The Thirty Years' War - James Aitken Wylie

These unworthy princes put away from them
the proffered liberty; and then the deliverer was
withdrawn. The man who had passed unharmed
over a hundred battle-fields fell by the bullet of an
imperial cuirassier. But Gustavus Adolphus had not
borne toil and braved danger in vain; nor did he
leave his work unfinished, although it seemed so to
his contemporaries. Germany, after being
chastened by yet other sixteen years of terrible
suffering, accepted the boon for which she was not
prepared in the lifetime of her great deliverer; for it
was the victories of Gustavus Adolphus that made
possible, and it was his proposals that formed the
basis ultimately of that great charter of toleration
under which Christendom finally sat down, and
which is known in history as the Pacification of
Westphalia.
Footnotes:
1. Schiller, vol. 2., p. 128.
2. We have followed the standard authorities for
our description of this celebrated battle; still, it
is impossible to give very minute or, it may be,
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