by her ally Sweden. Germany, seeing that unless peace
were restored her ruin as a great power would be inevitable, entered
into negotiations with France, and in 1648 the claims of France
and Sweden were settled by the Peace of Westphalia. This treaty is
particularly notable in the present instance because it gave to the
former country the footing on the Rhine already mentioned as the
beginning of French encroachments. Germany was forced to give up Alsace,
on the left bank of the river. France, by the seizure of Strassburg,
confirmed by the Treaty of Ryswick in 1695, extended her boundaries
to the Rhine. At the beginning of the French Revolution Leopold II of
Germany and other German monarchs agreed to support the cause of French
royalty, a resolution which was disastrous to the Empire. In 1795
Prussia, for political reasons, withdrew from the struggle, ceding to
France, in the terms of the Treaty of Basel, all her possessions on the
left bank of the Rhine. In 1799 war again broke out; but in 1801 the
Treaty of Luneville gave to France the whole of the left bank of the
river. Thus the historic stream became the boundary between France and
Germany. In 1806 the humiliation of the latter country was complete, for
in that year a number of German princes joined the Confederation of
the Rhine, thus allying themselves with France and repudiating their
allegiance to the Empire. In 1815, at the Congress of Vienna, the whole
of the Lower Rhenish district was restored to Prussia, while Bavaria,
a separate state, was put in possession of the greater part of the
Palatinate on the left bank of the Rhine.

From that time onward the German national spirit flourished, but the
future of the Empire was uncertain till its fate was decided by the
Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. In the great hall of the Palace of
Versailles in 1871 William I, King of Prussia, proclaimed, in the hour
of victory, the restoration of the confederated German Empire. The
French forfeited their Rhenish provinces, and once more the Rhine was
restored to Germany.

That the Thirty Years' War did not fail to linger in the folk-memory is
evidenced by the following gruesome legend of Oppenheim:

The Battle of Skeletons

The smoke and terror of the great struggle had surged over Oppenheim.
A battle had been fought there, and the Swedes and Spaniards who had
contested the field and had been slain lay buried in the old churchyard
hard by the confines of the town. At leas