Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/519

Rh GERMANY kindling conﬁdence and enthusiasm among those who depended upon him; and the result of his presence in South Germany was that the faith of the Protestants in their cause and in themselves revived, and that they no longer doubted of ultimate victory. The emperor felt how great had been his mistake in dismissing Vallenstein, and 501 already effected. The whole tendency of the Reformation 1632-48. had been to relax the bonds which united the various The Refor. elements of the state to each other and to their head. It mation divided the nation into two bitterly hostile parties, and the ‘"“1_ll‘° emperor was not able to assume towards them a perfectly polmcal . . . . . . . ., constitu- inipartial position. His imperial crown imposed upon him ﬁon THIRTY YEARS’ wAi>..] t zliclieu. facts The Thirty Years’ War settled once for all the principle form alliances with any of the others or with foreign powers, ‘the that men should not be persecuted for their reliaious faith. nominally on condition lthat their alliances should not be It is true that the peace of ‘Vestph_alia forrnallyorecognized injurious to the emperor or to the empire. Any authority at only. the three creeds, Catliohcism, Lutlieraiiism, and which still lawfully belonged to the emperor was transferred qigioug Calvinism, but so much suffering had been caused by the to the diet. It alone had now the power of making laws, -edoni. interference of the state with individual conviction that of concludino treaties in the name of Germany and of taleratioii in the largest sense, so. far as law was conce,rned, declaring warb and re-establisliiiig peace. N 0 one, however, was virtually conceded. This was the sole advantave trained expected that it would be of any real service. After 1654 from the war by the Protestants. The Catholic: iffsisted it became a perniaiiieiit body, and was attended only by the at ﬁrst on keeping all the ecclesiastical lands which had representatives of the princes and the cities ; and from that been taken from them before the edict of restitution in 1630. time it occupied itself mainly with trifles, leaving the affairs The Protestants responded by demanding that they should of each state to be looked after by its own authorities, and lose nothing which they had held before 1618, when the those of the country generally to such fortunes as chance war began. A compromise was at last effected by bctli should determine. parties agreeing to the date l624,—an arrangement which It would not have been strange if so shadowy an empire Cong“. secured to the Catholics their immense (rains in Bohemia had been broutrht altovether to an end. Some slivht bond ance of and the other territories of the house ofbHapsburg. The of connexion fvas, hofvever, necessary for defenc: against “)9 em‘ restoration of the elector palatiiie to part of his lands, and common dangers; and the empire had existed so long, and 1”‘ his reinstatement in the electoral oﬂice, were important so many great associations were connected with it, that it concessions; but on the other hand, the duke of Bavaria seemed to all parties preferable to any other form of union. kept the Rhenish palatinate, and, as he remained an elector, Moreover, Sweden, and other states which were now the votes of the Protestants in the electoral college were members of the empire, warmly supported it; mid the fewer by one than they had been in 1618. house of Hapsbiirg, on which it reﬂected a certain splendour, lss of The country suffered enormous territorial losses by the would not willingly have let it die. An Austrian ruler, Wit0T)'- war. Up to this time the possession of Metz, Toiil, and even when he spoke only in the name of Austria, derived after many fruitless entreaties, at last persuaded him to come forth from his retirement and form a second army. He did so on condition that he should have absohite command ; and so urgent was the need of his services that Ferdinand allowed him to make himself in this way a great and dangerous power within the state. In 1632 he was defeated at the battle of Liitzen ; but the defeat was better than an ordinary victory, for the Swedish hero was among the slain. Wallenstein now aimed at becoming a great sovereign ; perhaps he even aspired to the imperial crown itself. In any case his dilatory movements, his endless intrigues, and his haughty tone caused such profound uneasiness at Vienna that in 1634 he was got rid of by murder. For fourteen years longer, although the original objects of the war were almost forgotten, the tempest continued tosweep over Germany. It received a fresh impetus from the inter- vention of Cardinal Richelieu, who, although the enemy of Protestants in France, thought ﬁt to weaken Austria by aiding them in Germany. Vhile Gustavus Adolphus lived, {ichelieu was kept comparatively in the background ; after tlie king’s death he was one of the mainsprings of the war. At last, in 1648, after ﬁve years of negotiation at Osnabriick and Minister, the peace of Westphalia was concluded. Verdun by France had never been officially recognized; now these bishoprics were formally conceded to her. She also many of the greatest memories of European history. received as much of Alsace as belonged to Austria. To the The effect of the Thirty Years’ Var on the national life National Swedes were granted Western Pomerania, with Stettin, and the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden. These acquisitions, which surpassed the advantages Gustavus Adolphus had hoped to win, gave Sweden the command bath of the Baltic and of the North Sea. In virtue of her German possessions Sweden became a member of the empire ; but France obtained absolute control of her new territories. There was a further diminution of Germany by the recognition of the independence of Switzerland and the United Provinces. Both had long been virtually free; they now for the ﬁrst time took the position of distinct nations. In the political constitution of Germany the peace of the necessity of associating himself with the Catholics ; so that the Protestants had a new and powerful reason for looking upon him with jealousy, and trying to diminish his authority. The Catholics, while maintaining their religion, were willing enough to co-operate with them for this object; and Germany often saw the strange spectacle of princes rallying round the emperor for the defence of the church, and at the same time striking deadly blows at his political influence. The diet was a scene of perpetual quarrelling between the two factions, and their differences made it- iiiipossible for the imperial chamber to move beyond the region of oﬂicial routine. Thus before the Thirty Years’ War the empire had virtually ceased to exist, Germany having become a loose confederation of principalities and free cities. Fora moment the emperor Ferdinand appeared to have touched the ideal of Charles V., in so far, at least, as it related to Germany, but only for a moment. The stars in their courses fought against him, and at the time of his death he saw how far beyond his power were the forces with which even Charles had been unable to contend. The state of things which actually existed the peace of Westphalia made legal. So nearly complete was the independence of the states that each received the right to authority from the fact that as emperor he represented was disastrous. armies, but by hordes of adventurers whose sole object was plunder. The criielties they inflicted on their victims are almost beyond conception. Before the war the population was about twenty millions; after it the number was pro- bably ﬁve or seven millions, and cannot have been more than ten. Whole towns and villages were laid in ashes, and vast districts turned into deserts. Churches and schools were closed by liundreds, and to such straits were the people often reduced that cannibalism is said to have been not uncominon. Industry and trade were so completely p:iral_vsed that in 1635 the Hanseatic League was virtually Vcstphalia did not so much make changes as sanction those I broken up, because the menibei's, once so wealtliy, could It had not been carried on by disciplined life.