What follows is an example of 17th-century journalism. Written by John Rushworth (who was only 6 years old when the war began), it represents an Evangelical and English view of the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War.

The clouds gather thick in the German sky; jealousies and discontents arise between the Catholics and the Evangelics, or Lutherans, of the Confession of Augsburg. Both parties draw into confederacies and hold assemblies; the one seeking by the advantage of power to encroach and get ground, the other to stand their ground and hold their own. The potency of the house of Austria, a house devoted to the persecution of the reformed religion, became formidable. The old emperor Mathias declared his cousin german, the archduke Ferdinand, to be his adopted son and successor, and caused him to be chosen and crowned king of Bohemia and Hungary, yet reserving to himself the sole exercise of kingly power during his life.

The Jesuits triumphed in their hopes of King Ferdinand. The pope exhorted the Catholics to keep a day of jubilee and to implore aid of God for the Church’s high occasions. To answer this festival the elector of Saxony called to mind that it was then the hundredth year complete since Martin Luther opposed the papal indulgences, which was the first beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Whereupon he ordained a solemn feast of three days for thanksgiving and for prayer to God to maintain in peace the purity of the Word and the right administration of the sacraments. The professors of the universities of Leipzig and Wittemberg, the imperial towns of Frankfurt, Worms, and Nuremburg, -yea, the Calvinists also,-observed the same days of jubilee against the Romish Church, and much gold and silver was cast abroad in memory of Luther, whom they called blessed. . . . . .

The Bohemian troubles took their first rise from the breach of the edict of peace concerning religion and the accord made by the emperor Rudolf whereby the Protestants retained the free exercise of their religion, enjoyed their temples, colleges, tithes, patronages, places of burial, and the like, and had liberty to build new temples and power to choose defenders to secure these rights and to regulate what should be the service in their churches. Now the stop of building certain churches on lands within the lordships of the Catholic clergy (in which the Evangelicals conceived a right to build) was the special grievance and cause of breach.

On the 23d of May the chief of the Evangelics went armed into the castle of Prague, entered the council chamber, and opened their grievances; but, enraged by opposition, they threw Slabata, the chief justice, and Fabricius, the secretary, from an high window into the castle ditch; others of the council, temporizing in this tumult and seeming to accord with their demands, were peacefully conducted to their own houses. Hereupon the assembly took advice to settle the towns and castle of Prague with new guards; likewise to appease the people and take the oath of fidelity. They chose directors, governors, councilors provincial to govern affairs of state, and to consult of raising forces against the enemies of God and the king and the edicts of his Imperial Majesty. They banished the Jesuits throughout all Bohemia.