coalition; and his successor Rodolph II. was yet inferior to him in the necessary talents of a sovereign. He was fonder of philosophical researches than of the cares of the empire, and spent that time with Tycho Brahé, the astronomer, which would have been more profitably employed in opposing the measures of Henry IV., a prince, who, had he reigned but a few years longer, would in all probability have annihilated, or at least very greatly abridged, the power of the house of Austria. The religious dissensions continued daily to increase in virulence and animosity, and at length the Catholic and Protestant leagues plunged Germany into a civil war of thirty years' continuance, and reduced that empire to the greatest extremity of national distress. Upon the death of Matthias, the successor of Rodolph, Ferdinand, archduke of Gratz, was elected emperor. He was a zealous Catholic, and the Protestants of Bohemia, who had suffered under the government of Matthias, were apprehensive of still greater restraint under Ferdinand. They determined, therefore, to be governed by a prince of their own persuasion; and they accordingly conferred the crown of Bohemia on the elector palatine, who had married the daughter of James I., king of England. This prince encountered a series of misfortunes. The emperor Ferdinand put him under the ban of the empire, engaged his small army at Prague, and took from him both his crown and his electorate; he fled into Silesia, and thence successively into Holland, to England, and to France. His father-in-law James refused him the smallest assistance, contrary to the importunities of the whole English nation, and

to his own personal glory, as he would thus have become the head of the Protestant cause in Europe. It was evidently the interest likewise of Louis XIII. to hinder the princes of Germany from being oppressed, and to check the increasing power of the emperor. Yet the elector palatine was refused aid from that quarter also. The emperor Ferdinand, in a diet held at Ratisbon, declared him fallen from all his estates and dignities, and bestowed his electorate on Maximilian of Bavaria.

The Protestant party, now almost overpowered, chose Christian IV., king of Denmark, to be their chief, but his armies were successively defeated by the imperial generals. The party of the Catholics were carrying all before them, and every thing seemed to promise that Ferdinand would become absolute through the whole of Germany, and succeed in that scheme, which he seemed to meditate, of entirely abolishing the Protestant religion in the empire. But this miserable prospect, both of political and of religious thraldom, was dissolved by the great Gustavus Adolphus, who, being invited by the Protestant princes of Germany to espouse the cause of the reformed religion, was induced to assist them, not only as being himself of that persuasion, but as it was of consequence to his own kingdom of Sweden, to prevent the emperor from obtaining a firm footing upon the Baltic.

Gustavus entered Germany, and drove the imperial army out of Pomerania. He attacked the celebrated General Tilly, and entirely defeated him at Leipsic. The whole country submitted to him from the banks of the Elbe to the Rhine. He

marched triumphant through the whole of Germany, while the Emperor Ferdinand, fallen at once from all his proud pretensions, was reduced so low as to solicit the pope to publish a crusade against the Protestants. On their part all was in a train of success, and the elector palatine was on the verge of being restored to his crown and electorate, when the heroic Gustavus, in the midst of his victories, was killed in the battle of Lutzen. The elector palatine, oppressed with infirmities and misfortune, died of a broken heart. It was the son of this elector, the gallant Prince Rupert, who, together with his brother Maurice, distinguished themselves in the civil wars of England in support of the royal cause, during the reign of their uncle Charles I.

After the death of Gustavus, the war, on the part of the protestants, was carried on by the Swedish generals; and Oxenstiern, the chancellor of Sweden, succeeded his master Gustavus, as head of the Protestant interest. Cardinal Richelieu at the same time declared war against the two branches of the house of Austria, which were attacked at once by France, Sweden, Holland, and Savoy. Under these distressing circumstances died the Emperor Ferdinand II., during the whole of whose reign the empire had been subjected to all the miseries of foreign war and of civil commotions.

The Austrian power continued still to decline under his son Ferdinand III. The Swedes gained a footing in the empire; and the French supported the Protestant princes with troops and with money. At length Ferdinand III., heartily tired of an unsuccessful war, concluded the peace of Westphalia

in the year 1648. In virtue of this celebrated treaty, the Swedes and the French were become the legislators of Germany; the dispute between the emperor aad the princes of the empire, which had subsisted for seven hundred years, was at length decided. Germany became a 'great aristocracy, composed of a monarch, electors, princes, and imperial towns. The Germans were

now

obliged to pay five millions of rix-dollars to the Swedes, for the aid they had received from them. The kings of Sweden became princes of the empire, and acquired Pomerania with a considerable part of the imperial territories. The king of France was made landgrave of Alsace, and the palatine family was restored to all its rights, except the upper palatinate, which remained with the elector of Bavaria. Above a hundred and forty restitutions were decreed and complied with; and, what was the greatest importance, the religious dissensions were finally put an end to. The three religionsthe Catholic, the Lutheran, and the Calvinist, were equally established. The imperial chamber was composed of twenty-four Protestant members, and twenty-six Catholic, and the emperor was obliged to admit of six Protestants, even in his aulic council at Vienna *.

*What is termed the peace of Westphalia consisted, in fact, of two treaties; the one made at Osnaburgh, 16th August, 1648, between the Germans and Swedes; the other, in the same year (25th October,) at Munster, between the Germans and the French. The capital proviso is contained in the eighth article of the Treaty of Osnaburg; which, therefore, we shall

here transcribe.

"For preventing any disputes that hereafter may arise in

The peace of Westphalia was the presevation of the German empire, which was otherwise tending headlong to ruin. A war of thirty years' continuance had desolated the country, and destroyed some of the most opulent and flourishing of the towns. The quarrels between the Protestant and Catholic princes must have terminated only by the entire destruction of one party or of the other. Industry was at a stand, agriculture neglected, commerce and manufactures totally annihilated. This salutary peace settled all dis

the political state, all and every one of the electors, princes, and states of the Roman empire, ought to be so confirmed by virtue of this treaty, in their ancient rights, prerogatives, freedom and privileges, in the free exercise of their territorial rights, in matters ecclesiastical and political in their dominions, in their rights of regality, and in the possession of all these together, that no person may have it in his power to give them actual molestation, on any pretence whatsoever. They shall, without any contradiction, enjoy the privilege of suffrage in all deliberations concerning the right of the empire, particularly when laws are to be made or interpreted, war to be declared, contributions to be imposed, levies of troops to be made, and their quarters to be regulated; new fortresses to be erected, in the name of the public, in the territories of the states, or garrisons to be placed in the old ones; as also when any treaties of peace or alliance are to be concluded, or any other affairs of that nature to be treated; none of these, or others of the like kind, shall be undertaken or permitted without the suffrage and free consent of all the states of the empire, assembled in the diet. They shall, above all things, have the perpetual right of making alliances between themselves and foreigners for their own preservation and security; provided, nevertheless, that such alliances are not directed against the emperor and empire, against the public peace, or against the present transaction in particular; and that they do not in any ways infringe the oath which they have all taken to the emperor and empire."