The Thirty Years' War - James Aitken Wylie

capable of opposing them, resumed their victorious
advance. Rapidly overrunning the Dukedoms of
Mecklenburg, and putting garrisons in all the
fortresses, they soon made themselves masters of
the whole of Germany to the North Sea.
Wallenstein next poured his troops into Schleswig-
Holstein, and attacked Christian IV in his own
territories, and soon the Danish king saw his
dominions and sovereignty all but wrested from
him.
So disastrous for the Protestant interests was
the issue of the campaign, illustrating how
questionable in such a controversy is the
interference of the sword, and how uncertain the
results which it works out. Not only had the
Protestants not recovered the Palatinate of the
Rhine, but the tide of Popish and imperialist
victory had rolled on, along the course of the
Weser and the Elbe, stopping only on the shores of
the Baltic. The Elector of Brandenburg saw the
imperial troops at the gate of Berlin, and had to
send in his submission to Ferdinand. The Dukes of
Mecklenburg had been placed under the ban of the
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