‘If you make the people run away, you will starve’: the military significance of refugees during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648)

Abstract

The Thirty Years’ War of 1618–1648 was the most devastating conflict in European history prior to the twentieth century and the greatest demographic crisis since the Black Death of the fourteenth century. Accordingly, many scholars have examined the ‘human cost’ of the Thirty Years’ War both in broader studies of the military and civilian experience of the conflict and with an increased focus on the multiple types of localised civil-military interactions which characterised the ‘small war’ or Kleinkrieg. This article takes these studies further, by examining how refugees – a neglected manifestation of the ‘human cost’ of the Thirty Years’ War – could in turn have a significant impact on how warfare was conducted locally and on the course of the conflict itself.

Keywords:

• Refugees
• Thirty Years’ War
• early modern
• warfare
• small war

The Thirty Years’ War of 1618–1648 was the greatest demographic crisis in European history prior to the twentieth century. Even though the long-accepted figure of one-third of the total pre-war inhabitants of the Holy Roman Empire perishing has been reduced in more recent scholarship to a more conservative fifteen–twenty per cent, this lower number still makes the Thirty Years’ War between three and four times more costly than either the First or Second World War.¹ As just under two-thirds of the estimated five million deaths in the Thirty Years’ War involved non-military personnel, it is unsurprising that the civilian experience has attracted much scholarly attention.² In particular, recent research has examined the various forms of civilian-military interactions which were an integral part of the ‘small war’ (Kleinkrieg) aspect of the conflict.³

It should be noted that, whilst the term ‘small war’ was widely used in the 1630s, it became increasingly associated with partisan and guerilla warfare in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.⁴ This article uses the term Kleinkrieg to refer to the myriad minor localised operations such as raids, skirmishes, ambushes, and foraging expeditions which constituted the majority of military engagements and civil-military encounters during the Thirty Years’ War. Such ‘small war’ actions involved not only troops in the belligerents’ field armies, but also soldiers based in the hundreds of garrisons throughout the empire, and had a greater societal, demographic, and economic impact on the empire and its people than events such as the battles of Breitenfeld and Lützen. Indeed, where traditional military histories of the Thirty Years’ War focus on ‘big war’ events like major battles, sieges, and campaigns of notable commanders such as Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden and Albrecht von Wallenstein, such events were relatively rare as the conflict witnessed only forty-eight such engagements involving more than 7,000 participants, an average of less than two per year.⁵

This article seeks to expand the growing body of work on the Kleinkrieg of the Thirty Years’ War through an examination of refugees from the German states of the Holy Roman Empire. In particular, the article assesses the significance of displaced persons on the course and conduct of the conflict within these territories on the micro-level, both as a result of their absence from one location and their presence in another. In doing so, the article ‘joins the dots’ between various strands of research to produce a broader picture of both the importance of refugees on martial operations in the time period, and the interdependent relationship between civilian populations and military units in early modern warfare.

Significance of refugees (1618–1648): a historiographical sketch

The experiences of refugees are often grouped together with issues such as looting, pillaging, starvation, disease, and slaughter under the collective umbrella of the ‘human cost’ of the Thirty Years’ War.⁶ When listed alongside the brutality of events such as the sack of Magdeburg in1631 and the horror of the ‘Swedish Drink’ in which victims would be forced to swallow foul liquids such as excrement⁷, however, it is unsurprising that the experiences of rural refugees fleeing their homesteads for the temporary safety of nearby urban settlements have attracted a lesser degree of scholarly attention.

While displaced persons, as well as other forms of migration, have not been ignored,⁸ historians have tended to concentrate on their human suffering and role in the demographic devastation produced by military activity. Almost no research has been conducted on how the flight of civilian populations from one location, and their presence in another nearby, could in turn impact Kleinkrieg operations in a significant way during the Thirty Years’ War. For example, a number of works examine how the presence of large numbers of displaced people in a city could exacerbate problems such as overcrowding, overstretched local resources, and the spread of disease.⁹ However, they do not address how such issues – and, therefore, refugees – could influence the local course of war more generally, such as making the settlement less able to withstand a siege and more likely to surrender.

In addition, considering the long-acknowledged dependence of early modern armies on the resources and output of non-combatants as a source of supplies and money, there has been a surprising lack of research into the impact of flights of such civilian populations on military strategy and tactics. This article will demonstrate that officers in this conflict, and the early modern period more broadly, acknowledged the implications of refugee flights on army supply and military operations. It is therefore important to add this dimension to our understanding of warfare in the period.

One complication, perhaps, is that our modern conception of a ‘refugee’ is markedly different from the experiences of dispossessed people in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Article 1(A)(2) of the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees defines a refugee as someone who is unable to remain in – or return to – their country of origin ‘owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion’.¹⁰ This definition, reinforced by the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, was influenced by the mass flights from Nazi persecution and from the Soviet takeover of eastern Europe post-1945.¹¹ Although much literature within the field of refugee studies over the last few decades has criticised the central focus on persecution and crossing national frontiers, the 1951 Convention continues to act as the basis of most states’ policies towards displaced persons.¹² As a result, refugees are regarded nowadays as products of warfare which – due to the emphasis on crossing borders – are seen as removed from the conflict they are fleeing and so no longer play any direct role or influence its conduct.

Accordingly, the significance of refugees is almost exclusively examined from macro/long-term rather micro/short-term perspectives. Indeed, much work has been done on the impact of historic human capital flight, resulting from ideological or racial persecution for example, as well as potential brain drains as a product of people fleeing ongoing conflicts such as the Syrian Civil War and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.¹³ The same is largely true of the scholarship on refugees in early modern Europe which focuses largely on religious exiles and those who established long-lasting communities where they sought safety.¹⁴ For example, many of the works on Dutch refugees in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England focus on their long-term significance – including literature on how their arrival influenced agricultural practices, manufacturing techniques, and even the evolution of the English language in areas where they settled.¹⁵ Similarly, much work has been done on the cultural, religious, and political importance of French Huguenots in the countries where they found shelter and sanctuary.¹⁶

Within the historiography of the Thirty Years’ War itself, the most famous refugees were the rulers of the Electoral Palatinate. After accepting the crown of Bohemia in the wake of the Defenestration of Prague of 1618, Frederick the ‘Winter King’ of Bohemia was expelled from his new kingdom in late 1620 after scarcely a year on the throne. Emperor Ferdinand II placed Frederick under the ‘Imperial Ban’ and stripped him of his ancestral lands and prestigious electoral title. As Ferdinand distributed these prizes to his loyal supporters in the early 1620s, the ‘Palatine Family’ established a court-in-exile at The Hague, which would serve as a base of operations for almost three decades until the partial restoration of Frederick’s son under the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.¹⁷

The vast majority of people who fled their place of origin during the Thirty Years’ War, however, would not meet the modern ‘refugee’ criteria. The 1951 Convention formulation is too specific when applied to the experiences of displaced persons in this Central European conflict, even though the fear of impending violence by approaching armies and persecution by occupying forces were important factors in the creation of refugees in the early modern period.¹⁸ Yet many people were compelled to abandon their homes for other, sometimes very personal reasons. The destruction of houses, the wholesale theft of possessions, and the devastation of local agriculture and economies were all factors which would threaten a person’s survival and lead them to seek refuge elsewhere, even without an immediate threat to their physical wellbeing or after the departure of an army from their community. Accordingly, when this article refers to ‘refugees’ in the sections below, it means any individual or group fleeing their location either temporarily or permanently as the war rendered their remaining impossible.

It should also be noted that most refugees of the Thirty Years’ War did not cross international frontiers or even borders between imperial states, with many simply seeking shelter in the nearest walled town and waiting until the danger passed before returning home if possible.¹⁹ This was certainly the case with Hans Heberle, a shoemaker from Weidenstetten in present-day Baden-Württemberg whose memoir of his twenty-eight flights to Ulm between 1631 and 1648 is one of the most important sources of information for the refugee experience during the Thirty Years’ War.²⁰ As displaced persons during the conflict often did not travel as far or remain away for as long as refugees in modern wars, they frequently stayed within the military theatre and were not separated from the civilian experience of the war. The following sections of this article will therefore assess how refugees could have a doubly significant impact on military operations by being simultaneously absent from one location and present in another.

Significance of refugees through absence

Although the military importance of refugees is often overlooked by historians, early modern observers were certainly aware that repeated and prolonged flights could have a notable impact on operations. The significance of displaced persons largely resulted from the logistical problems in supplying armies prior to the modern period. As the French Marshal Claude Louis, Duc de Villars, informed his troops during the War of the Spanish Succession, ‘if you burn, if you make the people run away, you will starve’.²¹ Ensuring the supply of provisions was arguably the greatest influence on strategy during the Thirty Years’ War, as it determined timings of campaign seasons and movements of armies between locations which could support large numbers of troops.²² When no battle was imminent, logistical concerns meant that commanders often had to disperse their forces in small units across the nearby countryside to be sustained by the populations of villages and farming communities, rather than keeping them all together in a single garrison.²³ The demands placed on such civilian settlements were further increased by the fact that armies were accompanied by a substantial number of camp followers, including wives, children, prostitutes, sutlers, and providers of important services such as medical care and tending to horses.²⁴ Indeed, contemporaries frequently commented on the size of the baggage train, which could occasionally match or even exceed the number of actual soldiers.²⁵

This dependency on the wealth, resources, and output of rural civilians for the supply, sustenance, and shelter of military personnel resulted in commanders often addressing the absence of inhabitants and the resulting temporary or permanent depopulation of nearby areas in their correspondence.²⁶ For example, in his memoirs of fighting in Protestant, anti-Habsburg armies during the Thirty Years’ War, the Scottish general Robert Monro recorded his unit’s march to Schivelbein (now Świdwin in Poland), a city which he described as ‘then layd almost waste with Pestilence’. Following their arrival in the town, Monro complained that ‘I had slight quarters for my Souldiers’, a situation that he attributed to ‘the Inhabitants being fled away’.²⁷

Some refugees would even burn down their own houses to deny invaders shelter and prevent their possessions from falling into the hands of friendly or enemy troops. Johannes Schleyss, the Lutheran pastor from Gerstetten in Baden-Württemberg, who himself had been compelled to flee to nearby Heidenheim in Summer 1631, wrote in April 1632 that during the Swedish advance through Bavaria, ‘in some places [civilians did] set fire to the places behind them and run away with their wives and children’.²⁸

The most significant logistical problem which resulted from the flight of refugees from rural communities though was the rapid decline or total collapse of agricultural production. One English-language courant printed in Amsterdam in late summer 1621 included a report from Speyer dated 20 August which asserted that so many people had fled to the city from the surrounding countryside that it caused severe disruption to the production and distribution of foodstuffs. In response, troops quartered nearby sent one of the remaining inhabitants to ‘warne the other[s] to come home againe and prepare meat which if they do not [the soldiers] will sett all the villages on fier’.²⁹

Armies depended upon seizing much of their food in the field, and it was almost impossible to procure the vast quantities required in a single location.³⁰ Indeed, according to Géza Perjés, a population density of thirty-five inhabitants per square kilometre was required to provision armies without magazines and ensure that each soldier received the typical daily ration of one kilogramme of bread in the early 1600s. By the second half of the century, only France, Belgium, Westphalia, the Rhineland, and Lombardy had the necessary ratio stipulated by Perjés.³¹ The flight of rural refugees and near-total depopulation of some agricultural areas could therefore have a significant strategic impact. As John A. Lynn neatly summarised in his work on the ‘Tax of Violence’, ‘No peasants, no bread’.³²

Of course, the flight of civilian populations was not the sole cause of food shortages and famines during the Thirty Years’ War. Armies and camp followers were frequently rapacious in their collection of foodstuffs for their own subsistence and would also destroy crops and other produce to deny them to the enemy.³³ For example, when imperial forces were encamped near Colmar at harvest time in 1635, the soldier Peter Hagendorf recorded in his Tagebuch that ‘we spoiled the entire crop around the city for the residents of Colmar by harvesting it for ourselves, reaping it, riding through it, and burning it’.³⁴ In addition, individual crop failures probably occurred most frequently as a result of climatic events such as droughts.³⁵ Whilst such natural and man-made shortages certainly contributed to separate instances of harvest failures and famine, it was the repeated and prolonged flights of rural refugees which arguably made the greatest contribution to the sustained downward spiral of decreasing agricultural output which only worsened as the war progressed. Numerous contemporaries lamented that the depopulation of rural agricultural communities in favour of the safety of nearby walled towns prevented the sowing for the next harvest, with Pastor Johann Daniel Minck from Biberau in Darmstadt observing that lack of husbandry resulted in the land being ‘so overgrown with firs that one would take it for woods rather than fields’.³⁶

