The Thirty Years' War - James Aitken Wylie

were the emperor and his allies – the Pope, the
King of Spain, and Maximilian of Bavaria –
resolved that the war should go on. Wallenstein
advised Ferdinand to meet the Protestant States
with an unqualified amnesty;[3] and had the
emperor done so he would very probably have
broken their union, and brought back the more
pliant and wavering. But blinded by bigotry and the
brilliant prospects of triumph, which he imagined
the fall of Gustavus Adolphus had opened to him,
he rejected the Duke of Friedland's counsel, and
instead of holding out the olive-branch to the
Protestants, offered them battle by increasing the
number of his army. Hostilities soon again
commenced.
Victory still followed the standards of the
Swedes. During the campaign of 1633, they
overran the territory of Bamberg, swept along the
Danube, and took the town of Ratisbon, which
gave them the command of Bavaria, the cradle of
the League. Their arms were attended with equal
success in Suabia, and on the Upper and Lower
Rhine. Lower Saxony and Westphalia also became
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