Eleanor Swift-Hook’s Book 1 in a new series is The Fugitive’s Sword. The Lord’s Learning series traces the story of Philip Lord. Forced into exile by a charge of treason as a boy of fifteen, he rises to become a commander of men on land and at sea, with a reputation for ruthlessness in the brutal wars that rage across Europe in the second quarter of the Seventeenth century…
Author: Eleanor Swift-Hook / October 2024 / 386 pages
In the article below, Eleanor examines the turbulent years of the 1620s – the setting for The Fugitive’s Sword. It was a time when all of Europe was engulfed in what would become the Thirty Years’ War.
@emswifthook #17thCentury #HistFic #30YearsWar #LordsLearning #LordsLegacy
The Thirty Years War was the most costly war in terms of human life that Europe has ever known. The more modest estimates say 20% of the total population died as a direct result of the conflict, and in places that figure was as high as 90%. It was a bitter, brutal war which was powered by the most potent cause known to man—absolute conviction in religion. Of course, religion was married to her earthly suitor, political power, and as time went on it was a muddied mix of the two that caused horrific suffering through the miseries of plague and famine brought about by the depredations of vast armies. The conglomeration of states that made up the Holy Roman Empire—including principalities, bishoprics, free cities, duchies and kingdoms—much of which would become modern day Germany, was divided, invaded, sacked, occupied, oppressed and liberated, often more than once.
It all began when the Protestant leaders of Prague (then the capital of Bohemia) threw three men out of a window. They were upset because their rights of worship had been supposedly guaranteed by the emperor’s chosen heir, who was a Habsburg and Catholic. They had reluctantly elected him to be their king solely on the basis of his promise to uphold those rights. But instead, he reneged. The Bohemian’s declared that as his word to them was broken they could eject his regents (through the window) and elect a new king. They chose the leading Protestant prince in the empire, Frederick V, Elector Palatine, to be that new king. Despite advice from his wife’s uncle the King of Denmark and his father-in-law the King of England, both strong Protestant kingdoms, and his mother amongst others, Frederick accepted. A little over a year later, in November 1620, he and his family fled Prague to avoid capture by the emperor’s army, leaving the Protestant nobles and the Bohemian people to pay the price of their revolt.
The exiled King and Queen of Bohemia were given sanctuary in the Protestant Dutch United Provinces, where Frederick’s grandfather William the Silent had led the rebellion against Catholic Habsburg Spain in the 1560s. A rebellion that was still in progress. Whilst there was limited sympathy for their losing their Bohemian crowns, there was strong outrage across much of Protestant Europe that they were also deprived of the Elector Palatine’s own lands as punishment for what the emperor chose to see as an act of treason.
In England, King James had been striving to reconcile the hostile parties by proposing that his son and heir wed a Habsburg princess. But by 1624, neither his son, Prince Charles nor his favourite, the Duke of Buckingham—and certainly not his people—wanted a Spanish Match.
War seemed the only option and troops were raised to serve under the infamous mercenary commander, Ernst von Mansfeld. When news of the Bohemian defeat had first reached England in 1620 a force of volunteers had immediately been raised which went on to garrison the key cities in the Palatinate before being defeated when the Palatinate was occupied. But most of these new troops were not volunteers. They were criminals and vagabonds, sent by the parishes who were glad to be rid of them.
And there were doubts raised as to their immediate destination. Whether they should march directly to the Palatinate to liberate the cities there or if they should first help the Dutch whose key city of Breda was slowly being strangled in an ever-tighter noose by the army of the Italian mercenary commander. Ambrogio Spinola. who was in Spanish service.
In the autumn of 1624, where Mansfeld’s army would go or should go was exercising the political and military minds of Europe on both sides—and the fate of Breda as well as the fate of the Palatinate hung in the balance.
It is at this point The Fugitive’s Sword begins, weaving its story against the backdrop of political and military tension. Outside Breda the arrival of an enigmatic young man, still in his teens offers one of Spinola’s Captains the opportunity to win favour. And uncertain as to where Mansfeld’s men will go, the exiled Queen of Bohemia sends a trusted agent, one of her ladies, to find out and, if needed, to sway matters so as to ensure the troops remain committed to a Palatinate campaign.
Eleanor Swift-Hook enjoys the mysteries of history and fell in love with the early Stuart era at university when she re-enacted battles and living history events with the English Civil War Society. Since then, she has had an ongoing fascination with the social, military and political events that unfolded during the Thirty Years’ War and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and loves writing stories woven into the historical backdrop of those dramatic times. She is the author of the Lord’s Legacy series and lives in County Durham. You can find her on her website eleanorswifthook.com, or on Twitter/X @emswifthook
