During this time the French, under the famous Marshals, Turenne and Condé, had not only maintained themselves in Alsatia, but had crossed the Rhine and ravaged Baden, the Palatinate, Würtemberg and part of Franconia. Although badly defeated by the Bavarians in the early part of 1645, they were reinforced by the Swedes and Hessians, and, before the close of the year, won such a victory over the united Imperialist forces, not far from Donauwörth, that all Bavaria lay open to them. The effect of these French successes, and of those of the Swedes under Torstenson, was to deprive Ferdinand III. of nearly his whole military strength. John George of Saxony concluded a separate armistice with the Swedes, thus violating the treaty of Prague, which had cost his people ten years of blood. He was followed by Frederick William, the young Elector of Brandenburg; and then Maximilian of Bavaria, in March, 1647, also negotiated a separate armistice with France and Sweden. Ferdinand III. was thus left with a force of only 12,000 men, the command of which, as he had no Catholic generals left, was given to a renegade Calvinist named Melander von Holzapfel. [Sidenote: 1645.] The chief obstacle to peace--the power of the Hapsburgs--now seemed to be broken down. The wanton and tremendous effort made to crush out Protestantism in Germany, although helped by the selfishness, the cowardice or the miserable jealousy of so many Protestant princes, had signally failed, owing to the intervention of three foreign powers, one of which was Catholic. Yet the Peace Congress, which had been agreed upon in 1643, had accomplished nothing. It was divided into two bodies: the ambassadors of the Emperor were to negotiate at Osnabrück with Sweden, as the representative of the Protestant powers, and at Münster with France, as the representative of the Catholic powers which desired peace. Two more years elapsed before all the ambassadors came together, and then a great deal of time was spent in arranging questions of rank, title and ceremony, which seem to have been considered much more important than the weal or woe of a whole people. Spain, Holland, Venice, Poland and Denmark also sent representatives, and about the end of 1645 the Congress was sufficiently organized to commence its labors. But, as the war was still being waged with as much fury as ever, one side waited and then the other for the result of battles and campaigns; and so two more years were squandered.