ended in 1623, making it a five years' war, had it not been for the outrageous treatment of the Protestant states of northern Germany, resulting in a political disintegration in which Germany lost half of her population and two-thirds of her wealth. Her religion and morality sank low, and the intellectual damage required generations to restore.

The Roman Catholic Church, having guided Christianity for centuries without a rival, naturally felt greatly wronged by Protestant secession. This explains the uncompromising enmities of the Thirty Years' War. Various parties claimed the control of the religious doctrines to be taught the people, as well as control of worship; they were fighting each other for this power, ready to sacrifice their lives for it. The Lutherans were as intolerant toward the Calvinists as they were toward the Catholics. The Catholic Church, convinced of the absolute truth of its doctrines based upon 13 centuries of growth, naturally could not tolerate some young reformers to arise and challenge its divine right, especially not since these reformers seized old monastic and ecclesiastic foundations with domains and edifices and administered them in their own interest. The resistance of the Catholic hierarchy, to the last drop of blood, was a normal reaction. As so often happens, the conditions were abnormal, not the human beings.

Had the war stopped in 1623 the Catholics would have been left with decided advantages. Their own ambitions, however, prevented it. Gustavus Adolphus appeared, and by his efforts Protestantism is said to have been saved from extinction. During 13 of the 30 years the lands of the Protestants had been devastated; during the next 17 years an equalization of the exhaustion of the parties developed before a lasting religious peace was made. It became clear in the end that neither Catholics nor Protestants could crush their opponents without perishing likewise.

TERRIBLE RESULTS OF THE WAR.

The terrible results of the Thirty Years' War may be summed up by saying that Germany was the carcass, and the hosts which invaded the German soil were the vultures. The Protestant invaders were Swedes, Finns, Hollanders, Frenchmen, Englishmen, and Scotchmen; on the Catholic side there came in Spaniards, Italians, Walloons, Poles, Cossacks, Croats, and representatives of nearly all other Slavonic tribes. There was an army never larger than 40,000 men, but the camp followers were 140,000, consisting of gangs of Gypsies, Jewish camp traders, marauders, and plunderers. The soldiers robbed and tortured all alike, both friend and foe. The inhabitants would flee to the woods, taking with them or hiding everything they could. But the invaders were experts in discovering secret treasures; they would pour water on the ground, and where it sank quickly there they knew something had been recently buried.

To retaliate, the peasants would watch for stragglers, for the sick and wounded who had dropped behind, putting them to death with every device of insult and cruelty known. Much of the cruelty is too hideous to mention. In many districts the desolation was so great that persons were found dead with grass in their mouths. Men climbed up the scaffolds and tore down the bodies of those hanged and devoured them. The supply was large. Newly buried corpses were dug up for food. Children were enticed away that they might be slain and eaten. The population, when plundered, would become plunderers in turn, forming into bands, and inflict on others the horrors that they themselves had suffered. Men became wholly indifferent to the sufferings of others. Whole countries were destroyed, towns and villages reduced to ashes, and civilization was pushed back into barbarism for half a century. The Thirty Years' War is said to have been so unspeakably cruel and calamitous that the like has never been known in Europe.

CAUSES OF THE LENGTH OF THE WAR.

Gustavus Adolphus writes in a letter that the war would be long drawn out and stop from exhaustion. The original purpose of the war was the suppression of the Protestant faith, but the victories of Gustavus Adolphus made the Catholics hopeless. Also other interests of a political nature rose up, the war passed from a German to a European question. Though there were times when peace might have been made, the side who had the best of it for the moment deemed it folly to stop when victory was in reach. The other side thought it base and cowardly not to continue, as some turn of fortune might repair the losses. Many a war has dragged on after the purpose for which it began had become unattainable, because those who began it were too vain to admit that the objects of the war were impossible from its outset.

In a long war also individuals rise up to whom fighting becomes a second nature, who know nothing else but violence and murder. Thus many soldiers were indignant when the Westphalian peace was signed, for they felt they had a vested right to plunder and murder, looking upon a wretched, helpless population as their just prey.

A further reason for the long continuation of the war was the very exhaustion of both sides; there was not enough strength on either side to strike a decisive blow, nor sufficient energy left to make a vigorous effort for peace, making it seem useless to try. In the earlier and middle period of the war there were many cries for peace, but in the last eight years there was a terrible silence of death and such utter desperation that no one dared to speak of peace, so great was the exhaustion. The soldiers decreased as it became more and more difficult to recruit and feed them; the military operations grew feebler and more desultory, the fighting more inconclusive, though the misery did not diminish. But while the people and soldiers had become tired of the interminable struggle and wanted peace, many of the diplomats did not appear to desire it.

CAUSES OF THE WAR.

The great length of the war gradually revealed its very hopelessness and uselessness, creating a general desire for rest and peace, transforming and weakening the religious movements out of which the war had arisen. The principle of private judgment, coming from the Reformation, had had time to develop and undermine the ideas of temporal rights and duties common to both parties, while many ideas first conceived by the Reformation but suppressed at the time, had at last commenced to grow through the long-continued tribulations.

Another cause of the war was the inherent incompatibility of religious views among the people. Religious discord exists to-day, but it is not decided by bloody contests, because of breadth of religious insight, general indifference, and increasing skepticism. The convictions of the people of the seventeenth century, as to the truth of their own opinions and the errors of their opponents, were of such an absolute character as can not be found nowadays even among people with the most rigid beliefs. They did not know then that it was possible to live together and yet have the most varied and contradictory religious convictions. To suppose that these people were stupid is an error. The chances are that they were less stupid than the people are to-day. How many, at the present time, can look at their country, its ideals, ideas, and customs justly and without prejudice? Naturally very few. But to place ourselves outside of not only our country but our generation is much more difficult. How could we then expect the people of the seventeenth century to do this?

IGNORANCE THE FUNDAMENTAL CAUSE OF THE WAR.

The fundamental cause that brought the Thirty Years' War to a close was mental insight into the uselessness and hopelessness of further struggle, caused by the feeling of exhaustion due to the