Posted on 07/31/2007 2:48:21 PM PDT by blam
Mass Grave Sheds Light on Europe's Bloody History
By David Crossland in Berlin
Europe's soil is blood-soaked from centuries of fighting but rarely yields mass graves from battles that took place before the two world wars. One such grave has now been found near Berlin with over 100 soldiers who died in the 1636 Battle of Wittstock. Archaeologists say they can learn much from the skeletons which show terrible wounds.
An archaeologist gently uncovering a row of skeletons in the mass grave found in Wittstock near Berlin.
Archaeologists in Germany are examining a mass grave containing the skeletons of more than 100 soldiers who fell in a major battle during the Thirty Years War.
Workers came across the graves by chance while digging in a sand pit near the town of Wittstock, northwest of Berlin, in June.
"The special thing about this find is that there are only very few mass graves in Europe between 1300 and 1850 that can be attributed to specific battles," Antje Grothe, the archaeologist leading the excavation, told SPIEGEL ONLINE.
Historians and archaeologists called to examine the neat rows of skeletons quickly concluded that they were men who died in the Battle of Wittstock on October 4, 1636, when a Protestant army of 16,000 Swedes beat a force of 22,000 from the Catholic alliance of the Holy Roman empire and Saxony. Some 6,000 men died in the fighting.
Archaeologists are now excavating the site and have started to examine the skeletons, many of which show the dreadful battlefield wounds that killed them - bones smashed by heavy blades, skulls torn open by musket balls.
The rarity of such graves may seem astonishing given the hundreds of battles that shaped Europe's blood-drenched history. But the battlefields often stretched over a number of square miles,
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
GGG Ping.
I’m just glad that we’ve pretty much outgrown the practice of killing each other over differences in religious beliefs...well, at least those Religions that are modern and civilized that is.
Wow, cool!
Only the rationale for slaughter has changed. Look at the 20th century.
Northern Irish still appear at it.
We forget that even the English civil Wars were marked by savage battles. More than 200,000 died in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland among a population of less than 10,000,000. A recent biographer of Luther has remarked that it would have been better for Europe if Luther had suffered the fate of Hus.
Coincidence?
I think not!
They must have eaten the brown acid.
Nah, it was probably the Purple Haze what got ‘em.
(bonus points if you get it!)
Wow. The Swedes used to fight?
Woodstock, not Wittstock. What are the bonus points good for? Brown acid?
Death tolls in old wars usually are less than in more recent ones, if only because it is easier to kill a lot more people with one weapon today. Though this is changing in some conflicts (not even wars) such as the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan (though it could be considered a war on the Iraqi/islamofascist side—they’re losing a lot of people, though not in the hundreds of thousands).
Sweden actually has one of the most advanced militaries in the world, and has a decent amount of soldiers due to conscription. It is a neutral country, but that is not the same as pacifist.
The author probably thinks the Middle Ages were a fun time, also. Maybe he even pines for the public burnings of heretics put on by the Church back then. Afterall, these spectacles were such great entertainment for the ignorant masses, as well as being didactic in nature! What this author reveals about himself is pretty ugly. It sounds to me like an endorsement of the repression formerly practiced by the RC Church. But I have often encountered this same sentiment among Catholics, so I am not surprised by it in the least.
I was giving the conclusion of Richard Marius, a recent biographer and admirer of Luther. Whether Luther was right or wrong theologically is beside the point, which is that he initiated an age of war motivated by religious fanaticism. Even the Reconquista, which lasted almost four hundred years,or the wars fought between Turks and Christians were never savage as the religious wars of Europe, especially those in France and Germany. Spain, England, Italy, and France were all saved finally by despotic governments. After 1648, religion no longer drove the wars of Europe. The despot Cromwell died early, sparing the country across the channel from another general like Henry V.
Luther initiated nothing of the sort. Idiots simply used Luther's teaching as their excuse to kill others. None of Luther's teachings can be interpreted as initiating an age of war. Following this idiotic reasoning, Jesus was responsible for the Crusades and the inquisition while Moses cause the Holocaust.
Luther initiated nothing of the sort. Idiots simply used Luther's teaching as their excuse to kill others. None of Luther's teachings can be interpreted as initiating an age of war. Following this idiotic reasoning, Jesus was responsible for the Crusades and the inquisition while Moses cause the Holocaust.
By the same reasoning an unreasonable Pope, that forced Luther to nail his thesis to the door of the Church by selling indulgences and ignoring the teachings of Jesus, initiated the war even more than Luther did.
I add that since the Pope was infinitely more powerful than Luther, he must be thousands of time more responsible for the ensuing conflicts.
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Thanks for the ping, SunkenCiv.
