In many places all the people had become Protestants, and the church having been built by the money of either themselves or their ancestors, the churches had been used for nearly one hundred years for Protestant services. Americans can understand the situation by thinking how it would be and what would happen if England should now demand that all property owned by the Crown before the Revolutionary War should be restored. Ferdinand II. was now to force a war upon his subjects which left Europe a great cemetery. During the Thirty Years' War the population of Europe was reduced from sixteen millions to less than six million people. Thirty-five thousand towns and villages were destroyed. Three-fourths of the population perished in Bohemia, partly by the sword, but also by pestilence and famine, and many emigrated. The question had resolved itself into this, "Shall we permit Protestantism to be forever exterminated?" It took all this sorrow of destruction of property and of human life to bring about political toleration between Protestant and Catholic States. For thirty-three years Germany seems to have been blind to what was going on around her. The intellectual impetus given by the Reformation made the theological strife between Lutherans and Calvinists bitter and absorbing. Large districts both south and west of them had been forced back under the dominion of the Church of Rome, and the Germans did not interfere. They had done but little for the Dutch in their desperate fight against the Spanish Hapsburgs and Romanism, so that William of Orange, in bitterness of heart, had said, "If Germany remains an idle spectator of our tragedy, a war will presently be kindled on German soil which will swallow up all the wars which have gone before it." That war was now on. "No, true freedom is to share All the chains our brothers wear, And with heart and hand to be Earnest to make others free." CHAPTER VII. THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR.—CONTINUED. This war is usually divided into five periods: 1. War in Bohemia; 2. War in the Palatinate; 3. Danish war; 4. Swedish war; 5. Franco-Swedish war. After their king had been made Emperor of Germany, the Bohemians, in an effort to make sure of their deliverance from the rule of Ferdinand, chose for their king Frederick V., Elector Palatine, who being the head of the Evangelical Union, was considered the chief of the Reformation party in Germany. He was elected August 26th, 1619. He was not fortunate in securing the friendship and support of his own subjects. His conduct was so unbecoming his profession that it was no wonder God did not prosper him as a public leader. Frederick V. was son-in-law of James I. of England, and it was hoped by his election to secure the favor of the Protestants of England and Scotland.