At first the star of Ferdinand seemed to shine the brighter in spite of the dark shade cast by the murder of Wallenstein. [Sidenote: =Battle of Nördlingen, 1634.=] The army placed under the orders of the young Ferdinand, king of Hungary, captured Regensburg in July, stormed Donauwörth, and laid siege to Nördlingen. There the king was joined by the cardinal-infant, Ferdinand of Spain, who was on his way to assume the government of the Netherlands, at the head of 15,000 men. In spite of inferior numbers Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, ever sanguine and ever impetuous, prevailed on the wary Horn, who commanded the Swedes, to risk a battle; but the evening of the 6th of September 1634 saw him a fugitive, and Horn a prisoner with 16,000 men _hors de combat_. The battle of Nördlingen was one of the decisive battles of the war. Just as Breitenfeld had made the conquest of north Germany by the Emperor and the success of the Edict of Restitution impossible, so did Nördlingen render the conquest of south Germany by Protestantism impossible. The Catholic bishoprics were recovered, Bernhard’s duchy of Franconia vanished, and the line of the Main became once more the boundary between the religions. [Sidenote: =Peace of Prague, 1635.=] In May 1635, the negotiations for peace which had been going on so long with Saxony were brought to a happy conclusion, and a treaty embodying the terms agreed upon was duly signed at Prague between John George and the Emperor. The question of the ecclesiastical lands was settled by taking the year 1627 as the test year. Whatever belonged to Protestants at that time was to remain Protestant, whatever was then Catholic was to be Catholic still. This arrangement secured nearly all the northern bishoprics to Protestantism. Lusatia was to be made over to Saxony, and Lutheranism in Silesia guaranteed by the Emperor. Lutheranism was still to remain the only privileged form of Protestantism. These conditions were intended to form a basis for a general peace. It was hoped that other states would accept them, and so gradually put an end to the war. To some extent the anticipation was realised. A considerable number of the cities and smaller states of north Germany accepted the treaty of Prague, but that it would ever form a satisfactory basis for a general peace was impossible, as long as it provided no security whatever for the Calvinists, and did not attempt to deal with the dangers of foreign intervention.