Page:History of the Thirty Years' War - Gindely - Volume 1.djvu/55

 extermination, of the opposing party? It would be unreasonable to ascribe to one of the religious parties alone the guilt of this fierce struggle; they were equally guilty, If, in one land, the one received harder blows than it dealt out, the account was nevertheless balanced in some other. To be just in judging the contending personalities, we may not make the efforts of our own party our rule of fitness for the dispensing of our praise and blame. We should judge them by the ability with which they filled their places and carried out their plans; by the self-sacrificing spirit which actuated them in relation to their associates, and should inquire also whether they observed, and in what manner they observed, those eternal, moral laws which are respected alike by all Christian nations. Led by these principles, we can rightly judge such men as Ferdinand II., Maximilian of Bavaria, and Gustavus Adolphus, and do them justice, although their action was so opposite that the approval of the one scems to involve the condemnation of the other.

But disagreement in religious convictions was not the sole cause of the war. The insubordination of the Estates in Austria, the avidity of the princes to enrich themselves at the cost of the Church property, the ambition of individual party leaders, who could be satisfied only in a general disorder, contributed so largely to the kindling of the conflagration as to make it doubtful to what particular the greater guilt should be ascribed. But whatever may have kindled the strife, it is certain that its long duration was caused only by material interests. Though ideal views may give rise to a war, this once begun, the material questions of possession and power advance to the front and become, in contests which the party at first defeated would have been glad to end by yielding somewhat, the