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 346 General History of Europe 590. Provisions of the Treaties of Westphalia. The religious troubles in Germany were settled by extending the toleration of the Peace of Augsburg so as to include the Calvinists as well as the Lutherans. The Protestant princes were to retain the lands which they had in their possession in the year 1624, regardless of the Edict of Restitution, and each ruler was still to have the right to determine the religion of his state. The practical dissolu- tion of the Holy Roman Empire was acknowledged by permitting the individual states to make treaties among themselves and with foreign powers ; this was equivalent to recognizing the independ- ence which they had, as a matter of fact, already long enjoyed. While portions of northern Germany were ceded to Sweden, this territory did not cease to form nominally a part of the Empire, for Sweden was thereafter to have three votes in the German diet. The emperor also ceded to France three important towns Metz, Verdun, and Toul and all his rights in Alsace, although the city of Strassburg was to remain with the Empire. Lastly, the independence both of the United Netherlands and of Switzer- land was acknowledged. 591. Disastrous Results of the War in Germany. The ac- counts of the misery and depopulation of Germany caused by the Thirty Years' War are well-nigh incredible. Thousands of vil- lages were wiped out altogether ; in some regions the population was reduced by one half, in others to a third, or even less, of what it had been at the opening of the conflict. The people were fearfully barbarized by privation and suffering and by the atroc- ities of the soldiers of all the various nations. Until the end of the eighteenth century Germany remained too impoverished to make any considerable contribution to the culture of Europe. Among the German rulers the hitherto rather unimportant elec- tors of Brandenburg, of the House of Hohenzollern, were just be- ginning to build up a power destined in our own days to cause untold disaster. Hohenzollern rulers created the kingdom of Prussia in the eighteenth century, humbled both France and the Hapsburgs in the nineteenth, and finally so overreached themselves in the twentieth century that they lost their throne altogether.