nstein without mercy. The assassins were
abundantly rewarded. The emperor still prosecuted the war with
perseverance, which no disasters could check. Gradually the imperial
arms gained the ascendency. The Protestant princes became divided and
jealous of each other. The emperor succeeded in detaching from the
alliance, and negotiating a separate peace with the powerful Electors of
Saxony and Brandenburg. He then assembled a diet at Ratisbon on the 15th
of September, 1639, and without much difficulty secured the election of
his son Ferdinand to succeed him on the imperial throne. The emperor
presided at this diet in person. He was overjoyed in the attainment of
this great object of his ambition. He was now fifty-nine years of age,
in very feeble health, and quite worn out by a life of incessant anxiety
and toil. He returned to Vienna, and in four months, on the 15th of
February, 1637, breathed his last.

For eighteen years Germany had now been distracted by war. The
contending parties were so exasperated against each other, that no human
wisdom could, at once, allay the strife. The new king and emperor,
Ferdinand III., wished for peace, but he could not obtain it on terms
which he thought honorable to the memory of his father. The Swedish army
was still in Germany, aided by the Protestant princes of the empire, and
especially by the armies and the treasury of France. The thunders of
battle were daily heard, and the paths of these hostile bands were ever
marked by smoldering ruins and blood. Vials of woe were emptied,
unsurpassed in apocalyptic vision. In the siege of Brisac, the wretched
inhabitants were reduced to such a condition of starvation, that a guard
was stationed at the burying ground to prevent them from devouring the
putrid carcasses of the dead.

For eleven years history gives us nothing but a dismal record of weary
marches, sieges, battles, bombardments, conflagrations, and all the
unimaginable brutalities and miseries of war. The war had now raged for
thirty years. Hundreds of thousands of lives had been lost. Millions of
property had been destroyed, and other millions squandered in the arts
of destruction. Nearly all Europe had been drawn into this vortex of
fury and misery. All parties were now weary. And yet seven years of
negotiation had been employed before they could consent to meet to
consult upon a general peace. At length congresses of the belligerent
powers were assembled in two important towns o