Page:History of the Thirty Years' War - Gindely - Volume 1.djvu/21



T the request of my intimate friend, the publisher, I have decided to put the results of my many years’ study of the Thirty Years’ War into a work suited to the wants of a large circle of readers. In obeying this wish, I can also discharge to others an obligation which I have long felt. I therefore join my labors with those of the contributors to the series, entitled “The Knowledge of the Present Time,” the purpose of which is to present to the cultured classes, in a popular and attractive style, the results of those recent investigations which would otherwise have remained more or less unavailable in the scientific forms in which specialists have stated them.)

My work is divided into three parts. The first describes those events which gave immediate occasion to the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War, and proceeds thence to relate the history of the Bohemian insurrection, the judicial proceedings and confiscations which followed, and the consequent reactionary measures of religious reformation. In this I have closely followed the course of the four volumes which I have written on the history of the Thirty Years’ War. My statement in regard to the part which Father Dominicus took in the council of the officers of the League and the Emperor before the battle of the

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