Then followed the third period of fourteen years, from 1634 to 1648, in which victory and reverses were nearly equal on both sides. The Swedes, driven back to the Northern Sea, girding up their whole strength, again burst forth into the middle of Germany. Again the tide of fortune ebbed to and fro, becoming gradually less powerful. The French, greedy of booty, spread themselves as far as the Rhine; the land was devastated, and famine and pestilence raged. The Swedes, though losing one General after another, kept the field and maintained their claims with unceasing pertinacity. In opposition to them stood the equally inflexible Maximilian, Prince of the League. Even in the last decade of the war, the Bavarians fought for three years the most renowned campaigns which this dynasty has to boast of. The fanatical Ferdinand was dead, his successor, able, moderate, and an experienced soldier, persevered from necessity; he also was firm and tenacious. No party could bring about a decisive result. For years negotiations for peace were carried on; whilst the generals fought, the cities and villages were depopulated and the fields were overgrown with rank weeds. Peace came at last; it was not brought about by great battles, nor by irresistible political combinations, but chiefly by the weariness of the combatants, and Germany celebrated it with festivities though she had lost three fourths of her population. All this gives to the Thirty years' war the appearance of foredoomed annihilation, ushered in as it was by the most fearful visitations of nature. Above the strife of parties a terrible fate spread its wings; it carried off the leaders and prostrated them in the dust, the greatest human strength became powerless under its hand; at last, satiated with devastation and death, it turned its face slowly from the country which had become a great charnel house. It is not the intention of this work to characterize the Generals and battles belonging to this period of struggle, but to speak of the condition and circumstances of the German people, both of the destructive and suffering portions of the population, of the army, alike with the citizen and peasant. Since the Burgundian war and the Italian battles of Maximilian and Charles V., the burgher infantry had thrown into the background the knightly cavalry of the middle ages.