The Thirty Years War: Friedrich Schiller's classic history of the savage war of religion that devastated Germany and tore apart the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church during the years 1618 to 1648. It was the time of Gustavus Adolphus, the Hapsburg Emperor Ferdinand II, Cardinal Richelieu, Albrecht von Wallenstein, terrible battles, starvation, social collapse, and intolerable suffering.