CHAPTER IV.

THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR.--THE CLIPPERS OF MONEY,
AND PUBLIC OPINION.

Monotonously did the death wail sound in the chronicles and records of
fellow-sufferers. Where thousands were saved, millions were ruined and
destroyed. The war was destructive of house, wealth, and life, alike in
town and country. Manifold was the work of the destroying forces, but a
higher force was unceasingly at work to ward off final ruin.

It is a marvellous circumstance, that in the same year in which the war
in Germany expired, the interest of the people in public affairs was so
far developed as to originate the first newspapers. In matters of
faith, moral feeling and the judgments of individuals had for a century
worked, but in politics it was only rarely and feebly that serious
diversity of opinion was ventured to be expressed by private
individuals. It was just when the recruiting drums of the princes were
beating at every muster-place that public opinion began its first
political struggle in the press. On an important social question, the
intellectual leaders of the people rose up against the immorality of
their own Sovereigns. We shall endeavour here briefly to exhibit the
course of public opinion, and show what was stirred up and carried away
by it during the war. It may more especially be discovered in the
literature of the flying-sheets, which contended for and against the
Bohemian King, condemned the _Kipper_ and _Wipper_, and did homage to
the great Gustavus Adolphus, but at last became itself, like the
nation, meagre and powerless.

It was after the beginning of the sixteenth century that the people
began to receive news through the press, in a double form. One of these
forms was a single sheet printed on one side, almost always ornamented
with a woodcut, and after the sixteenth century, with a copper-plate
engraving, under which the explanatory text was generally rendered in
verse. In these flying leaves were communicated the appearances in the
heavens, and comets; very soon also battles by land and sea,
portraitures of the celebrities of the day, and the like. Much of the
good humour, and coarse jests of the Reformation time are to be found
in them. The art of the wood carver was in constant activity, and we
find many characteristic peculiarities of the talents of the great
painters impressed upon it. The other form was that of pamphlets,
especiall