For four years the great questions of European policy were discussed by this assembly.  The all-important treaty, known in history as the peace of Westphalia, and which established the general condition of Europe for one hundred and fifty years, was signed on the 24th of October, 1648.  The contracting parties included all the great and nearly all the minor powers of Europe.  The articles of this renowned treaty are vastly too voluminous to be recorded here.  The family of Frederic received back the Palatinate of which he had been deprived.  The Protestants were restored to nearly all the rights which they had enjoyed under the beneficent reign of Maximilian II.  The princes of the German empire, kings, dukes, electors, marquises, princes, of whatever name, pledged themselves not to oppress those of their subjects who differed from them in religious faith.  The pope protested against this toleration, but his protest was disregarded.  The German empire lost its unity, and became a conglomeration of three hundred independent sovereignties.  Each petty prince or duke, though possessing but a few square miles of territory, was recognized as a sovereign power, entitled to its court, its army, and its foreign alliances.  The emperor thus lost much of that power which he had inherited from his ancestors; as those princes, whom he had previously regarded as vassals, now shared with him sovereign dignity.

Ferdinand III., however, weary of the war which for so many years had allowed him not an hour of repose, gladly acceded to these terms of peace, and in good faith employed himself in carrying out the terms of the treaty.  After the exchange of ratifications another congress was assembled at Nuremburg to settle some of the minute details, which continued in session two years, when at length, in 1651, the armies were disbanded, and Germany was released from the presence of a foreign foe.

Internal peace being thus secured, Ferdinand was anxious, before his death, to secure the succession of the imperial crown to his son who bore his own name.  He accordingly assembled a meeting of the electors at Prague, and by the free use of bribes and diplomatic intrigue, obtained their engagement to support his son.  He accomplished his purpose, and Ferdinand, quite to the astonishment of Germany, was chosen unanimously, King of the Romans—­the title assumed by the emperor elect.  In June, 1653, the young prince was crowned at Ratisbon.  The joy of his father, however, was of short duration.  In one year from that time the small-pox, in its most loathsome form, seized the prince, and after a few days of anguish he died.  His father was almost inconsolable with grief.  As soon as he had partially recovered from the blow, he brought forward his second son, Leopold, and with but little difficulty secured for him the crowns of Hungary and Bohemia, but was disappointed in his attempts to secure the suffrages of the German electors.