months, the Elector of the Palatinate
was driven away and his domains were given to the Catholic house of
Bavaria. This was the beginning of the great war.

Then the Habsburg armies, under Tilly and Wallenstein, fought their way
through the Protestant part of Germany until they had reached the
shores of the Baltic. A Catholic neighbour meant serious danger to the
Protestant king of Denmark. Christian IV tried to defend himself by
attacking his enemies before they had become too strong for him. The
Danish armies marched into Germany but were defeated. Wallenstein
followed up his victory with such energy and violence that Denmark was
forced to sue for peace. Only one town of the Baltic then remained in
the hands of the Protestants. That was Stralsund.

There, in the early summer of the year 1630, landed King Gustavus
Adolphus of the house of Vasa, king of Sweden, and famous as the man who
had defended his country against the Russians. A Protestant prince of
unlimited ambition, desirous of making Sweden the centre of a great
Northern Empire, Gustavus Adolphus was welcomed by the Protestant
princes of Europe as the saviour of the Lutheran cause. He defeated
Tilly, who had just successfully butchered the Protestant inhabitants of
Magdeburg. Then his troops began their great march through the heart
of Germany in an attempt to reach the Habsburg possessions in Italy.
Threatened in the rear by the Catholics, Gustavus suddenly veered
around and defeated the main Habsburg army in the battle of Lutzen.
Unfortunately the Swedish king was killed when he strayed away from his
troops. But the Habsburg power had been broken.

Ferdinand, who was a suspicious sort of person, at once began to
distrust his own servants. Wallenstein, his commander-in-chief, was
murdered at his instigation. When the Catholic Bourbons, who ruled
France and hated their Habsburg rivals, heard of this, they joined the
Protestant Swedes. The armies of Louis XIII invaded the eastern part
of Germany, and Turenne and Conde added their fame to that of Baner
and Weimar, the Swedish generals, by murdering, pillaging and burning
Habsburg property. This brought great fame and riches to the Swedes
and caused the Danes to become envious. The Protestant Danes thereupon
declared war upon the Protestant Swedes who were the allies of the
Catholic French, whose political leader, the Cardinal de Richelieu, had
just deprived the Huguenots (or French Protestants) of those rights