The Thirty Years' War continued to its Conclusion by the Peace of West- phalia; with a View of Spanish and Turkish Affairs, the Recovery of HISTORY OF MODERN EUROPE. BOOK III. FROM THE OPENING OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT IN 1545 TO THE EDICT OF NANTES AND PEACE OF VERVINS IN 1598. CHAPTER I. THE progress of the Reformation had hitherto been peaceful; we now enter upon an epoch when its path was marked with blood—a catastrophe foreseen and dreaded by Luther, but which he was spared from beholding. For a period of near a century, our attention will be chiefly arrested by religious wars, which however, are often combined with a great political movement that had already been initiated, the struggle for supremacy between France and the House of Austria. Before we enter upon these narratives it may not be amiss to inquire into the causes of Luther's success; and why a reformation which had before been fruitlessly attempted in England, in Bohemia, in Italy, should have succeeded in Germany and Switzerland. The same political causes which afterwards produced the religious wars of Germany, undoubtedly contributed to establish the Reformation in that country. In the German empire the civil power was twofold—literally an imperium in imperio; and thus the German Electors and Princes, being sheltered under a supreme head, were enabled to give reins to the feelings inspired by Papal abuses and extortions, without incurring the responsibility which attached to the Emperor. He, not they, was in immediate connection with Rome; a bond which the natural bigotry both of |