With energy, moderation and sagacity, the peacefully disposed Ferdinand so administered the government as to allay for seven years all the menaces of war which were continually arising.  For so long a period had Germany been devastated by this most direful of earthly calamities, which is indeed the accumulation of all conceivable woes, ever leading in its train pestilence and famine, that peace seemed to the people a heavenly boon.  The fields were again cultivated, the cities and villages repaired, and comfort began again gradually to make its appearance in homes long desolate.  It is one of the deepest mysteries of the divine government that the destinies of millions should be so entirely placed in the hands of a single man.  Had Ferdinand II. been an enlightened, good man, millions would have been saved from life-long ruin and misery.

One pert young king, in the search of glory, kindled again the lurid flames of war.  Christina, Queen of Sweden, daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, influenced by romantic dreams, abdicated the throne and retired to the seclusion of the cloister.  Her cousin, Charles Gustavus, succeeded her.  He thought it a fine thing to play the soldier, and to win renown by consigning the homes of thousands to blood and misery.  He was a king, and the power was in his hands.  Merely to gratify this fiend-like ambition, he laid claim to the crown of Poland, and raised an army for the invasion of that kingdom.  A portion of Poland was then in a state of insurrection, the Ukraine Cossacks having risen against John Cassimar, the king.  Charles Gustavus thought that this presented him an opportunity to obtain celebrity as a warrior, with but little danger of failure.  He marched into the doomed country, leaving behind him a wake of fire and blood.  Cities and villages were burned; the soil was drenched with the blood of fathers and sons, his bugle blasts were echoed by the agonizing groans of widows and orphans, until at last, in an awful battle of three days, under the walls of Warsaw, the Polish army, struggling in self-defense, was cut to pieces, and Charles Gustavus was crowned a conqueror.  Elated by this infernal deed, the most infernal which mortal man can commit, he began to look around to decide in what direction to extend his conquests.

Ferdinand III., anxious as he was to preserve peace, could not but look with alarm upon the movements which now threatened the States of the empire.  It was necessary to present a barrier to the inroads of such a ruffian.  He accordingly assembled a diet at Frankfort and demanded succors to oppose the threatened invasion on the north.  He raised an army, entered into an alliance with the defeated and prostrate, yet still struggling Poles, and was just commencing his march, when he was seized with sudden illness and died, on the 3d of March, 1657.  Ferdinand was a good man.  He was not responsible for the wars which desolated the empire during the first years of his reign, for he was doing every thing in his power to bring those wars to a close.  His administration was a blessing to millions.  Just before his death he said, and with truth which no one will controvert, “During my whole reign no one can reproach me with a single act which I knew to be unjust.”  Happy is the monarch who can go into the presence of the King of kings with such a conscience.