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The Thirty Years' War - James Aitken Wylie

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constitution -- namely, one king,, one law, one<br />

God."[4]<br />

But to the emperor, and the Jesuits, his<br />

counselors, giddy with the achievements of the<br />

past, and yet more so with the dreams of the future,<br />

defeat was treading upon the heels of success.<br />

Retribution came sooner than Ferdinand had<br />

foreseen, and in a way he could not calculate,<br />

inasmuch as it grew out of those very schemes, the<br />

success of which seemed to guard him against any<br />

such reverse as that which was now approaching.<br />

<strong>The</strong> man who had lifted him up to his dizzy height<br />

was to be, indirectly, the occasion of his downfall.<br />

<strong>The</strong> first turn in the tide was visible in the jealousy<br />

which at this stage sprang up between Ferdinand<br />

and the Catholic League. <strong>The</strong> emperor had become<br />

suddenly too powerful to be safe for Catholic<br />

interests, and the Jesuits of the League resolved to<br />

humble or to break him. So long as Ferdinand was<br />

content to owe his victories to Maximilian of<br />

Bavaria as head of the League, and conquer only<br />

by the sword of Tilly, the Jesuits were willing to<br />

permit him to go on. He was their servant while he<br />

95

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