Alpha Book

Far more serious than her political losses were the economic results to
Germany. The Thirty Years' War left Germany almost a desert. "About
two-thirds of the total population had disappeared; the misery of those
that survived was piteous in the extreme. Five-sixths of the villages
in the empire had been destroyed. We read of one in the Palatinate that
in two years had been plundered twenty-eight times. In Saxony, packs of
wolves roamed about, for in the north quite one-third of the land had
gone out of cultivation, and trade had drifted into the hands of the
French or Dutch. Education had almost disappeared; and the moral
decline of the people was seen in the coarsening of manners and the
growth of superstition, as witnessed by frequent burning of witches."
[Sidenote: Continuation of War between French Bourbons and Spanish
Hapsburgs. Peace of the Pyrenees 1659]
The peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years' War in the Germanies,
but it did not stop the bitter contest between France and Spain.


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