Scharfenberg, Germany, July 24, 2007—Their war lasted three decades. But for these unlucky soldiers, peace wouldn't come for another 400 years.

Excavation workers exposed about a hundred skeletons buried in a mass grave on Tuesday—casualties from a skirmish between Swedish and Imperial Saxon forces on October 5, 1636.

The battle was part of the Thirty Years' War—a vicious, sprawling conflict that lasted from 1618 to 1648. Fought mostly by mercenaries, the war was centered in what is now Germany and embroiled most of continental Europe in bloody political and religious maneuvering.

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