The tragic removal of both
Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus, the economic exhaustion of the whole
empire, and the national desire on the part of many Protestant princes,
as well as on the part of the Catholic emperor, to rid the Germanies of
foreign soldiers and foreign influence--all these developments seemed
to point to the possibility of concluding the third, or Swedish, period
of the war, not perhaps as advantageously for the imperialist cause as
had ended the Bohemian revolt or the Danish intervention, but at any
rate in a spirit of reasonable compromise. In fact, in May, 1635, a
treaty was signed at Prague between the emperor and such princes as
were then willing to lay down their arms, whereby all the military
forces in the empire were henceforth to be under the direct control of
the emperor (with the exception of a contingent under the special
command of the Lutheran elector of Saxony); all princely leagues within
the empire were to be dissolved; mutual restoration of captured
territory was to be made; and, as to the fundamental question of the
ownership of ecclesiastical lands, it was settled that any such lands
actually held in the year 1627, whether acquired before or after the
religious peace of Augsburg of 1555, should continue so to be held for
forty years or until in each case an amicable arrangement could be
reached.
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