At the beginning of the war even the distant readers were compelled to be violent partisans. Everywhere appeared controversial writings, opinions, councils, and deliberations. The nation was rent into large parties by this intellectual strife, and it is instructive to see how the writings of the disputants stand in exact relation to the success which their party had achieved. Till the battle of the Weissen Berge nine tenths of all the narratives and controversial writings are Protestant; they reached full a thousand in number. Hatred to the Jesuits blazed fiercely; bitter was the rancour against the Emperor, and incessant were the cautions against the League. After Prague, Strasburg was the centre of their warlike activity. Whilst at Prague the libel-writer von Rörig, as _Huss-redivius_, made his voice heard vehemently in many 'Political Discourses' against his adversary Sturm: the _magisters_ of Strasburg, after the fashion of Boccalini, made accusations against the same opponent, before Apollo and the high court of Parnassus; but their Apollo had to deliver human and explicit oracles. The answers in defence are cautious and uncertain, as during the whole war the Catholic party were generally not a match for the Protestants in the serious warfare of the pen. But the speedy flight of the new King of Bohemia suddenly changed the physiognomy of the literary market. The secret writings obtained as booty from the Bohemian party were published by their opponents; and about these bulky quartos there raged for years a battle of petty flying-sheets. Revengeful, and joyfully triumphant, the Imperialists sounded their pæan. It is true that in their brochures there was still some moderation, for they were obliged to spare the Lutheran Saxons; but so much the more irritably did they attack the enemy, in countless pictorial sheets and satirical verses. Endless and merciless were the satires on the fugitive winter King, he, the proud and witless one, with his wife and children, were depicted in every kind of pitiful situation, seeking their bread, departing in bad waggons, and digging a grave for themselves. This strife was interrupted by another, which will ever be of high interest. It was the storm of the German press against the "_Kipper_ and _Wipper_."