Out of these two disputes--the dispute about the Protestant administrators and the dispute about the secularized lands--the Thirty Years' War arose. The Catholic party stood upon the strict letter of the law, according, at least, to their own interpretation, and asked that everything might be replaced in the condition in which it was in 1552, the date of the Convention of Passau. The Protestant view, that consideration should be taken for changes, many of which at the end of the sixteenth century were at least a generation old, may or may not have been in accordance with the law, but it was certainly in accordance with the desires of the greater part of the population affected by them. [Sidenote: § 4. No popular representation.] There is every reason to believe that if Germany had possessed anything like a popular representation its voice would have spoken in favour of some kind of compromise. There is no trace of any mutual hostility between the populations of the Catholic and Protestant districts apart from their rulers. SECTION IV.--_Three Parties and Three Leaders._ [Sidenote: § 1. The leaders of parties.] Two men stood forward to personify the elements of strife--Maximilian, the Catholic Duke of Bavaria, and the Calvinist Prince Christian of Anhalt, whilst the warmest advocate of peace was John George, the Lutheran Elector of Saxony. [Sidenote: § 2. Maximilian of Bavaria.] Maximilian of Bavaria was the only lay prince of any importance on the side of the Catholics. He had long been known as a wise administrator of his own dominions. No other ruler was provided with so well-filled a treasury, or so disciplined an army. No other ruler was so capable of forming designs which were likely to win the approbation of others, or so patient in waiting till the proper time arrived for their execution. 'What the Duke of Bavaria does,' said one of his most discerning opponents, 'has hands and feet.' His plans, when once they were launched into the world, seemed to march forwards of themselves to success. [Sidenote: § 3. His love of legality.] Such a man was not likely to take up the wild theories which were here and there springing up, of the duty of uprooting Protestantism at all times and all places, or to declare, as some were declaring, that the Peace of Augsburg was invalid because it had never been confirmed by the Pope. To him the Peace of Augsburg was the legal settlement by which all questions were to be tried. What he read there was hostile to the Protestant administrators and the secularizing princes. Yet he did not propose to carry his views into instant action. He would await his opportunity. But he would do his best to be strong, in order that he might not be found wanting when the opportunity arrived, and, in spite of his enthusiasm for legal rights, it was by no means unlikely that, if a difficult point arose, he might be inclined to strain the law in his own favour. [Sidenote: § 4. Danger of the Protestants.]