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18 people and magistrates. During the eighteenth century this equality changed into a predominance of the German tongue, and Czech was only employed in certain formulæ used before the tribunals of the country and the Diet.

The Battle of White Mountain and the changes which followed it did much to promote the aims of the Habsburgs.

But from the constitutional point of view the principle of the independence of the Bohemian State remained intact. The King of Bohemia became a more absolute sovereign, but he always remained King of Bohemia. Legally the Czech State never ceased to exist. The Diet preserved its ancient constitutional rights, somewhat curtailed, yet in the main the same as before. The general parliament of all the lands of the Crown of St Venceslas remained a constitutional body. The disaster of 1620, followed by the New Constitution of 1627, did not destroy Bohemia's independence.

The Thirty Years' War, which followed the revolt of the Czech Estates, completed the ruin of Bohemia. At the commencement of the war Bohemia counted three million people, on the day of the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 she mustered only 800,000; and the devastation, havoc, and ruin of the country is difficult to picture. The war terminated in favour of the Habsburgs: Bohemia's