princes
and quarrelsome divines continued the rulers of Germany, and, towards the
end of the sixteenth century, everything seemed drifting back into the
Middle Ages. Then came the Thirty Years' War, a most disastrous war for
Germany, which is felt in its results to the present day. If, as a civil
and religious contest, it had been fought out between the two parties,--the
Protestants and Roman Catholics of Germany,--it would have left, as in
England, one side victorious; it would have been brought to an end before
both were utterly exhausted. But the Protestants, weakened by their own
dissensions, had to call in foreign aid. First Denmark, then Sweden,
poured their armies into Germany, and even France--Roman Catholic
France--gave her support to Gustavus Adolphus and the Protestant cause.
England, the true ally of Germany, was too weak at home to make her
influence felt abroad. At the close of the war, the Protestants received
indeed the same rights as the Roman Catholics; but the nation was so
completely demoralized that it hardly cared for the liberties guaranteed
by the treaty of Westphalia. The physical and moral vigor of the nation
was broken. The population of Germany is said to have been reduced by one
half. Thousands of villages and towns had been burnt to the ground. The
schools, the churches, the universities, were deserted. A whole generation
had grown up during the war, particularly among the lower classes, with no
education at all. The merchants of Germany, who formerly, as AEneas Sylvius
said, lived more handsomely than the Kings of Scotland, were reduced to
small traders. The Hansa was broken up. Holland, England, and Sweden had
taken the wind out of her sails. In the Eastern provinces, commerce was
suspended by the inroads of the Turks; whilst the discovery of America,
and of the new passage to the East Indies, had reduced the importance of
the mercantile navy of Germany and Italy in the Mediterranean. Where there
was any national feeling left, it was a feeling of shame and despair, and
the Emperor and the small princes of Germany might have governed even more
selfishly than they did, without rousing opposition among the people.

What can we expect of the literature of such times? Popular poetry
preserved some of its indestructible charms. The Meistersaenger went on
composing according to the rules of their guilds, but we look in vain for
the raciness and honest simplicity of Hans Sachs. Some of the professo