MilHist ping to the list
Well, now that the United State of Europe is firmly established, hopefully this battle won’t happen at all.
bump
bump
Book I, Chap. iv. : HOW SIMPLICISSIMUS’S PALACE WAS STORMED, PLUNDERED, AND RUINATED, AND IN WHAT SORRY FASHION THE SOLDIERS KEPT HOUSE THERE sets the tone for the whole story, and establishes the origin of who the narrator is. This should immediately rivet one's attention. Here's a tasty morsel from Book I, Chap. xiv: A QUAINT COMEDIA OF FIVE PEASANTS to pique one's interest:
Now before we were out of the wood, we espied some ten peasants, of whom part were armed with musquets, while the rest were busied with burying something. So our musqueteers ran upon them, crying, “Stay! Stay!” But they answered with a discharge of shot, and when they saw they were outnumbered by the soldiers, away they went so quick that none of the musqueteers, being weary, could overtake them. So then they would dig up again what the peasants had been burying: and that was the easier because they had left the mattocks and spades which they used lying there. But they had made few strokes with the pick when they heard a voice from below crying out, “O ye wanton rogues, O ye worst of villains, think ye that Heaven will leave your heathenish cruelty and tricks unpunished? Nay, for there live yet honest fellows by whom your barbarity shall be paid in such wise that none of your fellow men shall think you worth even a kick of his foot.” So the soldiers looked on one another in amazement, and knew not what to do. For some thought they had to deal with a ghost: to me it seemed I was dreaming: but the officer bade them dig on stoutly. And presently they came to a cask, which they burst open, and therein found a fellow that had neither nose nor ears, and yet still lived. He, when he was somewhat revived, and had recognized some of the troop, told them how on the day before, as some of his regiment were a-foraging, the peasants had caught six of them. And of these they first of all, about an hour before, had shot five dead at once, making them stand one behind another; and because the bullet, having already passed through five bodies, did not reach him, who stood sixth and last, they had cut off his nose and ears, yet before that had forced him to render to five of them the filthiest service in the world* . But when he saw himself thus degraded by these rogues without shame or knowledge of God, he had heaped upon them the vilest reproaches, though they were willing now to let him go. Yet in the hope one of them would from annoyance send a ball through his head, he called them all by their right names: yet in vain. Only this, that when he had thus chafed them they had clapped him in the cask here present and buried him alive, saying, since he so desired death they would not cheat him of his amusement.Now while the fellow thus lamented the torments he had endured, came another party of foot-soldiers by a cross road through the wood, who had met the above-mentioned boors, caught five and shot the rest dead: and among the prisoners were four to whom that maltreated trooper had been forced to do that filthy service a little before. So now, when both parties had found by their manner of hailing one another that they were of the same army, they joined forces, and again must hear from the trooper himself how it had fared with him and his comrades. And there might any man tremble and quake to see how these same peasants were handled: for some in their first fury would say, “Shoot them down,” but others said, “Nay: these wanton villains must we first properly torment: yea, and make them to understand in their own bodies what they have deserved as regards the person of this same trooper.” And all the time while this discussion proceeded these peasants received such mighty blows in the ribs from the butts of their musquets that I wondered they did not spit blood. Bur presently stood forth a soldier, and said he: “You gentlemen, seeing that it is a shame to the whole profession of arms that this rogue (and therewith he pointed to that same unhappy trooper) have so shamefully submitted himself to the will of five boors, it is surely our duty to wash out this spot of shame, and compel these rogues to do the same shameful service for this trooper which they forced him to do for them.” But another said: “This fellow is not worth having such honour due to him; for were he not a poltroon surely he would not have done such shameful service, to the shame of all honest soldiers, but would a thousand times sooner have died.” In a word, ‘twas decided with one voice that each of the captured peasants should do the same filthy service for ten soldiers which their comrade had been forced to do, and each time should say, “So do I cleanse and wash away the shame which these soldiers think they have endured.”
Thereafter they would decided how they should deal with the peasants when they had fulfilled this cleanly task. So presently they went to work: but the peasants were so obstinate that neither by promise of their lives nor by any torture could they be compelled thereto. Then one took the fifth peasant, who had not maltreated the trooper, a little aside, and says he: “It thou wilt deny God and all His saints, I will let thee go whither thou wilt.” Thereupon the peasant made the reply, “he had in all his life taken little count of saints, and had had but little traffic with God,” and added thereto with a solemn oath, “he knew not God and had no art nor part in His kingdom.” So then the soldier sent a ball at his head: which worked as little harm as if it had been shot at a mountain of steel. Then he drew out his hangar and “Beest thou still here?” says he. “I promised to let thee go whither thou wouldst: see now, I send thee to the kingdom of hell, since thou wilt not go to heaven”: and so he split his head down to the teeth. And as he fell, “So,” said the soldier, “must a man avenge himself and punish these loose rogues both in this world and the next.”
Meanwhile the other soldiers had the remaining four peasants to deal with. These they bound, hands and feet together, over a fallen tree in such wise that their back-sides (saving your presence) were uppermost. Then they stript off their breeches, and took some yards of their match-string and made knots in it, and fiddled them therewith so mercilessly that the blood ran. So they cried out lamentably, but ‘twas but sport for the soldiers, who ceased not to saw away till skin and flesh were clean sawn off the bones. Me they let go to my hut, for the last-arrived party knew the way well. And so I know not how they finished with the peasants.
