Talk:Swedish intervention in the Thirty Years' War

Title
If the current title is the way it's going to be, then the "i" in intervention ought to be de-capitalised, since this title is not a proper noun. Srnec (talk) 01:22, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Tone of the article?
The section labelled "Battles", in particular, suffers from its informal, unsourced nature. Would anyone mind reviewing it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.150.95.176 (talk) 08:38, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Petition for Deletion
This page suffers from major problems all around, the aforementioned problems being just the height of it.

For one, the page is redundant with the (far better) general page of the Thirty Years', including a thorough examination of the war's combatants and the course of it. There is nothing on this page that is not done better by the other.

Secondly, the map purporting to show the positions of the combatants is horrendous. It characterizes Denmark as being part of the Catholic Opposition, when in fact Denmark was both Protestant and previously the standardbearer of the anti-Imperial cause. It is true that it sided with the Imperials against Sweden and the allies later, but that does not mean it is poorly worded.

The Danish situation is merely the worst crime of the map. It portrays the whole of Germany as being in the Imperial (/ Catholic) camp, when this was by no means the case!!! In fact, the Swedish landing and occupation of Northern Germany was facilitated by the Danes and their allied (primarily Protestant, yes, but still) anti-Imperial Germans continuing to fight on after Tilly's campaigning in the region, notably including a joint defense of Straslund. The latter provided a vital buffer and support network for the continuing Swedish presence in the field throughout the war, and the Danish defection was very late in the game indeed. None of these are mentioned.

Thirdly, the infobox seems stretched to include virtually anybody it could fit into the Imperial infobox (regardless of actual role or effect), while utterly disregarding and undercrediting those of the anti-Imperial allies of whom Sweden was but one (albeit very important and spearhead) member. France is described as giving "temporary combat support", when in truth it had been at war with Habsburg dominions well before the Swedish intervention and not only put hundreds of thousands of men across the Rhine and into Italy and Spain, but it also provided much of the financial backing for the anti-Imperial alliance that helped keep the Swedish military intact during the horrendous costs of the campaign.

The presence of extremely valuable allies like England, the United Provinces, and (especially) Denmark (pre-change) is utterly ignored, to say nothing of the German realms themselves. It also considerably underplays the role of Scotland by mentioning it only as being involved in a "limited or noncombat" support role, when Scotland actually provided a number of soldiers and officers for the Swedish army and was a crucial source of supply along with the rest of the proto-UK, much like how the US was to the Western Allies of the world wars before it officially entered them.

Dismissing the Dutch participation from the war just because it was "another war" makes very little sense, especially given how the Thirty Years' was very little but a lot of different wars overlapping and running into each other, the Dutch revolt included.

On top of this, the infobox numbers are incredibly dubious, being both extremely precise and in the anti-Imperial case extremely low. The combined numbers of Swedish casualties in the individual articles for the battle exceeds the claimed number of Swedish (and Swedish-alligned) casualties by a considerable amount, and considering these numbers are for the pitched battles alone in a war where skirmishing and raiding were commonplace this is difficult to accept, let alone believe. In addition, the "Allied" figure is so laughably small as to not be worthy of consideration, and indeed on the main article for this it notes that the Swedish number alone is more than twice the given figure, and the French and Dutch numbers are several fold what they are said to be.

This is before I get into abnormalities like listing "Imperial" troops as separate from "German" ones, and other such matters.

And finally, the tone of the article does not conform to NPOV standards, especially in the battles. Especially galling is the claim that after Gustav Adolph's death at the Battle of Lutzen the Swedish army "continued to press forward into Catholic territories with amazing success." While this may be technically true in the immediate sense, the next major battle they fought was the catastrophic First Nordlingen, which temporarily shattered the finest elements of the Swedish military and was a major reason pressing France to intervene directly in Germany. In addition, saying that the Swedes defeated "over half" of the "national army" of 100,000 Imperial troops not only gravely misunderstands the nature of the Holy Roman Empire, but manages to contradict the infobox given!

The box itself gives what seems to be a "greatest hit" compilation of the Swedish military in the Thirty Years', overlooking many of those covered in the still-incomplete infobox on the main article.

Overall, there is no other way I can describe this: this is a mess, and I would advocate it either be reformed entirely or deleted. Since I do not see how this contributes outside of what is seen in the main article, I would opt for the latter at present. 75.36.164.85 (talk) 07:15, 3 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Touched up on complaints. Made significant revisions. Will touch up on conversational style of article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by OranjinIII (talk • contribs) 03:41, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Update
I'm the original editor/creator of this article. I am working to finish the article. I have taken a break, longer than I would have liked. Any constructive critique of the article up until the Hesse-Kassel would be appreciated. I am aware of the fact that a greater diversity of sources is required and that the tone of the article is not up to Wikipedia's standards of objectivity.Norton05 (talk) 19:08, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

-- it is my intention to finish this article. I have no intention of letting it go to rest. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.175.10.115 (talk) 03:48, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Added Template Message
Thought it was a good idea to add a template message to alert people of the incorrect grammar and tone. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.87.1.138 (talk) 15:24, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Update
I am going to start working on this article again soon. I have had some time free up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:46:C802:5994:9917:CED9:F0FA:AF78 (talk) 04:20, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

I have been saying this for some time, but I am going to complete this article. I have to take a little time to refamiliarize myself with Wikipedia - and learn some of the new article editing features.. Oranjin6 (talk) 17:15, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Update 2
I am still working on this article and have made some significant strides to that effect. I will be making more as I am able. This article should go all the way up until France becomes a major participant in the conflict, beyond the death of the King of Sweden.Oranjin6 (talk) 19:03, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

I am again working on this article again. I will be making more edits. I am currently in the process of working on Maps. Oranjin6 (talk)

Military Reforms
The great reforms that modernized warfare in the 17th century weren't started or designed by GA or Horn. They were merely the Dutch reforms already in use there since the mid 1590s. Many of these came to Sweden through one of the reformers, John 'the Middle', Count of Nassau and cousin of the leader of the military revolution, Maurice Count of Nassau, commander of the Republic of United States of the Netherlands (aka Dutch Republic). GA / Horn did change the proven methods however. For example the number of ranks in units was reduced (probably from lack of men), infantry units were bunched much closer together again into the well known 'Swedish brigade', and different materials were tried to make the light infantry support guns (for lack of bronze I presume). Unfortunately, all these changes were counter-productive: fewer ranks meant lower firepower stamina and rate of fire, bunching up removed the flexibility and especially the ability to exchange units to recuprate (but this required well drilled men, perhaps the Swedish campaign army simply didn't have time for that), and the leather guns just didn't work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.162.138.100 (talk) 18:19, 2 June 2019 (UTC)