The honour of giving the final determination to the war belongs to Turenne. In 1646 he found himself for the first time at the head of an adequate force, and his own master, and he at once determined to put a stop to the ruinous system of frittering away advantages by acting on two different centres. [Sidenote: =Campaign of Turenne and Wrangel, 1646–1647.=] By combining his army with that of the Swedes, he saw that he could oppose an overwhelming force to the enemy, and end the war at a blow. Having procured the assent of Wrangel to his plan, who had replaced Torstenson in command of the Swedes, Turenne crossed the Rhine at Wesel, below Köln, and effected his junction with Wrangel on the Main. Slipping cleverly between the archduke Leopold William and the Bavarians, who sought to bar their passage, the united armies marched straight upon the Danube, seized Donauwörth, and spread themselves over the rich plain of Bavaria, plundering and burning up to the gates of Munich, and even penetrating as far as Bregenz in the Vorarlberg. Maximilian in despair deserted the Emperor, and signed a separate truce with the allies in May 1647. He did not keep it long. Stung in conscience, and afraid of after all losing the electoral hat, which he had risked so much to win, he again joined the Emperor in September of the same year. Terrible was the retribution which awaited him. Turenne and Wrangel returned into Bavaria with an army swollen with campfollowers to the number of 127,000. Beating the elector’s troops at Zusmarshausen on May 17th, 1648, they fastened like locusts on the land, and soon reduced it to the state of desolation in which the rest of Germany lay. Maximilian summoned Wallenstein’s old general Piccolomini to his aid, and prepared to strike one more blow for house and home, but before the armies met, the welcome news came that peace had been signed on the 24th of October at Münster, and the Thirty Years’ War was at an end. [Sidenote: =Negotiations for peace, 1642.=]