Ferdinand II., King of Spain, succeeded to the crown of Germany in 1619. He was by nature of a morose and revengeful disposition, and the bigotry and prejudice which had been instilled into his mind by Catholic preceptors made him an accomplished instrument in the hands of the church, in executing its exterminating vengeance on the heretics. During the course of his tutelage he made a pilgrimage to Rome, where an oath was administered to him by the pope, that if he should ever become emperor he would exterminate heresy in his dominions. When he ascended the throne Germany was divided into two factions. The one was known as the "Catholic League," and the other as the "Evangelical Union." The Catholic League was headed by Maximilian, elector of Bavaria, and comprised the bishops and princes attached to the house of Austria. The Evangelical Union was headed by the Duke of Wittenberg, the elector of Saxony and Brandenburg, and composed of Lutheran and Calvinistic princes and knights. A number of the princes of Bavaria assembled at Prague, and declaring that they would not submit to Maximilian, chose for their king Frederic, elector of the Palatina, a member of the Evangelical Union. This revolt benefited the Evangelical Union by a powerful accession. A desperate and bloody struggle was imminent between these two parties. Notwithstanding the Protestant influence in Bavaria, Ferdinand succeeded in having himself elected king. After this event he tore up in a violent rage the charter which Rudolph II. had granted the Bohemians, because it allowed them to build churches and school-houses. He then showed his remembrance of his popish oath by persecuting the Protestants, banishing their preachers, and depopulating the kingdom by an intolerance which caused emigrations of whole sections from his dominions. The victory of his troops near Prague enabling him to dictate a treaty which crushed the Protestant cause, and dissolved the Evangelical Union, he proceeded to restore the ecclesiastical institutions which had been abolished by the Protestants, to exclude Calvinists from the benefits of the religious peace of Augsburg, and to require Protestants living under Catholic princes to believe in Catholicism. Besides these decrees, enforced by the military power, the conquest of the Palatinate of Frederic, the bestowal of that dignity on Maximilian, the emperor's favorite, giving the Catholics the ascendency in the electoral college, the army of Tilly in Lower Saxony, where no existing enemy made it excusable, depriving the Protestants of their churches, committing wanton violence on the Lutherans, and compelling thousands to abandon their homes, property and country, were such gross violations of treaties, and such strong incentives to resistance, that the Protestant princes were impelled to unite in a league with the King of Denmark and the Duke of Holstein, determining to exhaust every resource in the defence of religious liberty. After some successes the