The Explorers' Club
№ CCCXXXIV - The Thirty Years' War, Part V: The Peace of Westphalia—The last nail in the coffin of feudalism & the ascendance of the ethnic nation-state (Westphalian sovereignty); the end of the Eighty Years' War & the independence of the Dutch Republic with the Peace of Münster (1648); the formal independence of the Old Swiss Confederacy from the Holy Roman Empire; the Treaties of Münster & Osnabrück (both 1648); the renewal of the Peace of Augsburg (1555), now recognizing Calvinism alongside Catholicism & Lutheranism; the rise of France as the greatest power on the continent; & the decentralization of power in the German-speaking lands.









Commentary: Of course, the Thirty Years' War is so vast in its length & breadth that even with these five consecutive episodes of "The Explorers' Club" we're barely managed to but scratch the surface of the war. Entire episodes can & probably should be devoted to Tilly, Wallenstein, Gustavus Adolphus, le Grand Condé, Cardinals Richelieu & Mazarin, & a thousand other personages, both high & low; the Spanish Fury, the Spanish Road, & the Spanish Square; the Defenestrations of Prague, the Sack of Madgeburg, & a thousand other horrors, atrocities, & tragedies; the Torstenson War, the Franco-Spanish War, the war against the Ottoman Empire, & a myriad other subsidiary &/or concurrent conflicts. Thirty years of unrelenting war that killed, through violence, disease, or hunger, between one-third & one-half of the population of Germany. Our world would not be as it is without the twentieth century, the course of which was set in the nineteenth century, the course of which was set in the eighteenth century, the course of which was set in the seventeenth century, in the thirty bloodstained years 'twixt 1618 & 1648. Forget not what you've learned in these past few weeks, treasured readers, I beseech thee, for knowing what has come before is the surest defense against allowing it to come again.

The Victors | Project OSPREY
Sunday, 31 March 2013
N.C.A.A. Tournament, Elite Eight
South Regional Final
(4) Michigan 79-59 Florida (3)
30-7, Big Ten 13-7

Sweet fancy Moses! Sunday's game was a delight from beginning to end. I was thrilled when the valiant Wolverines began the game with an amazing run & thrilled again by the stone-cold shooting of the epithetless Gators, but in the back of my mind a voice cautioned that things could not possibly keep going this well, that basketball games are forty minutes long & woe be to the club that thinks its victory assured after five or ten minutes. Then, to my astonishment, things kept going that well, or very nearly so. The valiant Wolverines manhandled the epithetless Gators! A twenty-four point lead was "shrunk" to seventeen by the half, but would swell again to twenty-five before stabilizing at twenty by the final buzzer. Michigan's offense was clicking, with points coming from both the paint & the perimeter. More impressive, though, was the Maize & Blue's defense, which Florida never found a way to thwart consistently; defense has not been the '12-'13 club's forte, but the lads were more than up to the challenge on Sunday. As I both wrote in both post-game text messages & posted to the FaceSpace, my emotional state after the game was one of joy, pure joy.

In three out of their four games in the tournament—& think about that for the moment, Michigan has played four games in this year's tournament—the valiant Wolverines have won by an average of twenty points: fifteen over South Dakota State, twenty-five over V.C.U., & twenty over Florida. We cannot simply ignore the two-point margin over top regional seed Kansas, but even taking that into account Michigan's average margin of victory is still a robust fifteen and a half points (15.5). The valiant Wolverines have not simply been victorious, they've been dominant. The last two weekends have been almost magical, a perfect moment in time that has washed away the ill-feelings of two decades of scandal, futility, & weary patience. Whatever happens in the Final Four—& please do not misinterpret those words as signally a lack of faith in the valiant Wolverines' chances against the epithetless Orange(men)—these have been high times for the Wolverine nation, & they can't take that away from us. The valiant Wolverines are the South Regional Champions!

Next: The Final Four v. East Regional Champions Syracuse on Saturday, 6 April in Atlanta. Syracuse's zone defense looked ominous in their Sweet Sixteen victory over Indiana. (I give them less credit for their Elite Eight victory over Marquette, an offensively-challenged club on even the best of days.) More, much more on this in the triumphal week ahead.

Go Blue!

Midwest Regional Final
(1) Louisville 85-63 Duke (2)

That was painful to watch, even without considering the traumatic injury to the epithetless Cardinals' Kevin Ware. (If I never again see a replay of his leg breaking, I'll be only too happy.) Louisville's aggressive defense was a riddle that Duke solved throughout the first half, but ultimately the epithetless Cardinals out-hustled the epithetless Blue Devils, handing Duke the kind of loss that I would never expected from a Coach K. coached club. Louisville looked invincible in the second half against Duke, but that says as much about Duke as it does about Louisville.

The Final Four
Louisville v. Wichita State
Michigan v. Syracuse

The two victors play for all the marbles on Monday, 8 April.

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day: SKApril
Desmond Dekker & The Aces, "Jamaican Ska" from King of Ska (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: Welcome to the R.B.D.S.O.T.D.'s third celebration of SKApril--thirty days of ska, ska, & more ska. One of my brother Knights o' Columbus has recently discovered ska, independent of me, & I mean to help foster his interest into an eventual obsession.

"Not everybody can Cha Cha Cha,
Not everybody can do the Twist,
But everybody can do the Ska,
It's a dance you can't re[sist]!

"Ska, ska, ska,
Jamaican ska,
Ska, ska, ska,
Jamaican ska…"