Most of our contemporaries perceive the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) as exclusively European and land. However, in reality, this grandiose military conflict can be considered global, because it affected not only the Old World, but also the colonies of Asia and America. The Thirty Years' War, like any clash of the world's leading powers, was fought not only on land, but also at sea, and the scope of naval operations was not inferior to the scale of land operations, and the battles of the Downs or Peter Hein's "Silver Voyage" were no less important than the victory at Rocroi or defeat at Bergen-ap-Zoom. It was during the Thirty Years' War that Holland and France tried to take away naval dominance from Spain. It must be said that they succeeded; by the 1650s, the Spanish fleet was a pitiful sight. The next book in the series tells about the most significant naval battles and outstanding naval commanders of the Thirty Years' War.