Page:History of the Thirty Years' War - Gindely - Volume 1.djvu/27



N offering Professor Gindely’s “History of the Thirty Years’ War” to the public in an English dress, I desire to make the following observations:

I. In regard to the work itself, the will inform the reader as to its origin. His great work will, perhaps, if ever completed, be too large to be called for much beyond the circle of those who can enjoy it in the original. But, this smaller one rests upon the same studies, and will, I trust, commend itself to the entire reading public as the best which has appeared on the subject.

Diplomacy is the point of most interest and importance in the history of a war. Battles are but incidents, and accounts of them are valuable chiefly for their bearing upon military science and art, and as indicating the pre-ponderance of the one party or the other. These are described with sufficient fulness. Further than this, descriptions of them are but sensational, like the details of crime in the columns of the daily press. But the diplomacy of a great struggle has another significance, and its points are seldom stated with more clearness and precision than in this work. The Author’s pictures of prontinent individuals also commend themselves, both by their vividness and by the evident care which has been taken in securing their accuracy. I mention, as examples, the accounts of Ferdinand II., Cardinal Khlesl, the Palsgrave Frederic, Bethlen Gabor, Prince of Transylvania,