The outbreak of the Lutheran rebellion paralysed the forces of Catholicism for a while. But it was not long ere the Papacy recovered from its panic. The latter half of the sixteenth, and the first half of the seventeenth century--the hundred years between the rise of the Order of Jesus and the peace of Westphalia--form a period of unprecedented activity for the conversion of the world to the one true faith. ♦1540–1648♦ The Catholic sovereigns were at the zenith of their power and bigotry, and both their consciences and their swords lay under the absolute control of the Pope; for on the triumph of Dogmatism depended the realisation of their own dreams of Despotism at home and conquest abroad. On the other hand, Protestantism was grimly determined to conquer or die. If one half of Western Christendom was passionately attached to the traditions made dear by the familiarity of ages, the other half was no less passionately attracted by the novelty of the prospect which had just unfolded its charms to their vision. The result of this antagonism was the most faithful imitation of hell on earth that the modern world has witnessed. Europe, convulsed by revolt and made desolate by barbarous repression, presented a scene for which, fortunately, it would be hard to find a parallel even in the annals of civilised mankind. While the Inquisition was revelling in human hecatombs in Spain, the Spanish general Alva was ravaging heretical Holland, and a Spanish Armada was preparing to assail heretical England. Religious motives receded further and yet further into distance as time went on; but the slaughter begun for the glory of God was continued for the love of power; and those who were formerly burnt as heretics were now butchered as malcontents. The Titanic feud culminated in the Thirty Years’ War, during which no fewer than ten millions of Christians were massacred in the name of Christ. The Treaty of Westphalia staunched the flow of blood for a moment, but did not heal the wound. Open violence was aided by patient intrigue, and the monks carried on the enterprise wherein monarchs had failed. Meanwhile, as though the legions of St. Dominic, of St. Francis, and the other monastic orders were not sufficient for the work of destruction, to them was added, as we have seen, the more formidable Society of Jesus. By this time also the Spanish Inquisition had accomplished its special mission of blotting out the Morescos and Marranos, and had entered into an alliance with Loyola’s legion; the two bodies forming together a two-edged sword in the hand of the Catholic reaction.