The flight of refugees also had financial implications. Armies during the Thirty Years’ War were largely maintained through the systematic extraction of money or provisions from communities in the form of ‘contributions’, which were to be paid in a regular fashion during a specified period of time; a system some historians have likened to protection rackets.³⁷ In addition, rapacious and starving officers and soldiers would frequently make excessive demands either to compensate for unpaid wages or maximise profits. Accordingly, the payment of troops – whether through ‘contributions’ or plunder – depended on the presence and resources of civilian populations in occupied areas.³⁸ Their absence could also prove disastrous for military enterprisers, who used similar tactics to recover the costs of raising troops.³⁹

Although Peter Wilson is correct that ‘the poor were often more mobile than the rich’, walled towns tended to be better disposed towards wealthier refugees.⁴⁰ For example, Leipzig relaxed the two-year residence requirement for citizenship when applications were made by richer displaced persons seeking admittance to the city.⁴¹ In addition, as refugees to Ulm were expected to finance their stay themselves, poorer villagers in the surrounding territory were often unable to find shelter there and therefore had to bear the brunt of the ‘tax of violence’ levied on their community.⁴² As contribution demands were apportioned as a quota according to the size of the settlement, and the inhabitants were to divide the burden between themselves, any decrease in the population through flight increased the obligation on the remaining villagers who often lacked the resources to pay. For example, those who stayed at Grandenborn in Hesse, where the number of households decreased from eighty-two in 1618 to fifteen in 1639, complained that ‘we poor people must continue to pay the entire burden of the war for the whole village as if it was still all standing and in good shape’.⁴³ The inability of civilian populations to meet increasingly unrealistic contribution demands in turn led to an escalation in incidents of plunder and violence, which prompted further flights, a classic vicious circle.⁴⁴ In such circumstances, soldiers would often have no choice but to hunt down and rob any civilians who fled with supplies or valuables.⁴⁵ As will be discussed below, the absence of the principal means by which soldiers were supplied and paid (i.e. the civilian population and its resources) could have disastrous results on the discipline, morale and loyalty of the troops.

Some scholars have noted how repeated and prolonged absences of inhabitants from rural areas undermined agricultural productivity and resulted in multiple episodes of starvation for soldiers and villagers alike.⁴⁶ Almost no-one, however, has examined how this longer-term issue impacted the military capabilities of the various units in local communities, and therefore how refugees could influence the conduct of the Kleinkrieg. As noted in the oft-quoted observation attributed to both Napoleon and Frederick the Great, an army marches on its stomach, and numerous works have examined the centrality of supply shortages – alongside lack of pay – as a cause of desertion and the outbreak of mutinies throughout history.⁴⁷ In the case of the Thirty Years’ War, soldiers would abandon their companies and regiments or participate in mass desertions or mutinies when the supply of provisions or the payment of wages broke down.⁴⁸ Although all major mutinies during the conflict were orchestrated by senior officers, such disruptions fed on declining morale and discipline amongst the troops due to grievances over pay and supplies. For example, the Swedish troops who mutinied in April 1633 had not been paid in full since 1631 and were owed bonuses following the battles of Breitenfeld and Lützen.⁴⁹

Even if subsistence crises did not result in catastrophic collapses of morale within armies, food shortages could still curtail the actions and effectiveness of military units. Peter Hagendorf recalled that, whilst imperial forces were in the mountainous Hunsrück region of the Rhineland Palatinate in winter 1635, ‘there was such a famine within the army that no horse was safe in its stall from the foot soldiers. They would stab a horse with a knife in the chest and then walk away, leaving the horse to bleed to death. Afterward they would eat it’.⁵⁰ Hagendorf noted that this brought little succour, as ‘this meat, however, did not last long, only five days’, and other instances demonstrate that similar expedients could have significant military consequences. For example, in late-1635, imperial troops had to abandon their artillery whilst withdrawing from near Moyenvic in Lorraine because a shortage of food had resulted in the soldiers eating the transport animals.⁵¹ It is evident, therefore, that the prolonged and repeated flight of civilians and the resulting drastic reduction in the production and availability of foodstuffs could have an impact on the conduct of the Thirty Years’ War at the Kleinkrieg level.

Multiple memoirs of soldiers who served during the Thirty Years’ War display a poor – if not outright contemptuous – opinion of civilians. For example, Colonel Paikul of the Swedish garrison in Olmütz wrote of the civilian population that ‘it would be better if the devil twisted their necks, before [losing] a single soldier’.⁵² Although similar views can also be found in Robert Monro’s writings, his memoirs highlight a number of important roles played by non-combatant populations which directly impacted Kleinkrieg operations, and which would be lost as a result of civilians fleeing as refugees to more secure locations.⁵³ Among the most significant was their ability to supplement armed forces, either through service in local militias or by being assembled in a more ad hoc manner by the military units present in their locality. Monro drafted in civilians for both offensive and defensive duties. For example, whilst near Colberg in 1630, he recorded how ‘I did appoint a company of Boores, with Armes, and Horses…to watch the passe, and if in case the enemy should pursue them, they had Orders from me to defend the passe’, whereas in late 1631, Landstuhl ‘was taken in also by storme, through the helps of the Country Boores’.⁵⁴

Although militias generally performed poorly, they did fight well on occasion, and as approximately ten per cent of able-bodied males in the German lands of the Holy Roman Empire served in territorial militias, they did represent sizeable forces which could be militarily significant so long as the civilians who filled the ranks remained in their communities.⁵⁵ Hans Heberle served in such a capacity and recorded that in late April 1631 the militia from the entire countryside surrounding Ulm were summoned to serve alongside a troop of infantry raised by the Duke of Württemberg. These forces had to defend the lands surrounding Ulm from incursions by imperial troops seeking to attack the forces of the Heilbronn League.⁵⁶ From late August 1634, when Heberle and his family escaped to Ulm for the second time and from which point their flights became far more frequent, his Zeytregister made no more mention of serving in the militia.

