This gloomy, hopeless, discontented, and ironical disposition showed itself everywhere, after the Thirty Years' War, by individuals giving vent to their thoughts about the state within whose jurisdiction they lived. It is true that the Germans continued after the great war to take an interest in politics: newspapers of all kinds increased gradually, and bore the news to every house; confidential reports from the seats of government and great commercial cities were circulated; the half-yearly reports of fairs comprised an abstract of the occurrences of many months; and numberless flying sheets, representing party interests, appeared upon every weighty event, both internal and external. The execution of the king, in England, was generally condemned by German readers as a frightful crime, and the sympathies of the whole nation were long with the Stuarts; but shortly before William of Orange put to sea against James II. it was read and believed that James had ventured to substitute a false child as heir to the throne. No one, however, excited public opinion so strongly against himself as Louis XIV. If ever a man was hated by the whole of Germany, he was. It is remarkable, that whilst the manners of his court and the fashions of his capital were everywhere imitated by the upper classes, and even the people could not escape from their influence, his politics were from the first rightly estimated by them. Countless were the flying sheets which were scattered about from all sides against him. He was the disturber of the peace, the great enemy, and in the lampoons also the proud fool. After the Palatinate was laid in ashes, the people called their dogs Melac and Teras; after the taking of Strasburg, a deeper cry of woe passed through the land. Finally, when in the great War of Succession the German armies long kept the upper hand, a feeling of self-respect was excited, which appeared in the small literature of the day. Had there been a German prince who could have awakened an energetic patriotism in the weak people, this hatred would have helped him. But a powerful outburst of patriotic feeling was hindered by the political condition of the country; in Cologne and Bavaria, French printing-presses were at work, and German pens wrote against their own countrymen.