ABSTRACT
Charles Tilly called the Thirty Years War "a complex web of wars", an apt description that reflects the fact that these conflicts were acted out by webs of people.101 Understanding the Thirty Years War entails examining many layers of convoluted and manipulative political relationships forged between small-scale actors - that is, between noblemen and between noblemen and minor princes and between those actors and larger powers. Military entrepreneurship flourished during the Thirty Years War and some elements of proprietorship continued into the eighteenth century. Francesco d'Este had plunged headfirst into the calculating, manipulative world of Italian politics in pursuit of an alliance that could muscle papal and then Spanish hegemony out of the way. Raimondo Montecuccoli's manipulation of his political status was only possible in a context in which political status was unclear.
