he age of France has come."

It was the contrast of two different epochs of civilisation, of two
worlds succeeding each other, rather than a conflict of rival Powers.
Spain was inseparably united with the Church and a declared enemy to
the rest of Christendom. France lived at peace with Protestants, and
based her policy on their support, having political but not religious
enemies to combat, gaining all that Spain lost by exclusiveness. It
was the adoption of a new doctrine. The interest of the State above
the interest of the Church, of the whole above the aggregate of parts,
determined the foreign as well as the domestic policy of the
statesmanlike prelate. The formidable increase of State power, in the
form of monarchy, was an event of European proportion and
significance. General History naturally depends on the action of
forces that are not national, but proceed from wider causes. The rise
of modern kingship in France is part of a similar movement in England.
Bourbon's and Stuarts obeyed the same law, though with a different
result.

X

THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR

THE LAST and most important product of the Counter-Reformation was the
Thirty Years' War. In Germany the rights of the churches had been
defined by the Peace of Religion, and the principles of the
settlement were not seriously contested.

When, the Archbishop of Cologne married and became a Protestant, he
endeavoured to retain his political position as one of the electors;
but the Catholics were strong enough to prevent it, as a thing
foreseen and clearly provided against by law. There had been a
constant propaganda on both sides, each gaining ground in some
direction, the Lutherans losing much by the extension of Calvinism at
their expense. By operation of the accepted maxim that the civil
power shall determine which religion may be practised within its
territory, Lutheran governments becoming Calvinist carried their
subjects with them, weakening the Protestant cause, and presenting a
divided front to opponents. In this matter there was one significant
exception. The House of Brandenburg became Calvinist, the country
remained Lutheran, while the minister, Schwarzenberg, was a Catholic.
To this timely divergence from the ideas and customs of the sixteenth
century, to this fundamentally different view of the function and uses
of the State, the Hohenzollerns owe no small portion of their
greatness in history. The Protestants were in the majori