suspensions of hostilities, or even partial relaxations, had entered
professedly as a point of policy into the system of warfare which now
swept over Germany in full career, threatening soon to convert its vast
central provinces--so recently blooming Edens of peace and expanding
prosperity--into a howling wilderness; and which had already converted
immense tracts into one universal aceldama, or human shambles, reviving
to the recollection at every step the extent of past happiness in the
endless memorials of its destruction. This innovation upon the old
practice of war had been introduced by the Swedish armies, whose
northern habits and training had fortunately prepared them to receive a
German winter as a very beneficial exchange; whilst upon the less hardy
soldiers from Italy, Spain, and the Southern France, to whom the harsh
transition from their own sunny skies had made the very same climate a
severe trial of constitution, this change of policy pressed with a
hardship that sometimes [Footnote: Of which there is more than one
remarkable instance, to the great dishonor of the French arms, in the
records of _her_ share in the Thirty Years' War.] crippled their
exertions.

It was a change, however, not so long settled as to resist the
extraordinary circumstances of the weather. So fierce had been the cold
for the last fortnight, and so premature, that a pretty confident
anticipation had arisen, in all quarters throughout the poor exhausted
land, of a general armistice. And as this, once established, would
offer a ready opening to some measure of permanent pacification, it
could not be surprising that the natural hopefulness of the human
heart, long oppressed by gloomy prospects, should open with unusual
readiness to the first colorable dawn of happier times. In fact, the
reaction in the public spirits was sudden and universal. It happened
also that the particular occasion of this change of prospect brought