to despotic bureaucratic states. The ruler
governed through his officials, and kept a standing army against his
enemies; to maintain his "state," that is, his courtiers, officials and
soldiers, was the task of the people. But to make this possible, it was
necessary to promote carefully the increase of the population, and the
greater tax-paying capacity of the subject. Some princes, especially
the Brandenburgers, did this in a liberal spirit, and thus in this dark
period, by increasing the power of their new state, laid the foundation
of the greatness of their houses. Others indeed lavished the popular
strength, in coarse imitation of French demoralization.

It was a mortal crisis through which Germany had passed, and dearly was
the peace bought. But that which was most important had been preserved,
the continuity of German development, the continuance of the great
inward process, by which the German nation raised itself from the
bondage of the middle ages to a higher civilization.

The long struggle, politically considered, was a defensive war of the
Protestant party against the intolerance of the old faith and the
attacks of the Imperial power. This defensive struggle had begun by an
ill-timed offensive movement in Bohemia. The head of the House of
Hapsburg had law and right on his side, so long as he only put down
this movement. His opponents put themselves in the position of
revolutionists, which could only be vindicated by success. But from the
day when the Emperor made use of his victory to suppress by means of
Jesuits and soldiers the sovereignty of the German princes, and the old
rights of the cities, he became in his turn the political offender
whose bold venture was repulsed by the last efforts of the nation. But
here we must take a higher point of view, from which the proceedings of
Ferdinand II. appear still more insupportable. Just a hundred years
before his reign, all the good spirits of the German nation fought on
the side of the Emperor, when he, in opposition to existing rights and
old usages, had founded a German Church and German state. Since that,
the family of Charles V. had for a century, a short time excepted, done
much by laborious scheming, or listless indifference, to destroy the
last source of this new life, independence of spirit, thought and
faith: it was for a century, a short time excepted, the opponent of the
national German life; it had its Spanish and Italian alliances, and had
arrayed