the way of a refinement of table manners. It was known even before Norbert Elias [23] that a long while was still to pass before reaching into a bowl with the bare hand was to be regarded as a faux pas by the majority, even among the nobler ranks of society. At the same time however measures were taken in a large number of bourgeoisie households to ensure a minimum degree of hygiene during meals. It was usual to wash the hands before and after eating; the corresponding washing utensils were available - either precious silver vessels or costly Handfaßschapps through to brass lion-shaped ewers and simple earthenware basins.

The furniture and household effects in the homes of the town citizenry as well as peasant homes continued to be fairly uniform right into the seventeenth century. There was a wide variety, both in terms of quantity and quality, in basic household possessions; the least opulent just about ensured survival, whereas more luxurious and plentiful fine materials represented both status and riches. Both were exposed to permanent threat during three decades of war however. While there was a slim hope of goods being returned or bought back in the aftermath of robbery and pillaging, everything would be lost if the enemy were to use fire as a weapon. At the beginning of August 1634 no less than 40 blazing fires in villages and castles could be observed from the Heiligenberg above Andechs Monastery during the retreat of the Swedes from Landshut to Augsburg [24] Ruins and ashes were all that were left behind, as was the case after hundreds if not thousands of the humble dwellings of the poor or the splendid buildings of the rich had been set ablaze. The owners could at least count themselves lucky to have escaped with their lives.



III. "This wonderful fertile land... totally ruined and... the poor and other country folk ... compelled to resort to roots and herbs for SUSTENANCE " [25]

During the celebration banquet held by the Imperial forces and the Swedes in the Great Hall of Nuremberg's Town Hall in the autumn of 1649 the guests were served four courses, each course consisting of 150 dishes. The banquet finished with a gigantic marzipan dish and the tables were strewn with candied flowers. On the same day "two oxen were slaughtered, an abundance of bread distributed and, for six hours, red and white wine poured out of a lion's throat" for the poor." [26] Feasts to celebrate the conclusion of peace were held everywhere by the relieved population and "a measure was sent to the house ...... of every neighbour to commemorate the peace" for those who did not join in the general celebrations. [27]

Which of the three afflictions, hunger, war and plague, tormented the population the most violently during the great war altered from time to time depending on region and current events. The worst situation was when all "3 rods - bellum, fames, pestis were felt at once". [28] And yet hunger was the permanent lot of a large section of the population and ended in death for many. Dogs and cats, horses and dead cattle, cow skins, roots and herbs - that was the only nutrition left in strongholds overwhelmed by hunger, such as Breisach in 1638. When the survivors reached Strasbourg on nine ships, the "whole town (ran) out to the wretched souls who more resembled ghosts and spirits than living men and women". [29]

Acquiring food, just managing to survive in itself, proved a permanent balancing act for many in much less extreme situations however. Of course there were years in which the harvest was good and the wine exquisite as well as years during which the prices for corn, bread and meat were not subject to exorbitant rates of inflation. But during years in which the peasants were hardly able to work their fields, even having been robbed of their seeds, years during which pillaging and the billeting of soldiers were topped by the terrible scourge of wolves and wild boar, plagues of mice, hail and frost, the privation was appalling. And the disparity between the overflowing tables of the rich and powerful and the frugal fare of the poor and powerless was incommensurable.

If one tries to gain a more general overview of the dietary circumstances of the general population during the Thirty Years War [30], it is apparent that the eating customs of the Middle Ages were giving way to quite distinct regional differences. The basic foodstuff was grain, although local arable conditions determined the sort of dishes which could be prepared from the various types of cereal. Porridge or gruel, made of millet, oats, buckwheat or barley and various species of wheat such as spelt, had been the main meal since Medieval times. Oatmeal was the most important food in the north, millet gruel in southern Germany. Buttered or spread bread was growing in importance mainly in central and northern Germany, whereby buttered bread often simply accompanied gruel and vegetable broth. In the early seventeenth century, buttered bread was eaten both during the feasts of rich burghers and as a rather poorly regarded snack for children and domestics. This social differentiation was only made possible by the variable quality of the bread - highly thought of white bread as opposed to coarse wholemeal bread. [31] The envoy Chigi found the Westphalian variety of pumpernickel to be "revolting muck not fit to be offered to peasants or beggars " [32]

