aria. The children
of these families being educated by the Jesuits, the latter repaired in
Germany the broken thread of the destinies of the Guises, and had even
better fortune than the Guises themselves; for they made for their own
use certain blind instruments, agents in diplomacy and tactics--skilful
workmen certainly, but still mere workmen. I speak of that hardy and
devout generation, of Ferdinand II. of Austria, of Tilly, and
Maximilian of Bavaria, those conscientious executors of the great works
of Rome, who, under the direction of their teachers, carried on for so
long a time, throughout Europe, a warfare which was at once barbarous
and skilful, merciless and methodical. The Jesuits launched them into
it, and then carefully watched over them; and whenever Tilly on his
charger was seen dashing over the smoking ruins of cities, or the
battle-field covered with the slain, the Jesuit, trotting on his mule,
was not far off.

This vile war, the most loathsome in history, appears the more
horrible, by the almost total absence of free inspiration and
spontaneous impulse. It was, from its very beginning, both artificial
and mechanical[3]--like a war of machines or phantoms. These strange
beings, created only to fight, march with a look as void of martial
ardour, as their heart is of affection. How could they be reasoned
with? What language could be used towards them? What pity could be
expected from them? In our wars of religion, in those of the
Revolution they were men who fought; each died for the sake of his
idea, and, when he fell on the battle-field, he shrouded himself in his
faith. Whereas the partisans of the Thirty Years' War have no
individual life--no idea of their own; their very breath is but the
inspiration of the evil genius who urges them on. These automatons,
who grow blinder every day, are not the less obstinate and bloody. No
history would lead us to understand this abominable phenomenon, if
there did not remain some delineation of them in the hellish pictures
of that diabolical, _damned_ Salvator Rosa.[4]

Behold, then, this fruit of mildness, benignity, and paternity; see
how, after having by indulgence and connivance exterminated morality,
seized on the family by surprise, fascinated the mother and conquered
the child, and by the devil's own art raised the _man-machine_, they
are found to have created a monster, whose whole idea, life, and action
was _murder_, nothing more.

Wise pol