At the outset of her monograph, Sigrun Haude stresses that the Thirty Years’ War has long served as a focal point for historians discussing how conflict impacted the development of statehood and supranational structures in Europe. Her assertion that its study gains new relevance in the current climate of political fragmentation is of course only compounded by the outbreak of the war in Ukraine some months after the publication of this book. The study focuses on the varied stories of actors on the ground and how they responded to the threats and upheaval of warfare, and thus offers us a timely reminder that, although the strategies and technical details of warfare are important, it is—in the end—the resistance, ingenuity, and suffering of regular people that effects lasting political change.

The geographical focus of the analysis lies in the southeast of the Holy Roman Empire, thus deliberately choosing Protestant city states and principalities such as Nuremberg and Brandenburg-Ansbach, as well as the Catholic Duchy of Bavaria, to offer scope for contrast and comparison between polities that offered quite different parameters to its inhabitants. It builds on self-narratives by well-known ecclesiastic writers, such as Maurus Friesenegger, Dietwar Bartholomäus, Maria Anna Junius, and Klara Staiger, as well as some lesser-known personal narratives, and new and compelling archival evidence. Besides a concise introduction and conclusion, the main part of the monograph is structured into three chapters of uneven length.

Chapter 2, “Experiences of War,” explores the bodily and mental stressors of warfare, including fear, hunger, and vulnerability. This section builds exclusively on self-narratives to explore how, in the everyday experience of warfare, the lines between friends and enemies became increasingly blurred over time. While the section is engagingly written and uses compelling quotations to make its points, specialist audiences will be familiar with the themes discussed here.

In the subsequent chapter, “Governmental Support: Hopes, Measures, and Realities,” Haude focuses on the support subjects could expect from local authorities. The list is not long, but it includes some measure of physical protection through city walls or other fortifications, ideally soldiers, as well as efforts to mitigate the effects of disease and poverty, and the provision of a modicum of spiritual care. Particularly interesting here is Haude's analysis of supplication records from Nuremberg and elsewhere, which show a population vigorously demanding more protection from marauding soldiers. The petitions raise interesting questions in the context of a new history of state-building from below (see André Holenstein et al., eds., Empowering Interactions: Political Cultures and the Emergence of the State in Europe, 1300–1900, 2009). These may prove to be particularly suggestive when put into dialogue with the research debate on whether the Thirty Years’ War was a result of the incomplete nature of the top-down processes of early modern state formation (most recently: Johannes Burkhardt, Der Krieg der Kriege: eine neue Geschichte des Dreissigjährigen Krieges, 2018). Finally, the remaining chapter 4, “Coping with Experiences of War,” discusses the varied strategies subjects employed in order to survive in the harsh conditions imposed by warfare. The self-narratives Haude consults show that the question of whether to remain at home or to flee was particularly fraught for members of religious communities that relied on enclosure for their way of life.

Furthermore, the search for reliable information on troop movements could prove to be vital, and the recording of such news could also provide a way of imposing a measure of control on an otherwise chaotic situation. Haude stresses that survival during this time depended on individual initiative and resilience. They also consult further documentation, such as sermons and prayers, as well as visitation records, in order to show the importance of religion and other spiritual practices in attributing meaning to the challenging experience of war. Finally, Haude insists that some of the encounters forced by warfare actually turned out to be positive opportunities for exchange for all concerned.

The author argues that this latter point has not yet been adequately considered by historians of the period, although it would serve to nuance the picture of universal doom and gloom that often accompanies accounts of the Thirty Years’ War. The study considers varied and fascinating themes, as a result of which Haude frequently has to condense a lot of background information at the outset of several (sub)chapters (e.g. 133–41). While this, as well as the concise overview of the events of the War in the introduction and the glossary, will be helpful for readers who wish to gain a first insight into this topic, such passages can feel repetitive for those who are familiar with the period and the extensive scholarship on the Thirty Years’ War. Yet while this book could certainly serve as an ideal reading assignment for students embarking on the history of early modern warfare from below, specialist readers will also discover new and interesting perspectives in this lucidly written, entertaining monograph.