In addition to fighting within or alongside armies, civilians could also contribute to ‘small war’ events and developments as a source of manual labour. For example, Monro recorded how he frequently drafted local labour for the construction or repairing of military fortifications. Whilst at Rügenwalde (modern-day Darłowo in Poland), he enlisted ‘the Country Boores, to fortifie the Passages without me, and next to make Skonces and Redoubts without the Towne, as also to repaire the Fortifications about the Castle, and in cleansing of the Mote, that it might be deeper of water’.⁵⁷ Over ninety kilometres away at Schivelbein (Świdwin), Monro sent orders to the peasantry of the surrounding territory ‘to come in the next day, with Spades, Shovels and Axes, for to repaire the works, that were almost ruined’.⁵⁸

The same memoirs highlight additional important functions: intelligence and communication. He wrote that, shortly after landing with Swedish forces in Pomerania in 1630, he ‘learned [from] the Boores, how neere the Enemy was unto us’. The utility of this information provided by the peasantry and its impact on the conduct of the Kleinkrieg was evident by the fact that Monro ‘suffered none to goe from us, lest we might be discovered to our enemies’ on the basis of the intelligence.⁵⁹ In addition, locals conveyed messages between officers. Following his arrival in Pomerania, Monro recalled that ‘I did send a Boore on Horsebacke, in the night, to acquaint his Majesty of Sweden…with the manner of our hard landing, and of our happy successe after landing’.⁶⁰ All these services would therefore be denied to armies if areas were depopulated due to the flight of civilians. In his study of Ulm and its surrounding territories, Shin Demura has demonstrated that the transmission of important news and intelligence between the city and the countryside was severely hindered after significant numbers of rural inhabitants fled to Ulm and other walled urban settlements.⁶¹

Significance of refugees (1618–1648) through presence elsewhere

Both Kleinkrieg and wider military strategy were not only affected by flows of refugees. After all, deaths of rural civilians similarly led to a marked decline in the ability of localities to supply or assist military personnel – willingly or unwillingly. Displaced people mattered in two linked respects by being simultaneously absent from one place and present in another. The vast majority of work which examines the presence of refugees within host communities during the Thirty Years’ War primarily focuses on their impact on residents and citizens. Historians have highlighted how the arrival of large numbers resulted in overcrowding, inflation, food shortages, and poor sanitation, all of which combined made starvation and epidemics more likely.⁶²

As famine and disease are widely acknowledged as the most common causes of death during the Thirty Years’ War, it is unsurprising that recent works examining the civilian experience focus on these issues while paying little or no attention to how the presence of potentially thousands of displaced persons could influence strategy and operations on the Kleinkrieg level.⁶³ A huge increase in the non-combatant population of an urban settlement with finite food supplies – especially when a siege appeared imminent – had enormous military implications. Indeed, it should be noted that whilst countryfolk would seek safety behind the walls of nearby towns and cities, these same settlements were most often the targets of the armies the refugees were fleeing from.⁶⁴ In order to conserve supplies and thereby increase the chances of withstanding a siege, garrison commanders frequently expelled civilians.

Not only were displaced people frequently the first to be ejected from places of safety in such circumstances, but more refugees were created by the expulsion of ‘superfluous people’. For example, when Pressburg (modern-day Bratislava) was about to be besieged in 1621, news publications reported that ‘all those among [the inhabitants] which have bin fo[u]nd not to be citizens have bin driven out of the citye’, and that ‘they have put out al the folks which were fled in it out of all other places roundabout’.⁶⁵ Likewise, during the invasion of the Lower Palatinate by imperial, Bavarian, and Spanish troops in 1622, ‘feare of want of Victuals’ caused the remaining strongholds to eject ‘all superfluous people as well Inhabitants as others’.⁶⁶

On the other hand, it is also clear that the presence of large numbers of refugees was not always seen as a burden or detrimental to the defence of a town or city. Whilst their flight denied their services either as troops or labour for the soldiers in their places of origin, refugees frequently provided welcome support in the location where they sought shelter. For example, following the Battle of Nördlingen on 6 September 1634, Hans Heberle fled to Ulm with his family after the routed Swedish cavalry passed through his village. Fearing both the rapacity of the retreating anti-Habsburg troops as well as the advancing imperial forces, Heberle recorded in his Zeytregister that ‘many thousand people from all over’ sought safety behind the walls of the city.⁶⁷ These refugees greatly contributed to the defensive efforts of the city in the uncertain weeks following the battle, when it appeared that the marauding pro-Habsburg forces would attack. Heberle wrote that he and other displaced persons joined the burghers of Ulm in cutting down the orchard trees in front of one of the city gates, presumably to deny potential cover to any besieging or attacking troops.⁶⁸ Even Joseph Furttenbach, the Master Builder and future Ratsherr who was one of the only contemporary chroniclers to express clear hostility towards the presence of refugees in Ulm, grudgingly acknowledged their contribution.⁶⁹ He observed that peasants who had fled to Ulm made up a sizeable contingent of the 15,000 people who felled trees, demolished walls, and dismantled properties in the interests of defending the city.⁷⁰

The example of Ulm provides another insight into the implications of absence from one location and presence in another. On 30 May 1635, Emperor Ferdinand II and Elector Johann Georg I of Saxony concluded the Peace of Prague which softened the rigidly-Catholic dictates of the 1629 Edict of Restitution and adopted a vaguer definition of the 1555 Peace of Augsburg. The agreement reconciled the Saxon Elector to the Emperor and sought to isolate Sweden from her German allies in order to unite all the imperial estates and drive external powers and their armies from the Empire. The Free Imperial City of Ulm formally accepted the Peace of Prague just over a month later, and the council’s decision to do so was informed in no small part by the presence in the city of a considerable number of refugees from the surrounding countryside.⁷¹ It is no coincidence that Heberle’s gruelling fifth flight, which started in late-May 1635 as an attempt to evade approaching imperial troops and saw him and his family seek shelter in Ulm for over a month, ended in late July following the city’s acceptance of the Peace of Prague.⁷² Similarly, the Theatrum Europaeum claimed that house-to-house inspections found 22,000 ‘foreigners’ within Ulm over the winter of 1634–5, and Furttenbach recorded that there were 16,000 ‘foreign peasants with wives and children’ in December 1634.⁷³

