This book uses the transnational story of a single regiment to examine how ordinary soldiers, military women, and officers negotiated their lives within the chaos and uncertainty of the seventeenth century. Raised in Saxony by Wolf von Mansfeld in spring 1625 in the service of the King of Spain, the Mansfeld Regiment fought for one and a half years in northern Italy before collapsing, leaving behind a trail of dead civilians, murder, internal lawsuits…and copious amounts of paperwork. Their story reveals the intricate social world of seventeenth-century mercenaries and how this influenced how they lived and fought. Through this rich microhistorical case study, Lucian Staiano-Daniels sheds new light on key seventeenth-century developments like the military revolution and the fiscal-military state, which is supported by statistical analysis drawn from hundreds of records from the Thirty Years War. This pathbreaking book unifies the study of war and conflict with social history.

‘The War People is an excellent first book - fresh and well-researched. Nothing like this eloquent close study of German soldiers on the march and in their quarters exists in the literature. Its merits should attract more scholars to this long-neglected aspect of military history.’

Gregory Hanlon - Distinguished Research Professor at Dalhousie University

‘The War People reconstructs the lives of seventeenth-century common soldiers in detail rarely captured by historians before. Using micro-historical techniques to painstakingly unlock neglected archives in several languages, Staiano-Daniels paints a vivid picture of professional soldiers, and the women who followed them, as a tightly knit social group. He tells a human story amid the violence of war, one of comradeship among hardship, of quarrels among themselves and with civilians, of the possibilities for plunder and promotion. The stories of ordinary people struggling to get along with each other and get ahead in society will appeal not only to anyone interested in early modern social history, but also marks a major advance in the writing of military history.’

Stuart Carroll - Professor of Early Modern History, University of York

‘The War People is an exciting and invaluable history from below that sheds light on the lived experiences of marginalized and forgotten people - common soldiers, subaltern officers, military wives, civilian peasants, local political officials - as they struggled through privation, famine, economic collapse, epidemics, and all manner of violence during the Thirty Years War. Through impressive social and microhistorical analyses surrounding the Mansfeld Regiment of Saxony, Staiano-Daniels brilliantly reconstructs the complex, evolving relationships between these colorful historical actors as their trajectories unfolded in the context of international religious warfare and the Military Revolution.’

Christy Pichichero - George Mason University