The national movement fostered in this manner was to end disastrously at the battle of the White Mountain in 1620. The treaty of Westphalia removed all probability of the establishment of an autonomous Bohemian nation. But Bohemian patriots have a saying that “as long as the language lives the nation is not dead,” and through all the dark days of the country’s history, in the very heart of continental Europe, cut off from the surrounding lands by a wall of forested slopes, the Bohemian language has held its own, not merely as a vernacular but as a literary language worthy of the nation’s pride. A period of marked decline intervened, however, between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. The crushing blow inflicted on Bohemian nationalism in 1620 was speedily followed by a rigid German oversight of the country. Seven years later, Ferdinand inaugurated a series of measures aimed at destroying the cause for which Bohemians had sacrificed their lives. The German language began to supplant the Bohemian. The “renewed ordinance of the land,” issued in 1627, contained provisions for the recognition of German in tribunals and government offices on the same terms as Bohemian. The appointment of Germans to important offices was a policy which marked this period. Its effects became perceptible in the growing use of the conquerors’ language. The seventeenth century is marked by a rapid growth of the Teutonic belt encircling Bohemia. Luditz and Saaz were lost to the Bohemian language in that period. So were the districts of Rokytince and Vichlaby[151] in the eastern section of the country. But since the beginning of the eighteenth century little change has taken place in the German-Bohemian linguistic boundary. Among the causes which contributed to the decline of the Bohemian language about this time were the land confiscations which were carried out on an extensive scale by the Imperialists.[152] Most of the noblemen of Bohemia were deprived of their estates. As a result about half the landed property of the country was taken away from its Slav owners. This spoliation was carried on by the Catholics, the despoiled and exiled Hussites being replaced by Germans, Spaniards, Walloons and even Irish. This foreign element naturally adopted the German language and Bohemian was abandoned to serfs and peasants.