Professor Wilson examines the causes, conduct, and consequences of the Thirty Years War, Europes most destructive conflict prior to the two 20th-century world wars.

This talk at Gresham College took place on the 400th anniversary of the defenestration of three Habsburg officials by Bohemian malcontents in Prague. This violent act triggered a crisis which expanded into general war despite the best efforts of most of those involved to contain it.