Although it is not possible to verify these figures (it should be noted that the latter, who felt that the presence of displaced persons was a much greater torment than the war itself, may have been prone to exaggeration), official civic documents certainly show an enormous proportion of refugees among the overall population, almost forty per cent according to a visitation of November 1634.⁷⁴ Ulm’s 21,000 inhabitants at the start of the seventeenth century placed it on a par with cities such as Augsburg and Nuremberg, and made it three or four times more populous than the next largest cities in Upper Swabia, demonstrating the significance of the presence, even if we assume the lowest estimate of displaced people behind its walls.⁷⁵

Indeed, the Guild of Shopkeepers and Merchants explicitly referred to refugees in its statement promoting the acceptance of the terms of the Peace of Prague. Their presence was blamed for the increasing difficulties in supplying food to ‘this very populated city’, and also cited the responsibility of the city authorities for the inhabitants of the Ulm territories who had fled there.⁷⁶ The guild asserted that unless the peace was accepted, the city would potentially have to deport the refugees in order to preserve provisions. They declared, however, that such an action would be grossly irresponsible, as those ejected would either starve to death or suffer at the hands of soldiers.⁷⁷ It should also be noted that the arrival of large numbers of refugees into Ulm from late 1634 contributed to the spread of plague from the villages to the city, with the result that by early 1635 the disease was so rampant that the Ulm council mandated that victims were no longer to receive a funeral sermon.⁷⁸ The example of Ulm and the Peace of Prague thus demonstrates very clearly that the presence of a large refugee population affected the development of the Thirty Years’ War on the local level.

Conclusion

This article has demonstrated that, rather than simply being a product of military operations during the Thirty Years’ War and a manifestation of the ‘human cost’ of the conflict, refugees could have a significant impact on military capabilities and operations. Indeed, in contrast to other civilian victims of the conflict who lost their lives to disease, starvation, or violence, displaced persons could be doubly influential on developments in the Kleinkrieg by being simultaneously absent from one location and present in another. The dependency of early modern armies on the resources, supplies, labour, wealth, and output of the civilian populations of the areas through which the troops moved and camped meant that military operations could be considerably hindered following the depopulation of rural areas through flight. Similarly, the presence of a large number of refugees in a walled town or city could affect the settlement’s experience of the Thirty Years’ War by assisting with the construction of defensive works, or by placing such demand on local resources that it would be impossible to withstand a siege. The topic of the significance of refugees within the Kleinkrieg is therefore one which deserves greater attention from historians of both migration and the military history of early modern Europe.

Acknowledgements

I thank Beat Kümin for his comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thomas Pert

Thomas Pert is a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow based at the University of Warwick. He is a historian of early modern British and European history, and his current research project focuses on the experiences of refugees during the Thirty Years’ War.

Notes

1 Peter H. Wilson, ‘Was the Thirty Years War a ‘Total War’?’, in Erica Charters et al., Civilians and War in Europe 1618–1815 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012), 26. For a detailed discussion on the historiography of the demographic impact of the conflict: John Theibault, ‘The Demography of the Thirty Years’ War Re-visited: Günther Franz and his Critics’, German History 15, no. 1 (1997), 1–21.

2 Examples include Volker Press, ‘Soziale Folgen des Dreißigjährigen Krieges’, in Ständische Gesellschaft und soziale Mobilität, edited by Winfried Schulze (Munich: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 1988), 239–68; Ronald G. Asch, ‘‘Wo der soldat hinkömbt, da ist alles sein’: Military Violence and Atrocities in the Thirty Years War Re-examined’, German History 18, no. 3 (2000), 291–309; Otto Ulbricht, ‘The Experience of Violence during the Thirty Years’ War: A Look at the Civilian Victims’, in Joseph Canning, Hartmut Lehmann and Jay Winter, eds, Power, Violence and Mass Death in Pre-Modern and Modern Times (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 97–128; René Hanke, ‘Bürger und Soldaten. Erfahrungen rheinischer Gemeinden mit dem Militär 1618–1714’, in Andreas Rutz (ed.), Krieg und Kriegserfahrung im Westen des Reiches 1568–1714 (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2016), 141–58; John Theibault, ‘The Material Conditions of War’, in Olaf Asbach and Peter Schröder, eds, The Ashgate Research Companion to the Thirty Years’ War (London: Routledge, 2016), 252–4; Sigrun Haude, Coping with Life during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) (Leiden: BRILL, 2021).

3 Peter H. Wilson, ‘Perceptions of violence in the early modern communications revolution: the case of the Thirty Years War 1618–1648’ in Violence and War in Culture and the Media: Five Disciplinary Lenses, edited by Athina Karatzogianni (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), 19; Brian Sandberg, ‘Ravages and depredations: raiding war and globalization in the early modern world’, in A Global History of Early Modern Violence, edited by Erica Charters, Marie Houllemare and Peter H. Wilson, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020), 92; Peter H. Wilson, Katerina Tkacova, and Thomas Pert, ‘Mapping premodern small war: The case of the Thirty Years War (1618–1648)’, Small Wars & Insurgencies 34, no. 6 (2023), 1043–71.

4 Martin Rink, ‘The Partisan’s Metamorphosis: From Freelance Military Entrepreneur to German Freedom Fighter, 1740 to 1815’, War in History 17, no. 1 (2010), 6–36; Sibylle Scheipers, On Small War: Carl von Clausewitz and People’s War (Oxford: Oxford University Press (OUP), 2018).

5 Wilson, Tkacova and Pert, ‘Mapping’, 1045.

6 Press, 239–68; Ulbricht, 97–128; Hanke, 141–58; Haude, Coping with Life.

7 Peter H. Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy: A New History of the Thirty Years’ War (London: Allen Lane, 2009), 833; Martin Bötzinger, Leben und Leiden während des Dreißigjährigen Krieges 1618–1648 in Thüringen und Franken (Bad Langensalza: Verlag Rockstuhl, 2016), 44.

