In Germany, apostate ecclesiastical and secular electors were seeking their own aggrandizement. Bishoprics with their manses were converted into hereditary principalities. As to their Swedish ally, Gustavus Adolphus, I refer my readers to the judgment of a Protestant admirer of this doughty champion of the Reformation. On page 329 of _Thirty Years War_ Schiller writes as follows:-- “The last, the greatest service, Gustavus Adolphus could render to religious and civil liberty was to die (1632, at battle of Lutzen).... It was no longer possible to doubt that he was seeking to establish himself in Germany, not as a protector, but as a conqueror. Already Augsburg boasted that it had been chosen as the capital of the new monarchy. The Protestant princes, his allies, made claims which could only be satisfied by despoiling the Catholics. It is then permitted to conclude that like the barbarian hordes of yore, he intended to divide the conquered provinces of Germany among the Swedish chiefs of his army. His conduct towards the unfortunate Elector Palatine, Frederick V, is unworthy of a hero. The Palatinate was in his hands, justice and honour required that he return it to the legitimate sovereign. But to avoid doing so he had recourse to subtleties which make us blush for him.” It is only fair to add that Gustavus did finally restore the Palatinate to Frederick, but as a fief of the Swedish crown. What, I ask, has been gained by the overthrow of the Public Law of Europe? For this was waged the Thirty Years War, one of the most cruel the world has known. Atrocities were committed on both sides, and the _tu quoque_ argument is very foolish. But if it be admitted that defensive war is always just and righteous, we must allow that the Catholics were justified in fighting for their public law. They were in possession since more than twelve centuries, and were resisting assailants who showed no quarter, and who robbed them of their churches and persecuted them, relentlessly, whenever they gained the upper hand, just as the Puritans did in Maryland. And what was the net result of the Thirty Years War? The loss of liberty both civil and religious. The German electors, ecclesiastical as well as secular, had been but administrators of free citizens, who now became subjects with little or no voice in the government. As to religious liberty, the new axiom _Cujus regio ejus religio_ was substituted for One Lord One Faith. The ruler of each realm became the infallible Pontiff of his subjects. “If any gratitude from this scandalous and accursed world were to be gained, and I, Martin Luther, had taught and done nothing else than this, that I have enlightened and adorned the temporal authority, for this alone should it be thankful to me, since even my worst enemies know that a like understanding as to the temporal authority was completely concealed under the Papacy” (Walch’s _Augs._, XIV, p. 520).