d the
Emperor, and was secretly murdered. The Roman Catholic party had begun
to lose courage, when, by a last effort of collected strength, it won
the bloody battle of Noerdlingen.

Then followed the third period of fourteen years, from 1634 to 1648, in
which victory and reverses were nearly equal on both sides. The Swedes,
driven back to the Northern Sea, girding up their whole strength, again
burst forth into the middle of Germany. Again the tide of fortune ebbed
to and fro, becoming gradually less powerful. The French, greedy of
booty, spread themselves as far as the Rhine; the land was devastated,
and famine and pestilence raged. The Swedes, though losing one General
after another, kept the field and maintained their claims with
unceasing pertinacity. In opposition to them stood the equally
inflexible Maximilian, Prince of the League. Even in the last decade of
the war, the Bavarians fought for three years the most renowned
campaigns which this dynasty has to boast of. The fanatical Ferdinand
was dead, his successor, able, moderate, and an experienced soldier,
persevered from necessity; he also was firm and tenacious. No party
could bring about a decisive result. For years negotiations for peace
were carried on; whilst the generals fought, the cities and villages
were depopulated and the fields were overgrown with rank weeds. Peace
came at last; it was not brought about by great battles, nor by
irresistible political combinations, but chiefly by the weariness of
the combatants, and Germany celebrated it with festivities though she
had lost three fourths of her population.

All this gives to the Thirty years' war the appearance of foredoomed
annihilation, ushered in as it was by the most fearful visitations of
nature. Above the strife of parties a terrible fate spread its wings;
it carried off the leaders and prostrated them in the dust, the
greatest human strength became powerless under its hand; at last,
satiated with devastation and death, it turned its face slowly from the
country which had become a great charnel house.

It is not the intention of this work to characterize the Generals and
battles belonging to this period of struggle, but to speak of the
condition and circumstances of the German people, both of the
destructive and suffering portions of the population, of the army,
alike with the citizen and peasant. Since the Burgundian war and the
Italian battles of Maximilian and Charles V., the burgher infa