A copy of a Scottish Danish flag. These were the colours awarded to the Scottish troops in 1627. It was designed from an original sketch by Rab Gordon of Rainnea Graphics
2018 witnessed a host of conferences commemorating the 400th anniversary of the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War. At least three of these events were framed around British involvement in the war, albeit such gatherings seemed more like an exercise in giving the English Civil War another platform. Moreover, it is actually 2019 that marks the four centuries since there was either a Scottish or wider British involvement or interest in the conflict. The Thirty Years’ War itself is generally taken to refer to the series of European conflicts that took place between 1618 and 1648.
In truth, some of these had a much older pedigree, most importantly the Dutch conflict with Spain, later known as the Eighty Years’ War (1568-1648), of which the last 30 years overlapped with what contemporary Britons called the ‘German Warres’. Other conflicts rumbled on for years after 1648, most notably from a Scottish perspective being the Franco-Spanish War (1635-59). Clearly the terminology concerning the duration of the war can seem anachronistic, yet it was nevertheless a contemporary term used in several pamphlets in and after 1648. The conflicts engulfed Europe and at various points engaged almost every European kingdom, duchy and city-state in some way or another.