内容简介：
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. AN EPISODE OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. The Thirty Years' War is an old story, but its interest has been recently revived. The conflict between Austria and German Independence commenced in the struggle of the Protestant Princes against Charles V., and, continued on those battle-fields, was renewed and decided at Sadowa. At Sadowa Germany was fighting for unity as well as for independence. But in the Thirty Years' War it was Austria that with her Croats, the Jesuits who inspired her councils, and her Spanish allies, sought to impose a unity of death, against which Protestant Germany struggled, preserving herself for a unity of life which, opened by the victories of Frederick the Great, and, more nobly promoted by the great uprising of the nation against the tyranny of Napoleon, was finally accomplished at Sadowa, and ratified against French jealousy at Sedan. Costly has been the achievement; lavish has been the expenditure of German blood, severe the sufferings of the German people. It is the lot of all who aspire high: no man or nation ever was dandled into greatness. The Thirty Years' War was a real world-contest. Austria and Spain drew after them all the powers of reaction: all the powers of liberty and progress were arrayed on the other side. The half-barbarous races that lay between civilized Europe and Turkey mingled in the conflict: Turkey herself was drawn diplomatically into the vortex. In the mines of Mexico and Peru the Indian toiled to furnish both the Austrian and Spanish hosts. The Treaty of Westphalia, which concluded the struggle, long remained the Public Law of Europe. Half religious, half political, in its character, this war stands midway between the religious wars of the sixteenth century, and the political...