position, had sacrificed his life for Bavaria. Wrangel and Turenne
chose the same spot for passing the river, which was so gloriously
marked by the victory of Gustavus Adolphus, and accomplished it by the
same means, too, which had favoured their predecessor. Bavaria was now
a second time overrun, and the breach of the truce punished by the
severest treatment of its inhabitants. Maximilian sought shelter in
Salzburgh, while the Swedes crossed the Iser, and forced their way as
far as the Inn. A violent and continued rain, which in a few days
swelled this inconsiderable stream into a broad river, saved Austria
once more from the threatened danger. The enemy ten times attempted to
form a bridge of boats over the Inn, and as often it was destroyed by
the current. Never, during the whole course of the war, had the
Imperialists been in so great consternation as at present, when the
enemy were in the centre of Bavaria, and when they had no longer a
general left who could be matched against a Turenne, a Wrangel, and a
Koenigsmark. At last the brave Piccolomini arrived from the
Netherlands, to assume the command of the feeble wreck of the
Imperialists. By their own ravages in Bohemia, the allies had rendered
their subsistence in that country impracticable, and were at last driven
by scarcity to retreat into the Upper Palatinate, where the news of the
peace put a period to their activity.
Koenigsmark, with his flying corps, advanced towards Bohemia, where
Ernest Odowalsky, a disbanded captain, who, after being disabled in the
imperial service, had been dismissed without a pension, laid before him
a plan for surprising the lesser side of the city of Prague.
Koenigsmark successfully accomplished the bold enterprise, and acquired
the reputation of closing the thirty years' war by the last brilliant
achievement. This decisive stroke, which vanquished the Emperor's
irresolution, cost the Swedes only the loss of a single man. But the
old town, the larger half of Prague, which is divided into two parts by
the Moldau, by its vigorous resistance wearied out the efforts of the
Palatine, Charles Gustavus, the successor of Christina on the throne,
who had arrived from Sweden with fresh troops, and had assembled the
whole Swedish force in Bohemia and Silesia before its walls. The
approach of winter at last drove the besiegers into their quarters, and
in the mean time, the intelligence arrived that a peace had been signed
at Munster, on the 24th October.
The colossal labour of concluding this solemn, and ever memorable and
sacred treaty, which is known by the name of the peace of Westphalia;
the endless obstacles which were to be surmounted; the contending
interests which it was necessary to reconcile; the concatenation of
circumstances which must have co-operated to bring to a favourable
termination this tedious, but precious and permanent work of policy; the
difficulties which beset the very opening of the negociations, and
maintaining them, when opened, during the ever-fluctuating vicissitudes
of the war; finally, arranging the conditions of peace, and still more,
the carrying them into effect; what were the conditions of this peace;
what each contending power gained or lost, by the toils and sufferings
of a thirty years' war; what modification it wrought upon the general
system of European policy;--these are matters which must be relinquished
to another pen. The history of the peace of Westphalia constitutes a
whole, as important as the history of the war itself. A mere abridgment
of it, would reduce to a mere skeleton one of the most interesting and
characteristic monuments of human policy and passions, and deprive it of
every feature calculated to fix the attention of the public, for which I
write, and of which I now respectfully take my leave.
[Note From the first PG etext of this work:
Separate sources indicate that at the beginning of this war there were
about 15 million people in Germany, and at the end of the war there were
about 4 million. If this is not surprising enough, war broke out again
only 10 years after the conclusion of this war.]