Page:Three Years in Europe.djvu/421

Rh supreme in Germany? The question had been decided in England and in Holland in favour of the newer creed, and in France and in Spain in favour of the older one. In Germany, the home of the dispute, the question was yet undecided. Historians have waxed eloquent over the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years' War, (1740 to 1763,) in which all the great European powers were engaged, and in which red men in America and dark men in Asia took a share. Historians are never tired of painting the dignity, beauty and heroism of Maria Theresa, descendant of a long line of Austrian emperors, and the vigour, the determination, the indomitable energy of Frederick the Great, who was resolved to give to his native Prussia a place in the map of Europe. All this is very fine writing but we are liable in the midst of this word-painting to miss the truth. The great question which was ultimately decided by these wars was whether Protestant influence and power, or Catholic influence and power, should rule supreme in North Germany, from Holland to the frontier of Russia. The noble cause triumphed once more, and Prussia, representing the Protestant influence, became a power in Europe as against the declining power of Austria. Europe was then divided by a line which might be drawn across the map of the Continent; the free and rational Protestant religion remained supreme in the northern half; the more emotional Roman Catholic religion survived in the south. There were deeper reasons for this division than the mere vicissitudes of war.