of Holland and Sweden, thought of him only as the ally of Spain, of the Vatican, of the Jesuits; and he of whom it had been believed a century before that by nothing but his existence was the coming of Antichrist on earth delayed, was in the eyes of the northern divines either Antichrist himself or Antichrist's foremost champion. The earthquake that opened a chasm in Germany was felt through Europe; its states and peoples marshalled themselves under two hostile banners, and with the Empire's expiring power vanished that united Christendom it had been created to lead[374]. [Sidenote: Troubles of Germany.] [Sidenote: Rudolf II, 1576-1612.] [Sidenote: Matthias, 1612-1619.] Some of the effects thus sketched began to shew themselves as early as that famous Diet of Worms, from Luther's appearance at which, in A.D. 1521, we may date the beginning of the Reformation. But just as the end of the religious conflict in England can hardly be placed earlier than the Revolution of 1688, nor in France than the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, so it was not till after more than a century of doubtful strife that the new order of things was fully and finally established in Germany. The arrangements of Augsburg, like most treaties on the basis of _uti possidetis_, were no better than a hollow truce, satisfying no one, and consciously made to be broken. The church lands which Protestants had seized, and Jesuit confessors urged the Catholic princes to reclaim, furnished an unceasing ground of quarrel: neither party yet knew the strength of its antagonists sufficiently to abstain from insulting or persecuting their modes of worship, and the smouldering hate of half a century was kindled by the troubles of Bohemia into the Thirty Years' War. [Sidenote: Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648.] [Sidenote: Ferdinand II, A.D. 1619-37.] [Sidenote: Plans of Ferdinand II.] [Sidenote: Gustavus Adolphus.] [Sidenote: Ferdinand III, 1637-1658.] [Sidenote: The peace of Westphalia.]