d military events
known to history as the Thirty Years' War.[25]

The Thirty Years' War had far-reaching and untold consequences on
Germany itself and indirectly on the course of modern civilization
generally. For close upon a generation Central Europe had been ravaged
from end to end by hostile and plundering armies. Rapine and
destruction were, for near upon a third of the century, the common lot
of the Germanic peoples from north to south and from east to west.
Populations were as helpless as sheep before the brutal, criminal
soldiery, recruited in many cases from the worst elements of every
European country. The excesses of Mansfeld's mercenary army in the
earlier stages of the war created widespread horror. But the defeat
and death of Mansfeld brought no alleviation. The troops of
Wallenstein proved no better in this respect than those of Mansfeld.
On the contrary, with every year the war went on its horrors
increased, while every trace of principle in the struggle fell more
and more into the background. Everywhere was ruin.

The population became by the time the war had ended a mere fraction of
what it was at the opening of the seventeenth century. Some idea of
the state of things may be gathered from the instance of Augsburg,
which during its siege by the Imperialists was reduced from 70,000 to
10,000 inhabitants. What happened to the great commercial city of the
Fuggers was taking place on a scale greater or less, according to the
district, all over German territory. We read of towns and villages
that were pillaged more than a dozen times in a year. This terrific
depopulation of the country, the reader may well understand, had vast
results on its civilization. The whole great structure of Mediaeval and
Renaissance Germany--its literature, art, and social life--was in
ruins. At the close of the seventeenth century the old German culture
had gone and the new had not yet arisen. But of this we shall have
more to say in the next chapter. For the present we are chiefly
concerned to give a brief sketch of the second great epoch-making
event, or rather train of events, which conditioned the foundation and
development of modern Germany. We refer, of course, to the rise of the
Prussian monarchy.

We should premise that the Prussians are the least German of all the
populations of what constitutes modern Germany. They are more than
half Slavs. In the early Middle Ages the Mark of Brandenburg, the
centre and chief provi