Wallenstein secretly opened negotiations from Prague with the French ambassador, and steadily disregarded the Emperor's orders to return to his command. The project was that he should go over to the Protestant side in return for the crown of Bohemia.
A general whom the traitor trusted, in turn betrayed him to the Emperor. Six soldiers, under the pretense of bearing dispatches, entered his room.
"Are you the traitor who is going to deliver your Emperor's troops to the enemy?" shouted one of the men.
Wallenstein realized that his hour had come. He said not a word, but stretched out his arms and silently received his death-blow.
With an invading French army in Germany, under the famous Marshals Turenne and Condé, looking about for choice bits of territory for France, a religious war had become a political one. It lasted until 1648, when the "Peace of Westphalia" concluded the most desolating struggle in the history of wars.
And what had been gained? The very principle for which it was undertaken was surrendered. Entire religious freedom was granted to Protestants (excepting in Austria); four great states were lost to the empire; a population of seventeen millions was reduced to four millions, with Imperial authority abridged and broken.
France took Alsace, and Sweden Pomerania. Holland and Switzerland were recognized as independent States. The supreme power was invested in the Reichstag, and the several German princes were made almost independent. The empire, as a unity, had been reduced to a shadow.
The devastation which had been wrought by those thirty terrible years cannot be described. Its details are too awful to be dwelt upon. Famine had converted men into wild beasts, who formed themselves into bands, and preyed on those they caught.
Such a band was attacked near Worms and was found cooking in a great caldron human legs and arms!
The spirit of the people was broken. Germany had been set back two hundred years. And for what? Not to accomplish any high purpose, not even from mistaken Christian zeal, but simply to carry out the despotic resolve of the Catholic Church to rule the minds and consciences of all men through its Popes and priesthood. It was the old battle commenced six centuries before. Had Henry not gone to Canossa in 1073, there had been no Thirty Years' War in 1618!