As far as main meals were concerned, by the early seventeenth century a very clear contrast had developed between north and south. Flour and milk-based meals had begun to displace the meat dishes which had predominated in southern Germany in the sixteenth century. Almost all the farinaceous foods which are still appreciated today, sweet and savoury dumplings, yeast cakes, plaited Danish pastry and small cakes were already familiar, as we know from menus dating from 1618 (Schlei8heim Estate). [33] In northern Germany on the other hand there was no drastic reduction in the consumption of meat. Beef, followed by mutton and veal, outweighed consumption of pork, whereby as a general rule meat stocks were consumed, including practically all their innards and soft parts. Poultry was mainly eaten on Sundays and Feast Days. Meat dishes were increasingly being supplemented by green vegetables and tubers. Fish was mainly consumed as Lenten fare. While the Medieval holy days, including days of fasting and abstinence in addition to the Lenten fast, were regarded with increasing indulgence in Catholic areas up to the middle of the seventeenth century, adherence nevertheless continued to be surprisingly obligatory, in town hospitals for example. [34] However during periods of extreme hardship the ban on the consumption of meat during periods of fasting was also lifted by episcopal decree. [35]

Meals continued to be taken twice a day as they had been during the Middle Ages although light snacks between main meals were becoming increasingly important. Beer was the most important drink - usually an extremely weak, home-brewed beverage. Wine was reserved for the tables of the rich and for infrequent, especially festive occasions. "Must" or scarcely fermented fruit-wine was a drink which was also enjoyed by ordinary people in wine-growing areas. Brandy, which had previously been mainly used for medical purposes, assumed growing importance throughout the seventeenth century. Potable water was only a significant drink in particular areas; well water was often manky, dark and brackish, quite unfit for consumption.

An innovation which arrived in Europe from England and Holland at the end of the sixteenth century continued to spread throughout central Europe during the Thirty Years War. "Tobacco drinking" was very quickly integrated as an important part of social intercourse and festivities, indeed of everyday life, mainly in the towns but also by the rural population.

The diet of ordinary people, whether in the towns or in the country, was extremely monotonous, even in years when the harvest was good and areas were spared from the tribulations of billeted soldiers and pillaging. Only when the absence of the three scourges, plague, famine and war, enabled weddings and christenings, kermis and fairs, parish revelries, guild festivals and similar festivities to be celebrated might the tables bow under the weight of bowls and an array of miscellaneous dishes. The numerous wedding and police regulations and decrees which continued to be issued during the Thirty Years War represented vain attempts to hold this immense extravagance in check.

The tables of the rich were spread with a much greater selection of foods and victuals. Alongside vast quantities of wine, "seigniorial fare" characteristically and mainly consisted of a range of different meats, fish, game and poultry - particularly roasted meat - as well as rare and expensive foods such as rice and sugars, sweetmeats, marzipan and exotic spices. Foods were seasoned to excess compared with today's tastes.

The immoderate consumption of alcohol during the period - excessive drunkenness and bouts of intoxication lasting for days on end were by no means unusual - led to the establishment of temperance movements as early as the beginning of the seventeenth century. But several decades were still to pass after the great war before the great sobering influence of coffee and the other new hot beverages, tea and chocolate, along with the new subsistence vegetable, the potato, were to alter meal-taking and dietary habits entirely. As far as nutrition was concerned, the period of the Thirty Years War was much closer to the Middle Ages than the modern period.



IV. "Women and children harried... returning ... almost naked and frozen to death" [36]

The permanent sense of potential threat posed by hunger, war and plague produced deep feelings of insecurity during the war and generated an atmosphere of perpetual Angst. [37] One of the fundamental aspects of everyday life during the period was the coexistence of fear and trepidation on the one hand and the pursuit of safety and security on the other. Despite individual differences, the ways of life which took shape under such conditions of ambiguity and uncertainty were largely uncomplicated. Directness and closeness counted far more than distance and refinement. The very state of being cast into an environment which was subject to unfathomable influences and which it appeared almost impossible to alter in any way had a lasting influence on numerous individual aspects of everyday life. It was beyond the means of the individual alone to find potential havens of safety; he or she was always dependent on the help of others, whether in the family or neighbourhood, guild or corporation, parish or community. In the smallest unit, the family, this co-operation was provided, according to the patriarchal dictates of the period, by the inseparable partnership of the father and mother of the house, a relationship that was by no means always harmonious. Here, at the most basic level of potential security, the woman's role was of supreme importance. Not only did she make an essential contribution to daily survival by working, cooking, keeping the house and attending to the needs of the children, she was also indispensable in the male world of work. Just as a craftsman could only acquire the title of master by entering into the state of wedlock, the peasant economy was essentially dependent on the joint work of the farmer and his wife. The work carried out by women, and even children, was indispensable.

