The Thirty Years War was a time of great turmoil in Europe. Silver imports from the Americas were drying up and the Little ice age reduced crop harvests. The art of propaganda was significantly advanced by the invention of the printing press and tension between the House of Habsburg and the Kingdom of France reached new heights. The stabilising power of the Catholic Church – which for five hundred years had been all but unopposed throughout most of Europe – bent under the weight of the Protestant Reformation, and witch hunting peaked during this time of paranoia and suspicion. Approximately half of the German and Bohemian (Czech) male population of Europe perished in the wars and civil strife that followed, and it’s estimated that the Thirty Years War cost the lives of over six million people at a time when Europe west of Poland had a total population of approximately 73 million.

Many of the characters in the story were real. Wallenstein and Mansfeld were rival commanders and fought against each other on a number of occasions. Aldringen and Christian Wilhelm were also real people who were present at the Battle of Dessau Bridge in 1626. Many other minor characters were also real, such as Archbishop Gifford, Count Collalto and Prince Casimir, and events such as the razing of East Frisia and the Siege of Pilsen occurred. The Bohemian Revolt, the first stage of the war, did begin with the Siege of Pilsen and end with the Battle of White Mountain, following which 27 men (mostly burghers) were put to death. The historical Martin Fruwein was scheduled to be put to death but died mysteriously before the execution.

The second phase of the Thirty Years War, the Danish Intervention, began when Denmark invaded northern Germany in 1625 to protect the King’s holdings in Saxony. The climactic Battle at Dessau Bridge all but ended this phase of the war. Wallenstein was constantly in danger of being deposed from his army and replaced by Count Collalto prior to Dessau Bridge, but the battle cemented his credentials as a military leader and he would continue to lead the Imperial army for another four years. The Danes found their homeland invaded in the following years until their King finally abandoned his support of the Protestant German states and signed a peace treaty with the Holy Roman Emperor. The third phase of the war would begin in 1630 with the Swedish intervention, followed by the fourth and final phase in which the French joined the conflict, in 1635. Continuous war would rage until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, at which point in time Karl will be 42 years old. A lifetime of war.

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I took some liberties with the craft of witch hunting. Godke is loosely based on Matthew Hopkins, an English freelance witch hunter who was personally responsible for the majority of witch executions in England’s history - despite the fact that his career lasted only three short years. I combined core elements of the early modern period with witch hunting sometimes without much historical justification. Godke and his warband enjoy payment for the execution of witches but most towns dealt with witches themselves, either through the legal system or through violent lynch mobs. However this was an era where mercenary soldiers made up the majority of most armies and mercenary commanders led most armies so I felt that it was not much of a stretch for the same mercenary attitude to apply to fictional witch hunters. Real witch hunters were indeed entitled to the wealth of the the executed witch.

The actual methodologies used for the persecution and extraction of confessions from witches are mostly accurate, though I refrained from using some of the more gruesome forms of torture. The use of the word “warlock” to describe male witches is a recent invention and historically the word “witch” sufficed for both genders, and as such I have used it when appropriate. As for the frequency of male witches, it is only due to historical revisionism that the witch hunts are considered to have been a form of gendercide. In Iceland 92% of accused witches were men, and in Russia there were twice as many men accused as women, though evidence does indicate that in Germany and France women were executed for witchcraft slightly more often than men.