8 Bernd Roeck, Eine Stadt in Krieg und Frieden: Studien zur Geschichte der Reichsstadt Augsburg zwischen Kalenderstreit und Parität (2 vols. Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989), II, 809–44; Quentin Outram, ‘The Socio-Economic Relations of Warfare and the Military Mortality Crises of the Thirty Years’ War’, Medical History 45 (2001), 151–84; Sigrun Haude, ‘The Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648): Moving Bodies – Transforming Lives – Shifting Knowledge’, Daphnis, 45 (2017), 475–91.

9 Theibault, ‘Material Conditions’, 245–56; Quentin Outram, ‘The Demographic Impact of Early Modern Warfare’, Social Science History 26, no. 2 (2002): 245–72, esp. 252–3.

10 Andreas Zimmerman, Jonas Dörschner, and Felix Machts, eds, The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol: A Commentary (Oxford: OUP, 2011), 280-1.

11 Elizabeth G. Ferris and Katharine M. Donato, Refugees, Migration and Global Governance: Negotiating the Global Compacts (Abingdon: Taylor & Francis, 2020), 33; Kemal Kirişci, ‘At 70, the 1951 Geneva Convention is under duress: The Global Compact on Refugees could help save lives and economies’, International Migration, 59 (2021), 253; Jerzy Sztucki, ‘Who is a refugee? The Convention definition: universal or obsolete?’ in Frances Nicholson and Patrick Twomey, eds, Refugee Rights and Realities: Evolving International Concepts and Regimes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (CUP), 1999), 55–6.

12 Andrew E. Shacknove, ‘Who is a Refugee?’, Ethics 95, no.2 (1985), 274–84; Aristide R. Zolberg, Astri Suhrke and Sergio Aguayo, Escape from Violence: Conflict and the Refugee Crisis in the Developing World (Oxford: OUP, 1989), 3–4; Sztucki, ‘Who is a refugee?’, 55–80; Rafael Bonoan, ‘Cessation of Refugee Studies: A guide for determining when internal displacement ends?, Forced Migration Review, 17 (2003), 8; Roger Zetter, ‘More Labels, Fewer Refugees: Remaking the Refugee Label in an Era of Globalization’, Journal of Refugee Studies 20, no. 2 (2007), 172–92; François Gemenne and Pauline Brücker, ‘From the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement to the Nansen Initiative: What the Governance of Environmental Migration Can Learn from the Governance of Internal Displacement’, International Journal of Refugee Law 27, no. 2 (2015), 245–63.

13 Edward Dutton, Yossry Ahmed Sayed Essa, Salaheldin Farah Bakhiet, Hamada Ali Abdelmuti Ali, Shehana Mohammed Alqafari, Asma Saad Hhamad Alfaleh, David Becker, ‘Brain drain in Syria’s ancient capital: No Flynn Effect in Damascus, 2004–2013/14’, Personality and Individual Differences 125, (2018), 10–13; Mariia Rudyk, Ganna Tolstanova, Liudmyla Ostapchenko, Larysa Skivka, ‘Inter-disciplinary team working in neuroimmunology can facilitate counteracting brain-drain in Ukraine due to war’, Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, 109 (2023), 269–70; Johannes Wachs, ‘Digital traces of brain drain: developers during the Russian invasion of Ukraine’, EPJ Data Science, 12 (2023), 14–18; Tom Kando, ‘The Nobel Prize and Intellectual Migration: A Demographic Analysis’, International Journal on World Peace 35, no. 3 (2018), 69–83; Lawrence A. Zeidman, Anna von Villiez, Jan-Patrick Stellmann, and Hendrik van den Bussche, ‘“History had taken such a large piece out of my life” – Neuroscientist refugees from Hamburg during National Socialism’, Journal of the History of the Neurosciences 25, no. 3 (2016), 275–98; Richard Stone, ‘Aid keeps researchers afloat in war-torn Ukraine: Fledgling programs aim to sustain lives and work, and stem brain drain’, Science 376, no. 6591 (22 April 2022), 337; Georgina Ferry, ‘Remember what science owes to child refugees’, Nature, 577 (30 January 2020), 599.

14 Geert Janssen, The Dutch Revolt and Catholic Exile in Reformation Europe (Cambridge: CUP, 2014); Geert Janssen, ‘The Republic of the Refugees: Early Modern Migrations and the Dutch Experience’, The Historical Journal 60, no. 1 (2017), 233–52; Geert Janssen, ‘The Legacy of Exile and the Rise of Humanitarianism’, in Brian Cummings et al., eds, Remembering the Reformation (London: Routledge, 2020), 226–42; Nicholas Terpstra, Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World: An Alternative History of the Reformation (Cambridge: CUP, 2015); Alexander Schunka, ‘Forgotten Memories – Contested Representations: Early Modern Bohemian Migrants in Saxony’, in Mareike König and Rainer Ohlinger, eds, Enlarging European Memory: Migration Movements in Historical Perspective (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke, 2006), 35–46; Alexander Schunka, ‘No Return? Temporary Exile and Permanent Immigration among Confessional Migrants in the Early Modern Era’, in Jason Coy, Jared Poley, and Alexander Schunka, eds, Migrations in the German Lands, 1500–2000 (New York: Berghahn, 2016), 67–87; Vivienne Larminie, Huguenot Networks, 1560–1780: The Interactions and Impact of a Protestant Minority in Europe (New York: Routledge, 2018); David Mayes, ‘Heretics or Nonconformists? State Policies toward Anabaptists in Sixteenth-Century Hesse’, The Sixteenth Century Journal 32, no. 4 (2001), 1003–26; John D. Roth, ‘The Limits of Confessionalization: Social Discipline, the Ban, and Political Resistance Among Swiss Anabaptists, 1550–1700’, The Mennonite Quarterly Review, 89 (2015), 517–37; James M. Stayer, The German Peasants’ War and Anabaptist Community of Goods (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991), 139–59.

15 G.E. Fussell, ‘Low Countries’ Influence on English Farming’, The English Historical Review 74, no. 293 (1959), 611–22; Nigel Goose, ‘The “Dutch” in Colchester: The economic influence of an immigrant community in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, Immigrants & Minorities 1, no. 3 (1982), 261–80; Hugh Dunthorne, Britain and the Dutch Revolt, 1560–1700 (Cambridge: CUP, 2013), 125–6; Peter Trudgill, ‘The role of Dutch in the development of East Anglian English’, Taal en Tongval 65, no. 1 (2013), 11–22.

