The war, after the habit of such encounters, did not decide
anything, when it came to an end with the treaty of Westphalia
in 1648. The Catholic powers remained Catholic and
the Protestant powers stayed faithful to the doctrines of
Luther and Calvin and Zwingli. The Swiss and Dutch Protestants
were recognised as independent republics. France
kept the cities of Metz and Toul and Verdun and a part of the
Alsace. The Holy Roman Empire continued to exist as a sort
of scare-crow state, without men, without money, without hope
and without courage.
The only good the Thirty Years War accomplished was a
negative one. It discouraged both Catholics and Protestants
from ever trying it again. Henceforth they left each other in
peace. This however did not mean that religious feeling and
theological hatred had been removed from this earth. On the
contrary. The quarrels between Catholic and Protestant
came to an end, but the disputes between the different Protestant
sects continued as bitterly as ever before. In Holland
a difference of opinion as to the true nature of predestination
(a very obscure point of theology, but exceedingly important
the eyes of your great-grandfather) caused a quarrel which
ended with the decapitation of John of Oldenbarneveldt, the
Dutch statesman, who had been responsible for the success of
the Republic during the first twenty years of its independence,
and who was the great organising genius of her Indian trading
company.
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