and of individual bishops, of whom the Bishop of Würzburg, Julius Echter of Mespelbrunn, was the most prominent, and of the Jesuits. The situation was in no wise altered by the fact that in 1598 Maximilian I succeeded to the sovereignty of Bavaria. He surpassed all the German princes of that period in ability and energy, and in the course of a few years he made Bavaria the most powerful of the German states. But he was prudent, peaceable, and above all intent on the internal improvement of his principality. Only on one occasion did he offer a decided opposition to the Calvinistic party; in 1607 he seized Donauwörth, which had persecuted its Catholic inhabitants. The Catholic League, which he organized in 1609 to offset the Protestant Union, was of a purely defensive nature.
Thus, in spite of unrest, the peace of the empire was apparently not in immediate danger at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Its impotence, however, was most clearly manifested in its economic and intellectual life. Under Charles V the German mercantile instinct had made the mistake of giving itself largely to the profitable business of money transactions with governments. This was no longer lucrative, but the self-control necessary for the more arduous gains of industrial enterprises now hardly existed. Moreover, political conditions made commerce timid. The free cities of the empire, the centres of mercantile life, had lost the support of the imperial power. The princes were either hostile to them or still biased by their economic views of land and agriculture. Furthermore, the extent of the several principalities was too small to form the basis of commercial undertakings while customs duties closed their frontiers. Foreign competition was already proving a superior force; commerce and manufacture, with the prosperity of which the growth of great states seems universally bound up, were at the point of collapse in Germany. Intellectual life was in an equally discouraging state. Almost without knowing it the nation had been divided by the Reformation into two religious camps, and a large part of it had accepted a wholly different faith. The thoughts of the people were being concentrated more and more on this one fact. They were encouraged in this by the princes who had derived from the schism great advantages in position and possessions, and also by the clergy on either side. The still insurmountable prejudice of the Lutherans of northern Germany against Catholics can be traced to the sermons of their preachers in the sixteenth century. From an entirely different point of view the Jesuits exhorted the Catholics to have as little as possible to do with Protestants. Sectarian strife controlled all minds. Thereby the common consciousness of nationality was just as obscured in the people as it was dulled in the princes by political selfishness.
From 1618 to 1713.—(1) 1618 to 1648.—The political life of the German nation was quickened into fresh activity by the strong character of several princes who in their respective states took up almost simultaneously the fight against the preponderating power of the petty landed nobility. Those among these princes who made their mark on German history were Ferdinand II of Austria, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, and, a generation later, Frederick William of Brandenburg, called the Great Elector. In 1617 Frederick II was chosen by his family, on account of the vigour he had shown as ruler of Styria, to be the associate and successor of Matthias. No sooner had the nobles felt Ferdinand's strong hand than they revolted in Bohemia, where they were most rebellious (1618). As Ferdinand did not have at his disposal the means to suppress it vigorously, the rebellion spread to the Danubian provinces, where it was supported by the rulers of Transylvania. When Matthias died (1619) the insurgents, through the mediation of Christian of Anhalt, went to the extreme of raising the head of the Union, Frederick V of Palatinate, to the throne of Bohemia (August, 1619), in order to obtain the help of the German Protestants. At the same time, however, Ferdinand was chosen emperor by the electors, whereupon Maximilian of Bavaria and the Elector of Saxony promised to fight on his side. The issue at stake was the existence of the Hapsburg dynasty. The struggle was carried on chiefly by troops of the two Wittelsbach lines and the Elector Palatine was defeated by the Duke of Bavaria on 8 November, 1620, at the battle of the White Mountain (Weissenberg) before the gates of Prague. Ferdinand II followed up his victory vigorously and from 1621 to 1628 established a new basis of political administration in his dominions. The multiplicity of heterogeneous Hapsburg territories, bound together almost solely by dynastic unity, was to be replaced by a compact Austrian state. This was to be founded on a system of government based on one official language, the German, on uniformity of administrative principles, on the profession of the Catholic faith by the entire population, and on the steady support of the reigning house by a body of great landed proprietors whose states were made up of the confiscated lands of the landed petty nobility. These great landowners, established in the various dominions of the Hapsburgs and free from separatist traditions, were to represent the principle of a single state as against the peoples of the several provinces.
The consequences of this change of system were soon felt all over Europe. The scheme had in view the organization of so extensive a state that the united Austrian dominion must needs become one of the great powers of Europe. Hitherto great countries had developed only in Western Europe, namely Spain and France. Their fields of conflict were Italy and Burgundy. Now, however, a strong power was rising on the borders of central Europe, which appeared to have unlimited room for expansion in the territories of eastern Europe. By means of its dynastic connexion with Spain it was as well a menace to France. As early as 1623 Austria and Spain supported each other in Switzerland; in 1628 Ferdinand by his power as emperor protected the interests of Spain in the War of the Mantuan Succession. As a result France became the natural enemy of Austria from the very beginning.
It was for this reason that the empire first became interested in the issue of the war in Bohemia. The greater portion of its territory lay between France and Austria. In the paralyzed condition of the empire a war between these two great countries would have to be fought out on imperial territory. It was remarkable that the clouds of war so quickly gathered. For the states of western Europe were, first of all, hampered by internal troubles and by their relations to one another, while the Hapsburgs were occupied at home. Even Maximilian of Bavaria, after the battle of the White Mountain, expected to bring the war to a speedy end by overcoming Christian of Anhalt and a few other adherents of the fugitive Elector Palatine. In order to bring the old Wittelsbach family feud to a final settlement, to seize the Upper Palatinate by way of war indemnity, and to secure the transfer of the electoral dignity from the palatine to the Bavarian line of the house Maximilian occupied the entire Palatinate. But war once kindled in the empire could not be confined within limits, and it spread slowly but steadily (see THIRTY YEARS WAR). Too much inflammable material had been accumulated by the discontent of the petty princes of the empire, by the religious animosities, by the lack of employment that resulted from the economic decline, and by the occupation of the border provinces by foreign powers. Whenever Maximilian gained a victory his enemies with very little trouble enlisted fresh hosts of mercenaries; the Netherlands furnished the money. Very soon he was obliged to send his army