16 Randolph Vigne, ‘Dominus Providebit: Huguenot Commitment to Poor Relief in England’ and Jane McKee, ‘The Influence of the Huguenots on Educated Ireland: Huguenot Books in Irish Church Libraries of the Eighteenth Century’, both in The Religious Culture of the Huguenots, 1660–1750, Anne Dunan-Page (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 69–86 and 121–36 respectively; Michael Green, ‘Bridging the English Channel: Huguenots in the educational milieu of the English upper class’, Paedagogica Historica 54, no. 4 (2018), 389–409; Owen Stanwood, The Global Refuge: Huguenots in an Age of Empire (Oxford: OUP, 2019); William H.F. Mitchell, ‘Huguenot Contributions to English Pan-Protestantism, 1685–1700’, Journal of Early Modern History, 25 (2021), 300–18.

17 Brennan Pursell, The Winter King: Frederick V of the Palatinate and the Coming of the Thirty Years’ War (London: Routledge, 2003); Nadine Akkerman, Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Hearts (Oxford: OUP, 2022); Thomas Pert, The Palatine Family and the Thirty Years’ War: Experiences of Exile in Early Modern Europe, 1632–1648 (Oxford: OUP, 2023).

18 Outram, ‘Socio-Economic Relations’, 177; Janssen, ‘The Legacy of Exile’, 228–30.

19 Ulbricht, 101–2; Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy, 791.

20 Gerd Zillhardt, ed., Der Dreissigjährige Krieg in zeitgenössischer Darstellung: Hans Herberles “Zeytregister” (1618–1672), Aufzeichnungen aus dem Ulmer Territorium: ein Beitrag zu Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsverständnis der Unterschichten (Ulm: Stadtarchiv; Stuttgart: Kommissionsverlag Kohlhammer, 1975).

21 Claude Louis Hector de Villars, Mémoires du maréchal de Villars, edited by Charles de Vogüé (6 vols, Paris, 1884–1904), II, 229–30.

22 Derek Croxton, ‘A Territorial Imperative? The Military Revolution, Strategy and Peacemaking in the Thirty Years War’, War in History 5, no. 3 (1998), 273; Jeremy Black, European Warfare, 1595–1660 (London and New York: Taylor & Francis, 2002), 141.

23 Asch, 295.

24 Michael Kaiser, ‘Die Söldner und die Bevölkerung. Überlegungen zu Konstituierung und Überwindung eines lebensweltlichen Antagonismus’, in Stefan Kroll and Kersten Krüger, eds, Militär und ländliche Gesellschaft in der frühen Neuzeit (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2000), 113-14; Theibault, ‘Material Conditions’, 252.

25 John A. Lynn, ‘Essential Women, Necessary Wives, and Exemplary Soldiers: The Military Reality and Cultural Representation of Women’s Military Participation (1600–1815)’ and Mary Elizabeth Ailes, ‘Camp Followers, Sutlers, and Soldiers’ Wives: Women in Early Modern Armies (c.1450–1650)’, both in Barton Hacker and Margaret Vining, eds, A Companion to Women’s Military History (Leiden: BRILL, 2012), 93 and 76 respectively; Peter H. Wilson, ‘Wars, States, and Gender in Early Modern European Warfare, 1600s–1780s’, in Karen Hagemann, Stefan Dudink, and Sonya O. Rose, eds, The Oxford handbook of gender, war and the Western world since 1600 (Oxford: OUP, 2020), 79.

26 Shin Demura, ‘Flucht der Landebevölkerung in die Stadt im Dreißigjährigen Krieg am Beispiel von der Reichsstadt Ulm und ihrem Territorium’, in Matthias Asche, Michael Herrmann, Ulrike Ludwig and Anton Schindling, eds, Krieg, Militär und Migration in der Frühen Neuzeit (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2008), 198–9; Jan Lindegren, ‘Men, Money, and Means’, in War and Competition between States, edited by Philippe Contamine (Oxford, OUP, 2000), 162.

27 Robert Monro, Monro his expedition with the worthy Scots Regiment (called Mac-Keyes Regiment) (London: William Jones, 1637), Second Part, 8.

28 H.A. Dieterich (ed.), ‘Leben und Leiden einer Albgemeinde im dreißigjährigen Krieg’, Blätter für württembergische Kirchengrschichte, 1 (1886), 93.

29 Anon., The courant out of Italy and Germany &c. [7 August – 1 September 1621]. (Amsterdam: George Veseler, 1621).

30 Géza Perjés, ‘Army Provisioning, Logistics and Strategy in the Second Half of the 17th Century’, Acta Historica Academiæ Scientiarum Hungaricæ 16, no. 1–2 (1970), 2; John A. Lynn, ‘The History of Logistics and Supplying War’, in Feeding Mars: Logistics in Western Warfare from the Middle Ages to the Present, edited by John A. Lynn (Oxford: Westview, 1993), 17.

31 Perjés, ‘4–5.

32 John A. Lynn, ‘How War Fed War: The Tax of Violence and Contributions during the Grand Siècle’, The Journal of Modern History 65, no. 2 (1993), 308–9.

33 Outram, ‘Socio-Economic Relations’, 174.

34 Jan Peters (ed.), Peter Hagendorf – Tagebuch eines Söldners aus dem Dreißigjährigen Krieg (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2012), 111.

35 Geoff Mortimer, Eyewitness Accounts of the Thirty Years War 1618–48 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 78.

36 Ibid.; Ulbricht, ‘The Experience of Violence’, 102.

37 Fritz Redlich, ‘Contributions in the Thirty Years’ War’, The Economic History Review 12, no. 2 (1959), 247–54; Lynn, ‘How War Fed War’, 296; Tryntje Helfferich, ‘A Levy in Liège for Mazarin’s Army: Practical and Strategic Difficulties in Raising and Supporting Troops in the Thirty Years’ War’, Journal of Early Modern History 11, no. 6 (2007), 476; David Parrott, ‘The Military Enterpriser in the Thirty Years’ War’, in War, Entrepreneurs, and the State in Europe and the Mediterranean, 1300–1800, edited by Jeff Fynn-Paul (Leiden: BRILL, 2014) 75; Sandberg, ‘Ravages’, 92.

