The Winter King: Frederick V of the Palatinate and the Coming of the Thirty Years War (review)

Reviews 229 Parergon 21.2 (2004) that Staupitz is not merely a ‘pre-reformer’ or a Reformation ‘forerunner’, but rather a ‘theological front-runner and herald of the Reformation’ (p. 379). This richly documented ‘theological biography’ offers both an invaluable guide to the thought of Staupitz, and a stimulating, sometimes provocative insight into the relationship between early sixteenth-century Catholic and Reformation thought. Although Staupitz’s unique relationship to Luther is of special interest and importance, Posset has convincingly shown that Staupitz must also be taken seriously as a significant theological and spiritual reformer in his own right. Benjamin Myers School of Humanities James Cook University Pursell, Brennan C., The Winter King: Frederick V of the Palatinate and the Coming of the Thirty Years War, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2003; cloth; pp. xvii, 320; 11 b/w illustrations; RRP US$89.95, £49.95; ISBN 0754634019. Frederick V has long been neglected in lacking a substantive modern biography. This highly successful study fills this gap and makes an important contribution to the historiography of the Thirty Years War. Accessibly written and based on impressive archival research, it is conversant with the secondary literature of the War in English, French and Spanish as well as in German. The result is a book likely to remain the standard study of Frederick for a long time to come. Pursell’s portrait of Frederick is both personal and political. One of the principal strengths of the book is the sustained account of the interaction between the elector’s personality and policies. Pursell’s method is to investigate the internal logic of Frederick’s intellectual positions as a vehicle for understanding their wider political consequences. The central theme is the struggle between Frederick and the Emperor Ferdinand II and between their incompatible visions of imperial government and law. The book also locates Frederick and the German war within the wider European diplomatic context. This international contextualisation and interplay gives the book an explanatory richness which enhances its value. Pursell rejects the traditional view of Frederick as a political incompetent. The Elector, according to Pursell, was neither weak-minded nor weak-willed. He was his own man with his own ideas, made his own decisions and mistakes, and created his own personal tragedy. Frederick emerges as a deeply devoted family man, a devout Calvinist, a Protestant ecumenist, and a ruler deeply imbued with 230 Reviews Parergon 21.2 (2004) a high sense of personal honour. For Pursell he represents neither fanaticism nor recklessness but a case study in conscience. His Christianity, however, was very warlike. His ‘personal faith in a warrior God helped to perpetuate the Thirty Years War’ (p. 245). His personal crusade, however, was not fundamentally religious, Pursell believes, but constitutional. He saw the Austrian Habsburgs as corrupters of the imperial constitution, who sought to transform the Empire into an hereditary monarchical possession, to undermine the status of the electors, and to dismantle established religious rights. Religious freedoms, for Frederick, were inextricable from the established constitutional framework but did not dominate his view of imperial affairs. It is a familiar seventeenth-century story: the rebel as self-styled defender of traditional structures who precipitates a political cataclysm. In this case it is part of a revisionist portrayal which gives its human subject a new and credible coherence. Frederick’s worldly skills were not, however, the adequate servant of his moral ambitions. By 1621, after defeats in Bohemia and Germany, he was willing to incite a continental war and a mass conflict over religion to effect his restoration. This, Pursell argues, ‘was the principal cause for the continuation of the Thirty Years War at this early stage’ (p. 153). But Frederick lacked the resources for a policy of such dimensions. Forced to depend upon allies, he found himself at the mercy of the agendas of English, Dutch and Swedish politicians. Lacking diplomatic ability as well as strategic vision, he was, as Pursell makes clear, a chronic political miscalulator and wishful thinker, especially about who would help him. His immaturity and wilfulness are clear in his relations with his fatherin -law James I of England, which are the major sub-plot of the book. Frederick believed...