ABSTRACT
The Peace of Westphalia was a settlement between individuals, primarily the emperor and the kings of France and Sweden, each with a commitment to securing a lasting Christian peace. Accordingly, the Thirty Years War has long been considered exceptional, as the location of a revolution in the technology and in the methods and scale of warfare. One can detect in the work on violence and warfare, in other words, the influence of, even a sort of interdisciplinary affinity with, sociology. If a theory of early-modern warfare could help us to navigate these murky waters, it still needs to be informed by the best historical work. The Renaissance and Reformation had given Europe a rich political vocabulary that actors invoked to promote their own, usually mundane, interests. As Joanna Bourke says, the best military history proves the aphorism that historians are better than their theories.