38 Ulbricht, ‘The Experience of Violence’, 100.

39 Parrott, ‘The Military Enterpriser’, 75.

40 Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy, 836.

41 Ibid.

42 Demura, ‘Flucht der Landebevölkerung’, 201.

43 John Theibault, ‘The Rhetoric of Death and Destruction in the Thirty Years’ War’, Journal of Social History 27, no. 2 (1993), 281.

44 Theibault, ‘Material Conditions’, 252; Sandberg, ‘Ravages’, 92.

45 Hans Medick, Der Dreißigjährige Krieg: Zeugnisse vom Leben mit Gewalt (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2018), 158.

46 Outram, ‘Socio-Economic Relations’, 181; Theibault, ‘Material Conditions’, 252.

47 Jennifer Speake (ed.), Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs (6th ed., Oxford: OUP, 2015). Accessed 23 February 2024, from <https://www-oxfordreference-com.ezproxy-prd.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/view/10.1093/acref/9780198734901.001.0001/acref-9780198734901-e-62>; A.D. Lee, ‘Food Supply and Military Mutiny in the Late Roman Empire’, Journal of Late Antiquity 12, no. 2 (2019), 277–97; C.S.L. Davies, ‘Provisions for Armies, 1509–50: A Study in the Effectiveness of Early Tudor Government’, The Economic History Review 17, no. 2 (1964), 234–48; Thomas Agostini, ‘“Deserted his Majesty’s Service”: Military Runaways, the British-American Press, and the Problem of Desertion during the Seven Years’ War’, Journal of Social History 40, no. 4 (2007), 957–85; John A. Lynn, Giant of the Grand Siècle: The French Army, 1610–1715 (Cambridge: CUP, 1997), 414–17; Jeanette Kamp, ‘The Dynamics of Desertion in a Military Labour Market, Frankfurt am Main 1650–1800’, in Desertion in the Early Modern World: A Comparative History, edited by Matthias van Rossum and Jeanette Kamp (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 60; Black, 49.

48 Asch, 295.

49 Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy, 517–18.

50 Peters, 113.

51 Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy, 562.

52 Quotation from B. Dudik (ed.), ‘Tagebuch des feindlichen Einfalls der Schweden in das Markgrafthum Mähren während ihres Aufenthaltes in der Stadt Olmütz 1642–1650’, Archiv für österreichische Geschichte, 65 (1883), 349.

53 Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy, 840; Asch, 300–1.

54 Monro, 5, 102.

55 Wilson, ‘Was the Thirty Years War a “Total War”?’, 24–5. B. Ann Tlusty, The Martial Ethic in Early Modern Germany: Civic Duty and the Right of Arms (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 9–10.

56 Zillhardt, 133–4.

57 Monro, 5.

58 Ibid., 8.

59 Ibid, 4.

60 Ibid, 5.

61 Demura, ‘Flucht der Landebevölkerung’, 198.

62 Outram, ‘Socio-Economic Relations’, 181; Ulbricht, 102; Theibault, ‘Material Conditions’, 252–3; Haude, Coping with Life, 100.

63 Press, 254; Theibault, ‘Material Conditions’, 253; David Lederer, ‘The Myth of the All-Destructive War: Afterthoughts on German Suffering, 1618–1648’, German History 29, no. 3 (2011), 400–1; Wilson, ‘Perceptions of violence’, 19; Sigrun Haude, ‘The World of the Siege in New Perspective: the Populace during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648)’ in Anke Fischer-Kattner and Jamel Ostwald, eds, The World of the Siege: Representations of Early Modern Positional Warfare (Leiden: BRILL, 2019), 21–43.

64 Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy, 792.

65 Anon., The courant out of Italy and Germany &c. [7 – 28 August 1621] (Amsterdam: George Veseler, 1621), [unpaginated]; [Anon], The courant out of Italy and Germany &c. [7 August – 1 September 1621], [unpaginated].

66 Anon., The fourth of September. Newes from sundry places, both forreine and domestique From Venice, Rome, Spaine, France, Naples, the Palatinate, and the Low-Countries [13 July – 8 August 1622] (London: Nathaniel Butter, 1622), [unpaginated].

67 Zillhardt, 150–1.

68 Ibid., 151.

69 Shin Demura, ‘Im Schutz der sicheren Stadt. Flüchtlinge in Ulm in der zweiten Hälfte des Dreißigjährigen Krieges’, Ulm und Oberschwaben: Zeitschrift für Geschichte, Kunst und Kultur, 56 (2009), 124.

70 Stadtarchiv Ulm (hereafter StA Ulm): H Furttenbach, 001, 273f.

71 Hans Heberle recorded that Ulm formally accepted the Peace of Prague on 27 June 1635. As his Zeytregister used the Old Style dating system, this was actually 7 July 1635: Zillhardt, 157; Demura, ‘Flucht der Landebevölkerung’, 192.

72 Zillhardt, 154–7.

73 Heinrich Oraeus, Theatrum Europaeum: Continuatio III, (Frankfurt am Main: Balthasar Christoph Wust, 1670), 379; StA Ulm, H Furttenbach, 001, 287: ‘16,000 frembde Pauren mit weib und kinder’.

74 The visitation determined that there were 8,214 refugees residing in the city in November 1634: StA Ulm, A 3530, Rats-Protokoll Nr. 84 (1634) fol.391. See also Demura, ‘Im Schutz der sicheren Stadt’, 124; Terence McIntosh, Urban Decline in Early Modern Germany: Schwäbisch Hall and Its Region, 1650–1750 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 2; Hermann Grees, ‘Die Bevölkerungsentwicklung in den Städten Oberschwabens (einschließlich Ulms) unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Wanderungsvorgänge’, Ulm und Oberschwaben Zeitschrift für Kunst und Kultur, 40–41 (1973), 137.

75 Grees, 134–6.

76 StA Ulm, A 1513, Nr. 167: ‘diser sehr populierten Statt’.

77 Ibid.

78 Sigrun Haude, ‘Life, Death, and Religion during the Thirty Years’ War’, in Continuity and Change: The harvest of Late-Medieval and Reformation History: Essays Presented to Heiko A. Oberman on his 70th Birthday, edited by Robert Bast and Andrew Colin Gow, (Leiden: BRILL, 2000), 422.