Exploring the Roots: How Historical Accuracy Enhances the 1632 Series

As with all alternate history novels, Eric Flint’s 1632 series needs to maintain some level of accuracy pertaining to the actual historical events used as a plot device and perhaps a good degree of plausibility of the hypothetical outcomes.

The first book in the series, also titled 1632, does tick a lot of boxes in terms of accuracy and plausibility. To give you some examples of how the author tackled the issues, here are some lingering questions that some new fans have in their mind, and the explanations.

Q: Did Gustav Adolf really lose sleep over the Sack of Magdeburg that he actually threw out some furniture pieces out of his tent?

A: Whether Gustav did throw out a chair or two might be impossible to confirm, but the Sack of Magdeburg was indeed a pretty big incident. It was reportedly brutal, even during a brutal time period in European history, so it only made sense that Gustav Adolf was furious. Some historical accounts say that he resorted to some kind of violence upon hearing the news. That said, the King of Sweden took advantage of the incident to establish an alliance against the Count of Tilly.

Q: Does the book portray the Scots correctly?

A: There were some 50,000 Scots involved in the Thirty Years’ War in various forces. About 30,000 of them fought for/with the Swedes. As for the portrayal, it’s safe to say that the book offers a stereotypical depiction of a Scot, but it might be difficult to determine if the description is accurate for the time. 1632 has at least one important detail correct: the Scottish brogue wasn’t around back then. Keep in mind that what most people think of old-fashioned Scottish-English didn’t actually come into existence until decades after the war (around late 17th century or early 18th century). 1632 explains that their English pronunciation sounds more like Appalachian hillbilly than the mainstream, modern version of the language. This isn’t a far-fetched idea, since the “Original Pronunciation” does sound very different from today’s English.

Some units mentioned in the book did exist in history, such as The Mackay (and so was Alexander Mackay) and The Green Regiment (established by Gustav Adolf himself).

Q: Did the Croat riders ever go that deep into Germany’s territory?

A: This one is easy. During the war, Croatia was part of the Habsburg Empire, or at least they fought with the Habsburg. The book simply makes a plausible assumption that there would be Croats wherever the Habsburgs were.

Q: Does it make sense that a small group of Americans (despite their pistols, shotguns, and rifles) could defeat 1500 Croats?

A: Now this is completely made up. The book makes it as if the Americans were so skillful in their defenses that hundreds of enemies found no easy way to breach. The simple explanation is that the defenses were engineered in such a way that only a couple dozen (or less) Croats could make their way into the school at a time. Think of a very narrow gate where only a handful of people can enter at the same time. And by the time the defenses were overrun, the rescuers had already made it to the scene.

We’re happy to report that the trend continues in all subsequent books in the series, although the prose quality varies because the series is written by a lot of different authors. However, the seven books in the main thread were written mostly by Eric Flint himself; only the second and third novels (of the main thread) were co-authored with David Weber.

Characterization

With the characterization part of the novel series, 1632 does a good job of showing some restraint and never straying too far from the actual historical figures. No matter how creative the series wants to be, it cannot take the liberty to create overly cartoonish characters from history. There are historical records to describe how kings and prominent leaders look. For example, Gustav Adolf is depicted as a good king, but there are moments when he turns to tyrannical rage because he has absolute power over everything in his kingdom.

We think the most important historical accuracy in 1632 is the simple acknowledgement that there’s been a desperate demand for America to do many things right, regardless of the circumstances. In the book, they came from a modern world, so they’re held to a higher standard for implementing justice and democracy to a large extent. It also appears that 1632 (and the series that follows) has a bright, optimistic view of capitalism, which makes sense because the book first came out in 2000 – long before the most recent financial crisis, 9/11 incident, and the Enron case, etc. While there’s also an argument that the book leans pretty heavily to pro-union discussion, it doesn’t really portray union in the modern sense of a movement organized around industries or professions.

What was the most advanced technological development in the 1600s? Was England or any of the British colonies in America directly involved in the Thirty Years’ War? We’d love to hear from you.

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