All this seems very confused
and tragic, but from this confusion a free, independent, and
powerful England emerged. When the Germans were preparing to cast
off the yoke of Rome in the Thirty Years' War, England had already
completed her task.
THE WHITE MOUNTAIN
While the peace negotiations were being carried on in Osnabruck and
Munster, the Thirty Years' War still flamed up here and there, more
perhaps to keep the troops in practice, to provide support for the
soldiers, and to have booty at command, than to defend any faith or
the adherents of it.
All talk of religion had ceased, and the powers now played with
their cards exposed. Protestant Saxony, the first State to support
Lutheranism, worked in conjunction with Catholic Austria, and
Catholic France with Protestant Sweden. In the battle of
Wolfenbuttel, 1641, French Catholics fought against German
Catholics, the latter of whom, however, later on carried the body
of Johan Baner in their ranks.
The Swedish Generals thought little of peace, but when the
negotiations dragged on to the seventh year, they thought the time
had come to have some regard to it. "He who takes something, has
something," Wrangel wrote to his son.
Hans Christoph von Konigsmarck, who continued Johan Baner's
traditions, had lately been with him at Zusmarshausen, and was now
sent eastward in the direction of Bohemia.
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