have escaped with, arithmetically speaking, HALF the harrying it
got in that long Business.

But Protestant Germany--sad shame to it, which proved lasting sorrow
as well--was all alike torpid; Brandenburg not an exceptional case.
No Prince stood up as beseemed: or only one, and he not a great one;
Landgraf Wilhelm of Hessen, who, and his brave Widow after him, seemed
always to know what hour it was. Wilhelm of Hessen all along;--and a few
wild hands, Christian of Brunswick, Christian of Anhalt, Johann George
of Jagerndorf, who stormed out tumultuously at first, but were
soon blown away by the Tilly-Wallenstein TRADE-WINDS and regulated
armaments:--the rest sat still, and tried all they could to keep out of
harm's way. The "Evangelical Union" did a great deal of manifestoing,
pathetic, indignant and other; held solemn Meetings at Heilbronn, old
Sir Henry Wotton going as Ambassador to them; but never got any redress.
Had the Evangelical Union shut up its inkhorns sooner; girt on its
fighting-tools when the time came, and done some little execution with
them then, instead of none at all,--we may fancy the Evangelical Union
would have better discharged its function. It might have saved immense
wretchedness to Germany. But its course went not that way.

In fact, had there been no better Protestantism than that of Germany,
all was over with Protestantism; and Max of Bavaria, with fanatical
Ferdinand II. as Kaiser over him, and Father Lammerlein at his right
hand and Father Hyacinth at his left, had got their own sweet way in
this world. But Protestant Germany was not Protestant Europe, after
all. Over seas there dwelt and reigned a certain King in Sweden; there
farmed, and walked musing by the shores of the Ouse in Huntingdonshire,
a certain man;--there was a Gustav Adolf over seas, an Oliver Cromwell
over seas; and "a company of poor men" were found capable of taking
Lucifer by the beard,--who accordingly, with his Lammerleins, Hyacinths,
Habernfeldts and others, was forced to withdraw, after a tough
struggle!--

Chapter XVI. -- THIRTY-YEARS WAR.

The enormous Thirty-Years War, most intricate of modern Occurrences in
the domain of Dryasdust, divides itself, after some unravelling, into
Three principal Acts or Epochs; in all of which, one after the other,
our Kurfurst had an interest mounting progressively, but continuing to
be a passive interest.

Act FIRST goes from 1620 to 1624; and might be entitled "The Bohem