A Protestant prince of unlimited ambition,
desirous of making Sweden the centre of a great Northern
Empire, Gustavus Adolphus was welcomed by the Protestant
princes of Europe as the saviour of the Lutheran cause. He
defeated Tilly, who had just successfully butchered the Protestant
inhabitants of Magdeburg. Then his troops began their
great march through the heart of Germany in an attempt to
reach the Habsburg possessions in Italy. Threatened in the
rear by the Catholics, Gustavus suddenly veered around and
defeated the main Habsburg army in the battle of Lutzen.
Unfortunately the Swedish king was killed when he strayed
away from his troops. But the Habsburg power had been
broken.
Ferdinand, who was a suspicious sort of person, at once
began to distrust his own servants. Wallenstein, his commander-
in-chief, was murdered at his instigation. When the
Catholic Bourbons, who ruled France and hated their Habsburg
rivals, heard of this, they joined the Protestant Swedes.
The armies of Louis XIII invaded the eastern part of Germany,
and Turenne and Conde added their fame to that of
Baner and Weimar, the Swedish generals, by murdering, pillaging
and burning Habsburg property. This brought great
fame and riches to the Swedes and caused the Danes to become
envious. The Protestant Danes thereupon declared war upon
the Protestant Swedes who were the allies of the Catholic
French, whose political leader, the Cardinal de Richelieu, had
just deprived the Huguenots (or French Protestants) of those
rights of public worship which the Edict of Nantes of the year
1598 had guaranteed them.
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