Here ends the account of Kundmann. Of how little importance was such a "_Koenigsschiessen_" of the seventeenth century may be gathered from the description. The popular festival of the olden time had become a pretentious solemnity. To do everything in a genteel way was the great desire; only the wealthy could become kings; to drive in carriages, to be accompanied by servants, to give costly meals and expensive prizes, were the main objects; the shooting was a minor point: and it was very significant that the king was no longer expected to speak publicly before his fellow-citizens; he represented in dumb show; the advocate spoke for the citizen at the festival also. Lastly, it may be perceived that the remnants of some of the old jovial customs had still been retained; they stand out in contrast to the prudery and susceptibility of the time; the improvisation of the _pritschmeister_ had ceased, and even the ironical verses on bad shots had to be prepared; gradually the reminiscences of a more vigorous time were laid aside as obsolete and absurd. It was not, however, the wretchedness of the people alone,--the bitter fruit of the war,--that destroyed the great brotherly feasts of the citizen, nor yet the ruling tendency to haughty exclusiveness against all who held a modest position in life, but equally injurious was the peculiar stamp impressed upon even the best and most highly cultivated, after that period of humiliation. It is time now to observe the great change in the German popular mind, which turned the martial citizen, who knew how to use powder and shot and to direct a gun, into the shy, timid gentleman, who hastened his steps when he heard near him the thump of the butt end of a musket, and feared lest his son should grow too tall, and come into the horrible position of having to shoulder a weapon in rank and file. This change was effected by the new polity of the princes. CHAPTER IV. STATE POLICY AND THE INDIVIDUAL. (1600-1700.) The last stage of the process of dissolution which the holy Roman empire passed through occupies the hundred and fifty years from Oxenstern to Napoleon. The mortal disease began in 1520, when Charles V., the Burgundian Hapsburger, was crowned Emperor of Germany; the death struggle itself did not begin till the election of Ferdinand II., the Jesuit protector, in 1620. The peal of bells that celebrated the Westphalian peace was a death-knell; what followed was the last slow destruction of an expiring organism. But it was also the beginning of a new organic formation. The rise of the Prussian state coincides precisely with the end of the Thirty Years' War.