The rhetoric of death and destruction in the Thirty Years War.

The Thirty Years War produced one of the largest outpourings of supplications and descriptions of misery in response to economic and demographic crisis in European History. This article investigates those descriptions of misery--hitherto either accepted at face value as eyewitness accounts or dismissed as biased exaggerations--as an important source for understanding the social impact of the war. The rhetorical flourishes in the descriptions which have led some to view them as biased, were part ...