The History of the Thirty Years War | Page 4

between France and Sweden. -- Oxenstiern takes the
Direction of Affairs. -- Death of the Elector Palatine. -- Revolt of the
Swedish Officers. -- Duke Bernhard takes Ratisbon. -- Wallenstein
enters Silesia. -- Forms Treasonable Designs. -- Forsaken by the Army.
-- Retires to Egra. -- His associates put to death. -- Wallenstein's death.
-- His Character.
Book V.
Battle of Nordlingen. -- France enters into an Alliance against Austria.
-- Treaty of Prague. -- Saxony joins the Emperor. -- Battle of Wistock
gained by the Swedes. -- Battle of Rheinfeld gained by Bernhard, Duke
of Weimar. -- He takes Brisach. -- His death. -- Death of Ferdinand II.
-- Ferdinand III. succeeds him. -- Celebrated Retreat of Banner in
Pomerania. -- His Successes. -- Death. -- Torstensohn takes the
Command. -- Death of Richelieu and Louis XIII. -- Swedish Victory at

Jankowitz. -- French defeated at Freyburg. -- Battle of Nordlingen
gained by Turenne and Conde. -- Wrangel takes the Command of the
Swedish Army. -- Melander made Commander of the Emperor's Army.
-- The Elector of Bavaria breaks the Armistice. -- He adopts the same
Policy towards the Emperor as France towards the Swedes. -- The
Weimerian Cavalry go over to the Swedes. -- Conquest of New Prague
by Koenigsmark, and Termination of the Thirty Years' War.

History of the Thirty Years' War in Germany.

Book I.

From the beginning of the religious wars in Germany, to the peace of
Munster, scarcely any thing great or remarkable occurred in the
political world of Europe in which the Reformation had not an
important share. All the events of this period, if they did not originate
in, soon became mixed up with, the question of religion, and no state
was either too great or too little to feel directly or indirectly more or
less of its influence.
Against the reformed doctrine and its adherents, the House of Austria
directed, almost exclusively, the whole of its immense political power.
In France, the Reformation had enkindled a civil war which, under four
stormy reigns, shook the kingdom to its foundations, brought foreign
armies into the heart of the country, and for half a century rendered it
the scene of the most mournful disorders. It was the Reformation, too,
that rendered the Spanish yoke intolerable to the Flemings, and
awakened in them both the desire and the courage to throw off its
fetters, while it also principally furnished them with the means of their
emancipation. And as to England, all the evils with which Philip the
Second threatened Elizabeth, were mainly intended in revenge for her
having taken his Protestant subjects under her protection, and placing
herself at the head of a religious party which it was his aim and
endeavour to extirpate. In Germany, the schisms in the church
produced also a lasting political schism, which made that country for
more than a century the theatre of confusion, but at the same time threw
up a firm barrier against political oppression. It was, too, the
Reformation principally that first drew the northern powers, Denmark

and Sweden, into the political system of Europe; and while on the one
hand the Protestant League was strengthened by their adhesion, it on
the other was indispensable to their interests. States which hitherto
scarcely concerned themselves with one another's existence, acquired
through the Reformation an attractive centre of interest, and began to
be united by new political sympathies. And as through its influence
new relations sprang up between citizen and citizen, and between rulers
and subjects, so also entire states were forced by it into new relative
positions. Thus, by a strange course of events, religious disputes were
the means of cementing a closer union among the nations of Europe.
Fearful indeed, and destructive, was the first movement in which this
general political sympathy announced itself; a desolating war of thirty
years, which, from the interior of Bohemia to the mouth of the Scheldt,
and from the banks of the Po to the coasts of the Baltic, devastated
whole countries, destroyed harvests, and reduced towns and villages to
ashes; which opened a grave for many thousand combatants, and for
half a century smothered the glimmering sparks of civilization in
Germany, and threw back the improving manners of the country into
their pristine barbarity and wildness. Yet out of this fearful war Europe
came forth free and independent. In it she first learned to recognize
herself as a community of nations; and this intercommunion of states,
which originated in the thirty years' war, may alone be sufficient to
reconcile the philosopher to its horrors. The hand of industry has
slowly but gradually effaced the traces of its ravages, while its
beneficent influence still survives; and this general sympathy among
the states of Europe, which grew out of