philosophy.[4]

Meanwhile Galileo, roused by the encouragement of scientific friends,
began a second time with infinite wit and sarcasm to expound and defend
his doctrines. The Church took him more sternly in hand. He was
imprisoned by the Inquisition and emerged from its dark chambers a
broken and silent man. Philosophy, terrified, fled from Italy, not to
return until over two centuries of the world's advance had prepared for
her a less barbaric greeting.[5]

Southern Italy was ruled by viceroys from Spain, but so feeble had the
Hapsburg grip become that Masaniello, a fisherman of Naples, was able to
rouse his city against its tyrants, and for over a year Spain was unable
to reestablish her authority. When she did, it was only by the treachery
of the peasant leaders who had succeeded the murdered Masaniello.[6]

The internal decay of Spain and the lassitude of her two feeble
sovereigns, Philip III (1598-1621) and Philip IV (1621-1665), prevented
her from rendering any material assistance to Austria, where the other
branch of the Hapsburgs, descendants of Charles V's brother Ferdinand,
were reduced to struggle for their very existence. Ferdinand and his
immediate successor as Emperor of Germany had kept the religious peace
carefully, and Germany had prospered. But then came new emperors who
repudiated their methods--Ferdinand had been deemed by the Church little
better than a Protestant. In 1608 the Protestant princes, becoming
suspicious, formed a league for mutual defence. The Catholics under
Maximilian of Bavaria formed an answering league in 1609. They almost
came to open war that year over a disputed succession in one of the
smaller duchies, the Protestants appealing to Holland for help and the
Catholics to Spain. Fortunately the terrible example of the civil wars
they had seen in France, held them back for a time. But always there
were arising new grounds for quarrel.

THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR

In 1618 the actual war began. A new leader, Ferdinand II, young and
intensely Catholic, had risen to guide the Hapsburg fortunes in Austria,
had successfully forced that land to resume the old religion, and now
aimed to do the same in Bohemia. The Bohemians, famed fanatics of the
unforgotten Hussite wars, broke into open rebellion, threw Ferdinand's
ministers through a window, and so roused the war that ruined
Germany.[7]

Ferdinand became Emperor of Germany the next year (1619), and called the
Catholic league to hi