It is a vivid history, colored by Schiller’s own interest in the question of human freedom and his rationalist optimism. Volume 1 covers the background of the war, through the Battle of Prague in late 1620.
Homero, Sófocles, Plato, Aristotle, Apuleius, Sêneca, San Agustín, Sun Tzu, Teresa de Jesús, Ignacio de Loyola, Nicolas Maquiavelo, Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, Miguel Cervantes, Hans Christian Andersen, Hermanos Grimm, William Shakespeare, John Milton, Tomás Moro, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, Henry James, Arthur Conan Doyle, Wilkie Collins, Joseph Conrad, H. Rider Haggard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.G. Wells, Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, Washington Irving, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Jack London, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, James Matthew Barrie, Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum, Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, Alejandro Dumas, Alejandro Dumas, hijo, Jules Verne, Emilio Salgari, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Friedrich Nietzsche, Franz Kafka, Sigmund Freud, Nikolai Gogol, Fiodor Dostoyevski, Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Mijail Bakunin, Virginia Woolf, Fernando de Rojas, Lope De Vega, Tirso de Molina, Francisco De Quevedo, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Baltasar Gracián, José Zorrilla, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, Juan Valera, Leopoldo Alas, Benito Pérez Galdós, Miguel De Unamuno, Emilia Pardo Bazán, Duque de Rivas, José Martí, Antonio Machado, Ramón María del Valle-Inclán, Jorge Isaacs, Horacio Quiroga, Federico García Lorca, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Rubén Darío, Charles Baudelaire, Henrik Ibsen, Gibran Jalil Gibran & José Rizal
Theophile Gautier, William Blake, Horace Walpole, Mary Shelley, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Gregory Lewis, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, William Thomas Beckford, Eliza Parsons, Eleanor Sleath, William Godwin, Charles Brockden Brown, Percy Bysshe Shelley, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Thomas Love Peacock, Edgar Allan Poe, John William Polidori, Washington Irving, Charles Robert Maturin, James Hogg, Victor Hugo, Frederick Marryat, Nikolai Gogol, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, George W. M. Reynolds, James Malcolm Rymer, Thomas Peckett Prest, Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Eliot, Wilkie Collins, Mayne Reid, Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Dickens, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Emile Erckmann, Alexandre Chatrian, Walter Hubbell, Arthur Conan Doyle, Oscar Wilde, Guy de Maupassant, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Arthur Machen, George MacDonald, John Meade Falkner, Marie Corelli, Richard Marsh, Henry James, Bram Stoker, Joseph Conrad, Guy Boothby, W. W. Jacobs, M. R. James, Robert Hugh Benson, E. F. Benson, Gaston Leroux, William Hope Hodgson, Grant Allen, Tobias Smollett, Clara Reeve, Friedrich Schiller, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Lord Byron, Robert Browning & Christina Rossetti
George MacDonald, Charles Brockden Brown, Henry James, Horace Walpole, Frederick Marryat, Washington Irving, H. P. Lovecraft, Louisa May Alcott, Charles Dickens, Grant Allen, Mayne Reid, Francis Marion Crawford, Oscar Wilde, Emily Brontë, Friedrich Schiller, Robert Louis Stevenson, Gaston Leroux, Algernon Blackwood, William Hope Hodgson, Ann Ward Radcliffe, G. P. R. James, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Gertrude Linnell, William Thomas LINSKILL, Lafcadio Hearn, George Sand, Catherine Crowe, E. G. Swain, Talbot Baines Reed, Mrs. Oliphant, Edgar Wallace, Vernon Lee, Arthur Quiller-Couch, D. H. Lawrence, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, H.G. Wells, Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman, Earl H. Reed, B. L. Farjeon, Paul Heyse, Rudyard Kipling, Wilhelm Hauff, Guy Boothby, Frederic Henry Balfour, M. R. James, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth, F. Britten Austin, Richard Marsh, Mrs. J. H. Riddell, William De Morgan, Arlo Bates, Thomas Nelson Page, E. F. Benson, Henry Johnson Brent, Richard J. Hinton, Leonard Kip, W. T. Stead, Howard Pease, E. Nesbit, Jean Webster, William Ogilvie, Andrew Lang, Carolyn Wells, Edward S. Sorenson, Eliza Parsons, Mary Noailles Murfree, Rafael Sabatini, Mrs. Molesworth, May Sinclair, S. Baring-Gould, Dorothy Scarborough, Richard Middleton, Weymer Jay Mills, Lanoe Falconer & Nathaniel Hawthorne
Theophile Gautier, William Blake, Horace Walpole, Mary Shelley, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Gregory Lewis, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, William Thomas Beckford, Eliza Parsons, Eleanor Sleath, William Godwin, Charles Brockden Brown, Percy Bysshe Shelley, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Thomas Love Peacock, Edgar Allan Poe, John William Polidori, Washington Irving, Charles Robert Maturin, James Hogg, Victor Hugo, Frederick Marryat, Nikolai Gogol, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, George W. M. Reynolds, James Malcolm Rymer, Thomas Peckett Prest, Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Eliot, Wilkie Collins, Mayne Reid, Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Dickens, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Emile Erckmann, Alexandre Chatrian, Walter Hubbell, Arthur Conan Doyle, Oscar Wilde, Guy de Maupassant, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Arthur Machen, George MacDonald, John Meade Falkner, Marie Corelli, Richard Marsh, Henry James, Bram Stoker, Joseph Conrad, Guy Boothby, W. W. Jacobs, M. R. James, Robert Hugh Benson, E. F. Benson, Gaston Leroux, William Hope Hodgson, Grant Allen, Tobias Smollett, Clara Reeve, Friedrich Schiller, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Lord Byron, Robert Browning & Christina Rossetti