Abbildung der Statt Pilsen in Böhmen, und wie selbige durch den von Mansfeldt belägert und Eingenohmen worden. Anno 1618

Title

Abbildung der Statt Pilsen in Böhmen, und wie selbige durch den von Mansfeldt belägert und Eingenohmen worden. Anno 1618

Description

Decorativ bird´s eye view of Pilsen in Bohemia, from the Bohemian and Palatine War (1618–1623). Count Peter Ernst II von Mansfeld, (1580-1626, Sarajevo) was an important mercenary and military leader in the early years of the Thirty Years' War. As a private military contractor on a royal commission, he was one of the leading mercenary generals in the fight against the Habsburg Emperor and his allies (Spain, Bavaria and the Catholic League) between 1620 and 1626 and, for personal reasons, made a significant contribution to easing the imperial turmoil over the turning points from 1620/21 and 1623 and expand it into a European war. In 1618 Mansfeld moved to support the Protestant estates that had rebelled against Habsburg rule in Bohemia. In 1618 Mansfeld managed to capture the city of Pilsen, which was loyal to the Habsburgs. Defeated at Sablat in June 1619, Mansfeld reorganized his troops and fought in Bohemia and Lower Austria in 1619/20. In 1620 he retreated to Pilsen, where he began negotiations with the imperial family on his own initiative. But he continued the fight for Bohemia until May 1621.

ca. 1618

Artist

Merian (1593-1650)

Matthäus Merian (1593 – 1650) , born in Basel, learned the art of copperplate engraving in Zurich and subsequently worked and studied in Strasbourg, Nancy, and Paris, before returning to Basel in 1615. The following year he moved to Frankfurt, Germany where he worked for the publisher Johann Theodor de Bry. He married his daughter, Maria Magdalena 1617. In 1620 they moved back to Basel, only to return three years later to Frankfurt, where Merian took over the publishing house of his father-in-law after de Bry's death in 1623. In 1626 he became a citizen of Frankfurt and could henceforth work as an independent publisher. He is the father of Maria Sibylla Merian, who later published her the famous and wellknown studies of flowers, insects and butterflies.

Historical Description

Bohemia is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech lands in the present-day Czech Republic. In a broader meaning, Bohemia sometimes refers to the entire Czech territory, including Moravia and Czech Silesia, especially in a historical context, such as the Lands of the Bohemian Crown ruled by Bohemian kings. Bohemia was a duchy of Great Moravia, later an independent principality, a kingdom in the Holy Roman Empire, and subsequently a part of the Habsburg Monarchy and the Austrian Empire. After World War I and the establishment of an independent Czechoslovak state, Bohemia became a part of Czechoslovakia. Between 1938 and 1945, border regions with sizeable German-speaking minorities of all three Czech lands were joined to Nazi Germany as the Sudetenland.