History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 03 by Thomas Carlyle

The enormous Thirty-Years War, most intricate of modern Occurrences in the domain of Dryasdust, divides itself, after some unravelling, into Three principal Acts or Epochs; in all of which, one after the other, our Kurfurst had an interest mounting progressively, but continuing to be a passive interest.

Act FIRST goes from 1620 to 1624; and might be entitled "The Bohemian King Made and Demolished. " Personally the Bohemian King was soon demolished. His Kingship may be said to have gone off by explosion; by one Fight, namely, done on the Weissenberg near Prag (Sunday, 8th November, 1620), while he sat at dinner in the City, the boom of the cannon coming in with interest upon his high guests and him. He had to run, in hot haste, that night, leaving many of his important papers, -- and becomes a Winter-King. Winter-King's account was soon settled. But the extirpating of his Adherents, and capturing of his Hereditary Lands, Palatinate and Upper-Palatinate, took three years more. Hard fighting for the Palatinate; Tilly and Company against the "Evangelical-Union Troops, and the English under Sir Horace Vere. " Evangelical-Union Troops, though marching about there, under an Uncle of our Kurfurst (Margraf Joachim Ernst, that lucky Anspach Uncle, founder of "the Line"), who professed some skill in soldiering, were a mere Picture of an Army; would only "observe," and would not fight at all. So that the whole fighting fell to Sir Horace and his poor handful of English; of whose grim posture "in Frankendale" [Frankenthal, a little Town in the Palatinate, N. W. from Mannheim a short way.] and other Strongholds, for months long, there is talk enough in the old English History-Books.