The Thirty Years' War - James Aitken Wylie

Europe of that teaching which it styles Christianity.
The emperor viewed the contemplated conquests as
sound in principle, and he could not see why they
should not be found as easily practicable as they
were undoubtedly right. He had a general of
consummate ability, and an army of 100,000
strong, that cost him nothing: might he not with a
force so overwhelming walk to and fro over
Europe, as he had done over Germany, and
prescribe to its peoples what law they were to
obey, and what creed they were to believe? This he
meant assuredly to do in that vast territory which
stretches from the Balkan and the Carpathians to
the German Sea, and the northern coast of Sweden.
The next conquest of his arms he fully intended
should be the two Kingdoms of Denmark and
Sweden; and then changing the German
Confederacy into an absolute monarchy, sweeping
away the charters and rights of its several States,
which he regarded but as so much rubbish, shutting
up all its heretical churches, and permitting only
the Roman religion to be professed, the whole to
the extreme north of Sweden would be brought
under what he accounted "the best political
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