THE MAKING OF MODERN EUROPE 379

possible. The great leader of the 'Catholic League' was
the Emperor Ferdinand II (1619-37), and of the 'Protestant
Union' Frederick the Elector Palatine (son-in-law of James I
of England), Owing to the skilful diplomacy of the French
minister Cardinal Richelieu, Gustavus Adolphus (King of
Sweden)—the greatest general of the age—assumed com-
mand of the Protestant forces, and won the " crowning
mercy " of the struggle at the battle of Liitzen (near Leipzig)
in 1632, against Wallenstein the Catholic commander. Gusta-
vus, however, died a heroic death in the hour of victory :
being surrounded by the enemy who ultimately killed him,
he declared, " I am King of Sweden, who do seal the religion
and liberty of the German nation with my blood." Though
the struggle continued after this, until the Peace of West-
phalia in 1648, and Germany was ravaged by hostile forces,
the Thirty Years' War closed with the assurance of reli-
gious and political liberty to the. Protestant States of North
Germany; the Catholic States of the South ranged them-
selves under Austria; .the Bourbons of France scored a
fateful ascendancy over the Hapsburgs by securing Alsace,
Metz, Toul, and Verdun; and Sweden was rewarded with
certain posts on the Baltic. " Austria, crippled in property,
prestige! and power, was left faced by an implacable enemy
from without—France; and by the growing ambition of
an enemy within—Prussia." The Holy Roman Empire—
in its Hapsburg avatar—was both spiritually and temporally
* cribbed, cabined, and confined'* within the Austrian border
but for its hold on Italy/ "The future lay with France and
Prussia.

The national-ascendancy of France began under Louis XIV
and ended with the defeatt'of Napoleon at Waterloo. From
the Treaty of Utrecht" -(1713) to^ the Vienna Settlement
(1815) the menace of France was ever present in European