It was a mortal crisis through which Germany had passed, and dearly was the peace bought. But that which was most important had been preserved, the continuity of German development, the continuance of the great inward process, by which the German nation raised itself from the bondage of the middle ages to a higher civilization. The long struggle, politically considered, was a defensive war of the Protestant party against the intolerance of the old faith and the attacks of the Imperial power. This defensive struggle had begun by an ill-timed offensive movement in Bohemia. The head of the House of Hapsburg had law and right on his side, so long as he only put down this movement. His opponents put themselves in the position of revolutionists, which could only be vindicated by success. But from the day when the Emperor made use of his victory to suppress by means of Jesuits and soldiers the sovereignty of the German princes, and the old rights of the cities, he became in his turn the political offender whose bold venture was repulsed by the last efforts of the nation. But here we must take a higher point of view, from which the proceedings of Ferdinand II. appear still more insupportable. Just a hundred years before his reign, all the good spirits of the German nation fought on the side of the Emperor, when he, in opposition to existing rights and old usages, had founded a German Church and German state. Since that, the family of Charles V. had for a century, a short time excepted, done much by laborious scheming, or listless indifference, to destroy the last source of this new life, independence of spirit, thought and faith: it was for a century, a short time excepted, the opponent of the national German life; it had its Spanish and Italian alliances, and had arrayed the Romish Jesuits against the indigenous civilization of the nation, aided, alas! by some of the German princes. It was by such means that it had endeavoured to become great in Germany, and in the same spirit, an overzealous Emperor called forth the bloody decision. On his head, not on the German people or Princes, lies the guilt of this endless war. The Protestant chiefs, with the exception of the lesser rulers, only sought to submit and make peace with their Emperor. It was only for a few years they were led into open war, by the arrogance of Wallenstein, the scorn of Vienna, and the warlike pressure of Gustavus Adolphus; the alliance of the great electoral houses of Saxony and Brandenburg with Sweden did not last four years; at the first opportunity they receded, and during the last period of the war, neutrality was their strongest policy.