The state of matrimony was one of the key categories in the communal life of the early modern period. [38] The untainted honour appropriate to a person's respective standing and sex was an elementary requirement of life. Honour as an omnipresent standard of daily life was of immeasurable value and easily injured, and dealings with other people were consequently highly ritualised. The abundance of ritualised forms, whether greeting and expressing appropriate good wishes when drinking, or whether showing respect by keeping one's distance or standing aside, the right order during processions and ceremonies, the seating arrangements at "upright" feasts and much more besides should not however be understood as being overly stiff and ceremonial. The strict safeguarding of one's own honour corresponded with an almost compulsive drive to detract from that of one's counterpart. Affairs of honour very quickly turned into brawls and the records and accounts of the period are filled with the verbal and real injuries to which these led.

In contrast to male honour which was exposed to a wide variety of attacks, a woman's honour was largely characterised in terms of sexual morality. The suggestion of flawed sexual integrity was a serious slur on a woman's honour. [39]

During the period of the Thirty Years War in particular however not all women lived in accordance with the required ideal. The huge retinue which accompanied the fighting troops not only consisted of wives and children who were faithfully provided for by even the simplest of soldiers according to the precepts of their profession [40], but also of women sutlers and a "horde of dissolute, lousy harlots". In the early modern period the lot of women was also marked by another phenomena, one of the most calamitous in the history of the western world. Of all the victims to be burnt at the stake during the witch-hunting mania (culminating in the period 1580 - 1650), a large number, predominantly women of every age and social standing, were put to death during the Thirty Years War. An insane "craze" which fused accusations of magical practices with abstruse notions of lecherous pacts with the devil added unspeakable ordeals, torture and execution of innocent women, as well as men, to the horrors of war, plague and famine.

There can be no doubt that superstitious beliefs, which were only very partially in harmony with those of the Christian religion, played an important role, and not just among the least-well educated sections of the population. We know about a large number of magical practices which would have been applied throughout the various stations of life, from birth, with its dangers for mother and child alike, through to dying and death.

Nonetheless, one may be fairly sure that it was the "simple folk" in particular who viewed themselves as integrated in the divine order and were cognizant of their state of being as subject to a higher answerability to God. And in those circumstances in which divine help with the afflictions of hunger, war, plague and other evils of life could not be secured, either by prayers or vows, votive offerings or pilgrimages, then fate was seen to be inevitably ordained by God. And so it was a cause of particular anguish when, during years of intense war or severe plague, it was not even possible to conduct a Christian burial. During the Thirty Years War, parsons and priests, monks and nuns could not always expect to be treated any better by the warring parties. Ecclesiastical institutions were equally exposed to the danger of pillaging and plunder. Nor did plague and famine stop at the gates of the monastery or parsonnage. [41] Thus it was that nuns went abroad to Switzerland with a "license to beg for alms" [42] and the Abbot of Andechs Monastery repeatedly sought to save the treasures and relics of the abbey behind the walls of the Franciscan monastery in Munich under the cover of night with the three consecrated hosts around his neck. [43]

And yet, despite the distress in the towns where "the rich transported their wealth away on loaded wagons, and the poor dragged in their burden of poverty on their bloody backs " [44], there were astounding moments of reconciliation between the troops and the population. It was the soldiers who were the first to erect maypoles, first of all for their officers, then for the billeting magistracy and finally for the whole town, and were "esteemed" in their turn. [45] Soldiers as the earliest innovators of a peaceful spring custom - one of the truly extraordinary facets of the absurd events of the period, but perhaps also a symbol of hope for better times to come and a peaceful daily round.

FOOTNOTES