Masters in the Things of War: Rethinking Military Justice during the Thirty Years War

Some historians have proposed that common soldiers in various parts of Europe lost a previous judicial independence around 1600 and have linked this development to a contemporary increase in discipline and in control over them. Meanwhile, historians of the Thirty Years War rarely mention military justice at all or depict this war as a time when military justice did not function. In contrast, this article examines the ordinary practice of military law during the Thirty Years War through a close reading of low-level legal paperwork generated by electoral Saxon units. Although military justice was not egalitarian, common soldiers in these units took an active role in the administration of justice, even in the early seventeenth century. The practice of law in early seventeenth-century electoral Saxon military units was similar to pre-existing structures of military justice, but subtly modified.