Now, what good came of all this sorrow, in which a great country was laid waste, and more than twelve million people perished? Protestantism was rescued from extinction on the continent of Europe. A limit was put to the aggressions of Austria. Since the Thirty Years' War religious toleration has been the boast of Protestant Germany. The awful loss of life would seem to show the value God places on the rights of the common people, in contrast with material prosperity. The spiritual assets of individuals and nations seem to abide, while their material assets are perishable. But for this war no such State as modern Germany would now exist, and northern Europe, not only Saxony, Brandenburg and Hanover, but Denmark, Sweden and Norway would have been swept into the Holy Roman Empire, and their intellects paralyzed by Romanism, as in Italy, Spain and Portugal. It was not alone the weeping Swedes who bewailed Gustavus' early death at the age of thirty-eight years, but his prowess made Greece long for liberty, prayers were offered for him at the Holy Sepulchre. The Pope said: "Gustavus was the greatest king in the world." Wallenstein paid him homage in saying: "It is well for him and me that he is gone. The German Empire does not require two such leaders." He was a man of sincere faith, which God graciously honored. He was a just man, always kind, even to tenderness, and withal he was a military genius. He transformed the science of war, making the man behind the gun mean more than the gun. He caused flexibility of movement to take the place of large massing of men. He was a severe disciplinarian, but he tried to have the obedience of the soldier to come from within, obeying the outward voice as the voice of God, country and king. He often said: "One can be a bold combatant but not a good soldier without being a Christian." In our age, so materialistic, so mercenary, that sees all too little of the heroic along religious lines, it comes like a breath from heaven to contemplate such a life, such a service, such a death as that of Gustavus the Great. He possessed that peculiar faculty of greatness, the distinct perception of a distant goal, and an unfaltering determination to reach it. In generalship he was superior to Wallenstein, the greatest Imperial commander of that century. In diplomacy and statesmanship he excelled Richelieu. He dared to follow the vision. CHAPTER XIII. LATER HISTORY OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR.