We may well leave to those who like such tasks the work of piling up articles of accusation against this man or that, of discovering that the war was all the fault of Ferdinand, or all the fault of Frederick, as party feeling may lead them. Probably the most lenient judgment is also the truest one. With national and territorial institutions the mere chaos which they were, an amount of political intelligence was needed to set them right which would be rare in any country or in any age. [Sidenote: § 6. Total disintegration of Germany.] As far as national institutions were concerned the Thirty Years' War made a clean sweep in Germany. Nominally, it is true, Emperor and Empire still remained. Ferdinand III. was still according to his titles head of all Christendom, if not of the whole human race. The Diet still gathered to discuss the affairs of the Empire. The imperial court, re-established on the principle of equality between the two religions, still met to dispense justice between the estates of the Empire. But from these high-sounding names all reality had fled. The rule over German men had passed for many a long day into the hands of the princes. It was for the princes to strive with one another in peace or war under the protection of foreign alliances; and by and by, half consciously, half unconsciously, to compete for the leadership of Germany by the intelligence and discipline which they were able to foster under their sway. [Sidenote: § 7. Protestantism saved.] When the days of this competition arrived it was of inestimable advantage to Germany that, whatever else had been lost, Protestantism had been saved. Wherever Protestantism had firmly rooted itself there sprang up in course of time a mighty race of intellectual giants. Göthe and Schiller, Lessing and Kant, Stein and Humboldt, with thousands more of names which have made German intellect a household word in the whole civilized world, sprung from Protestant Germany. When Bavaria, scarcely more than two generations ago, awoke to the consciousness that she had not more than the merest rudiments of education to give to her children, she had to apply to the Protestant north for teachers. [Sidenote: § 8. The worst over for Germany.] For Germany in 1648 the worst was over. Physically, at least she had no more to suffer. One page of her history was closed and another had not yet been opened. She lay for a time in the insensibility of exhaustion. SECTION IV.--_Continuance of the War between France and Spain._ [Sidenote: § 1. Peace between Spain and the Dutch.]