The Iron Princess: Amalia Elisabeth and the Thirty Years War, by Tryntje Helfferich

Abstract

The Iron Princess: Amalia Elisabeth and the Thirty Years War, by Tryntje Helfferich. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2013. 319 pp. $39.95 US (hardcover). Imagine the Thirty Years' War has been going on for over fifteen years and you are a territorial sovereign in rebellion against the empire. You are Landgravine Amalia Elisabeth, the widow and regent of a small territory in Protestant Germany, and the Catholic imperial army has just issued the 1635 Peace of Prague as an attempt to end the war in Vienna's favor. Your territory, Hesse-Cassel (or Hessen-Kassel), is divided by two rival hereditary lines, and while your line is firmly Reformed or Calvinist, Hesse-Darmstadt is led by a Lutheran faction eager to make peace with the Holy Roman Empire. As a Calvinist ruler you have no legal right in the imperial courts' eyes to worship as you please. You have a young son as the future landgrave, but as a female and regent you are vulnerable to a coup. Your privy council and estates usually oppose you. Militarily, much of your land is occupied by imperial troops and your main allies, Sweden and France, can hardly be trusted. In spite of this going against Amalia Elisabeth, she rose above it all and thrived. This narrative is part of the rich history of the life and times of Landgravine Amalia Elisabeth of Hesse-Cassel, told very compelling by Tryntje Helfferich in her book The Iron Princess: Amalia Elisabeth and the Thirty Years War. Helfferich tells the remarkable story of how this woman managed to survive the war, rule well, keep and even increase her land holdings, pacify her estates, and play a decisive role in the Peace of Westphalia's legal recognition of the Reformed faith in the empire. The book is mostly a biography of Amalia Elisabeth from the time of her husband Wilhelm V's death in 1637 until the Westphalian peace in 1648 and its German-based aftermath. The author explains the Lutheran-Calvinist split in Hesse and the Cassel-Darmstadt turf battles. The reader receives a careful history of one territory during the seventeenth century, especially in terms of the tensions between the rival Hessian dynastic lines and between the sovereign and the local estates. Telling either story well is hard, but she told both very well. Helfferich also clearly explains the multifaceted political history of the Europe-wide war itself, such as the sometimes helpful and sometimes meddling situation of Sweden in the northern areas, the French motivations along the Rhine (partly occupied by Amalia Elisabeth's forces), the Dutch interest in Hesse-Cassel's Calvinism, the role other Calvinist regions played in the war (such as the Palatinate), and the emperors' (Ferdinands II and III) own concerns. Surveys exist that present the overall story, but, as Helfferich states in the Introduction, none of them are comprehensive. …