His troops supported themselves by pillaging the country,
and the wretched inhabitants of Frederick's Palatinate were treated
almost as mercilessly by their pretended friends as by their open foes.

The peasants of Upper Austria also rebelled against Ferdinand's efforts
to force his religion upon them. For a time it seemed they would be as
successful as the Swiss mountaineers had been. Under a peasant named
Fadinger they gained several impressive victories; but he was killed,
and their cause collapsed into ruin. In its last stages their struggle
was taken up by an unknown leader, who was called simply "the Student."
But it was too late. Remarkable and romantic as was the Student's
career, his exploits and victories could not save the cause, and he
perished at the head of his followers.

Meanwhile, the war along the Rhine assumed more and more the savage
character that made it so destructive to the land. Mansfeld, driven from
the Palatinate, supported his ferocious troops almost entirely by
plundering. Tilly, the chief general of the Catholic League, followed
similar tactics, and, wherever they passed, the land lay ruined behind
them. Some of the lesser Protestant princes joined Mansfeld, but Tilly
proved a great military leader, and his opponents were slowly crowded
back into Northern Germany. The Emperor forced his religion upon the
Rhine districts, as he had upon Bohemia and Austria. The Protestant
world at last began to take alarm. Both England and Holland lent
Mansfeld support. The King of Denmark, drawing as many of the Protestant
German princes as possible to his side, joined vigorously in the
contest.

This Danish struggle may be considered the third period of the war. It
lasted from about 1625 to 1629, and introduces one of the two most
remarkable men of the period.

Albert of Waldstein, or Wallenstein, as he is generally called, was a
native of Bohemia, who joined the Catholics, and won military fame and
experience fighting on the imperial side in the Bohemian war. He
acquired vast wealth through marriage and the purchase of the
confiscated Protestant estates. Proving a remarkably capable financial
manager, he was soon the richest subject in the empire, and was created
Duke of Friedland, a district of Bohemia.

All of these successes were to Wallenstein mere preliminary steps to an
even more boundless ambition. He studied the political outlook, and his
keen eye saw the possibility of vastly expanding Mans