In addition to the deaths of an estimated 15–20 per cent of the population of the Holy Roman Empire, flight was a major factor behind the losses in areas with the highest-recorded population decline during the conflict ( Wilson 2012: 26, 791). The Thirty Years’ War of 1618–1648 holds the notorious distinction of being the greatest demographic crisis in European history following the Black Death of the mid-fourteenth century and prior to the devastation of the two World Wars of the early twentieth century. A case study based on over 200 newspaper reports allows this article to examine how the frequency of appearances of refugees in newsprint, as well as the language and vocabulary used to describe them, can provide a valuable insight into the experiences of displaced persons and the attitudes of contemporaries in mid-seventeenth century Europe. This article broadens the scope of studies on refugees during the Thirty Years’ War beyond such individualistic sources through an examination of their treatment in newsprint, a source base which has hitherto been entirely overlooked. However, the limited scholarship on displaced persons between 16 has been exclusively based on micro-level eyewitness accounts, diaries, and memoirs.
As the Thirty Years’ War was the greatest demographic crisis in Europe between the Black Death and the two World Wars, it is unsurprising that the conflict created the greatest number of refugees in the continent’s history prior to the twentieth century.
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