Source: The Simplicissimus Project
The Swedes were a major powerin Northern and Central Europe from the Thirty Years War [Gustavus Adolfus] through Charles XII’s defeat at Poltava at the hands of Peter the Great
Unrelated to this topic, but you might be interested:
http://www.physorg.com/news104901547.html
3,000-year-old mask found in Aleutians
A whalebone mask discovered at an Alaskan archaeological site was probably broken during an Aleut funeral 3,000 years ago, scientists said.
Mike Yarborough, who heads the dig on Unalaska Island in the Aleutian chain, told The Anchorage Daily News the mask is about 2,000 years older than any other to have been found. Only the upper half of the mask was found and it had old cracks in it.
Archaeologists began working on the hillside because a new bridge is to be built there, replacing an old wooden-decked one. The dig, originally scheduled to last only a month, has been extended because the site has proved to be much richer than anyone expected.
The village was inhabited at a time when the climate in the Aleutians was much colder and the islands were surrounded by ice year-round. The inhabitants lived in stone houses with under-floor air spaces for heating.
The mask resembles a 1,000-year-old one found on the Alaskan peninsula. Denise Rankin, vice president of the tribal corporation on Unalaska, said the eyes and other features are also familiar to her.
“They look just like an Aleut face,” she said.
It was the Orange Barrel.
Thanks.
War never has been pretty.
The blood seems to have thinned. They sure don’t know how to deal with insolent Muslims.
Thanks Renfield.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1873120/posts
Thanks for the links.
It seems so on the surface, but you can bet the Viking berserker trigger is still very much present.
You don't see it so much in the cities because of the socialist gloss. But out in the country side, and on the docks , you will see it very much alive and well.
They same tenacity for "tolerance" can flip around in a nanosecond.
Yeah, I think Muslims need their own Reformation.
It has always been an interest of mine to understand history from a contemporary perspective, that is what would it have been like to live during any arbitrary historical period.
We're all familiar with clinically generic and sterile history of names, dates, and places, most of which is focused upon the elite, the ruling class. Very little of history is representative of what life was actually like then. This is no different than what can be discerned from any history books concerning contemporary modern times. what do Boomer's children & grandchildren actually know about what life was like post-Kennedy assassination, LBJ era, landing on the moon, Watergate, etc. except what the history books state, except nameless faces and clinical detachement of sterile figures, places, and events (e.g. Tonkin Gulf, U.S.S. Pueblo, Landing Xone X-Ray). Its not until first hand narrative accounts are read that one gets an inkling what it was like to live through those events.
I think Grimmelhausen's satire does an exquisite and erudite job of edifying and illuminating the period from the eyes of the common man, i.e. the hoi polloi, and not some lofty, rarified, nobility and blue-blooded aristrocracy (the tip of the iceberg if you will). That would be akin to understanding contemporary life through accounts of the names, dates, places and activities and meetings held by current heads of state.
You mention the price of progress. I guess there's no better example of that than the U.S. Civil War. The Time-Life series on the Civl War puts that conflict into contemporary eyewitness terms, i.e., what it was like to have actually lived through those battles (often on an hour to hour time frame).
Another good example of this would be Robert Graves series, I, Claudius. This is a historical narrative written from Emperor Claudius' perspective about what contemplatively and plausibly could've been day to day life for the very elite of Roman society. Initially its written from the "fly on the wall" perspective. What struck me immensely with that work is the irony of these people considering themselves to be the epitome of civilized. One only can ponder what "barbarian" life was like in that regard (in that the horrendous brutality of those "civilized" people is utterly breathtaking).
Other than that, no point should be implied by my posting that excerpt from Grimmelhausen's story, other than what may be inferred existentially; you'll get out of it whatever you get out of it (in whatever terms whatever you get out of it means something to you).
The problem with the Muslims is that they HAVE had their Reformation. The fanatics today look backwards to the “purity” of the 7th Century and reject all that they learned from the Christians peoples whom their forefathers subjected or the modern colonial powers who ruled them.
The 30 Years War was a free-for-all. Nominally it was the Protestant princes vs. the Catholic League. But the fighting was all mixed up. Free Companies would fight for anybody, but mostly they fought for plunder. A lot of cities were just flat-out sacked.
That depends. A lot of people starved or died of plagues spread by armies. Direct battle deaths didn't actually exceed "other causes" until armies instituted regular supply systems & stopped living off the land. Also, innoculations & antibiotics helped limit "camp deaths".
The Allied Expeditionary Force probably lost more men to the Spanish Influenza of 1919 than it did in combat in 1918. The US Army in Cuba (1898-9) was decimated by Malaria.
Something more like an Enlightenment.
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