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CHAPTER XIV: Ferdinand
On the death of Mathias, Ferdinand, who had succeeded him as king of Bohemia and Hungary, was raised to the imperial throne. The Bohemian protestants, dreading his bigotry, chose Frederic V., the elector palatine, for their sovereign. their sovereign.
He was supported by all the protestant princes of the Germanic body, while Ferdiwhile Ferdinand was aided by the King of Spain and the catholic princes of the empire. Their forces proved overwhelming; Frederic, defeated and helpless, abandoned the conthe contest in despair, and forfeited both the crown and his electorate. The emperor Ferdinand, strengthened by victory, and by the acquisition of treasure, now turned the arms of his experienced generals, Wallenstein, Tilly, and Spinola, against the prothe protestants, who had formed a league, with Christian IV., king of Denmark, at its head, its head, for the restoration of the palatinate (A. D. 1625); but the imperialists were victorious , and the protestants were compelled to sue for peace. They subsequently formed a secret alliance with Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden: A. D. 1629.
The father of Gustavus had left him a well-confirmed authority, though without treasure; the nobles who might have endangered his power had been humbled in the preceding revolutions, and there was nothing to fear from Russia, Poland or Denmark. He was zealously anxious for the success of the protestant cause; he wished also to check the ambitious designs of the emperor; and Germany appeared, Germany appeared, in fact, to be the country in which he might seek for power with the greatest prospect of success. His talents, both military and civil, were of the highest order. Together with the lofty character of his genius, which manifested itself in the greatness of his plans, he combined the power of attention to minute details in the organization of his army, and a calm and penetrating insight into circumstances of the greatest intricacy .
His habits were of the most simple kind; and though the boldness of his enterprises astonished the world, he was personally mild, beneficent, susceptible of the warmest friendship, eloquent, popular, and full of reliance on Providence. Richelieu, the minister of France, desirous of curbing the power of the House of Austria , subsidized Gustavus; and England furnished him with 6,000 troops, headed by the marquis of Hamilton. The magnanimous king of Sweden, by his sudden and unexpected apunexpected appearance in the empire, by his irresistible progress, and finally by the victory of Leipsic, where he was opposed to the imperialist army under Tilly, revived the con- , revived the confidence of the protestant princes in their own power. He quickly made himself mashimself master of the whole country from the Elbe to the Rhine; but having been repulsed with considerable loss, in a furious attack on the intrenchments of the imperialists at Nuremberg, and hearing that their general, Wallenstein, had soon after removed his camp to Lutzen, he proceeded thither to give him battle. The imperial army greatly outnumbered the Swedes and their allies; and from daybreak to night the conflict was sustained with unabated vigor: but though the victory was nobly gained by the Swedes, their gallant king had fallen in the middle of the fight, covered with renown, with renown, and sincerely deplored by his brave and faithful soldiers: A. D. 1642. Both the king of Sweden and the court of France had been alarmed at the union of the whole power of Germany, in the hands of a ruler who assumed the tone of a universal sovereign; and the efficacy of a good military system, directed by the energetic genius of a single leader, was never more eminently displayed than on this occasion.
The war was still continued with various success; but the weight of it fell on the Swedes, the German princes having, after the fatal battle of Nordlingen, in 1634, deserted them. In the following year, however, the troops of France simultaneously attacked the Austrian monarchy at every accessible point, in order to prevent the forces of the latter from acting with decisive effect in any quarter. In 1637 the emperor Ferdinand died, and was succeeded by his son Ferdinand III., who pursued the policy of his father; but though there was considerable disunion among the con、 federates, the great events of the war were generally in their favor. It would be inconsistent, however, with the sketchy outline we are penning, to enter into further details of this memorable war; and, perhaps, limited as our space is, we may have been already too diffuse. We will, therefore, pass at once to the celebrated Peace of Westphalia, which was signed at Munster on the 24th October, 1648. It was concluded under the mediation of the pope and the Venetians, between the emperor Ferdinand III., Philip III., king of Spain, and the princes of the empire who belonged to their party, on one side; and Louis XIV., Christina, queen of Sweden, the statesgeneral of the United Provinces, and those princes of the empire, mostly protestants, who were in alliance with the French and Swedes, on the other. By this celebrated treaty all differences were arranged between the belligerants, except France and Spain, who continued in hostilities for eleven years afterwards; but it restored tranquillity to northern Europe and Germany, and became a fundamental law of the empire; while Holland and Switzerland acquired a simultaneous recognition and guarantee.