When Diplomacy Fails Podcast

Do you know what is truly delightful? My new historical fiction series, Matchlock! Matchlock is set during the Thirty Years' War, beginning in 1622, when Matthew Lock lands in Europe to investigate the brutal murder of his parents. Order your copy of Matchlock and the Embassy by clicking here. In this episode, we look at an oft-forgotten theatre of the Thirty Years War, the east. Specifically, we examine the Habsburg border with the Ottoman Empire, and assess the conflicts and slights which the two radically different powers had committed in previous years. The conflict wasn’t merely religious, or opportunistic or political – it was also a matter of pride, since both the Turkish Sultan and the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor laid claim to that banner of tradition: the inheritor of Rome. The Turkish Sultan had earned this by conquest, the Emperor through the Pope, but both argued fiercely that theirs was the more legitimate, and battle had a way of simplifying the question.Interestingly, the urgency of war lends u