The Thirty Years' War - James Aitken Wylie

effort to recover the much of which they had been
stripped, or to retain the little that had been left to
them. At this moment Ferdinand of Austria did his
best, though all unintentionally, to stimulate their
feeble efforts, and to make them join their arms
with those of the Swedish monarch in fighting the
battle of a common Protestantism. The emperor
issued orders to his officers to put in execution the
Edict of Restitution. The enforcement of this edict
would sweep into the Treasury of the emperor and
of the Roman Church a vast amount of Protestant
property in the two most powerful Protestant
electorates in Germany, those of Saxony and
Brandenburg, and would specially irritate the two
most important allies whom the emperor had
among the Protestant princes. The hour was
certainly ill-chosen for such a proceeding, when
Wallenstein had been dismissed, when defeat after
defeat was scattering the imperial armies, and
when the advancing tide of Swedish success was
threatening to sweep away all the fruits of
Ferdinand's former victories even more rapidly
than he had achieved them. But, the Court of
Vienna believing that its hold on Germany was
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