THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 232 THISTLE. he won a victory at Rheinfclden and succeeded in reducing the fortress of Breisach, but in the followint; year he met with an untimely death. In Februarj-, 1637, the Emperor Ferdinand II. died and was succeeded by his son, Ferdinand III. After the death of'Baner, in 1641, the Swedish arms were led to fresh triumplis by Torstenson, a general famous for the rapidity of his movements. He defeated the Archduke Leopold William and Piccolomini at Breitenfeld on November 2, 1642 : in 1644 he overran Den- mark, whose ruler. Christian IV., had been in- duced to take up arms against Sweden ; in the same year he defeated Gallas at JiJterbock; and on March 6, 1645, he won a great victory over the Imperialists, under Hatzfeld, at .Jankau, in Southern Bohemia. His repeated invasions car- ried devastation and ruin into the territories, even to the gates of Vienna, until the Austrians hardly dared appear to the north of the Danube. In the meanwhile, in the west and south, the French were waging war with varying success. In .January. 1642, they were successful at Kem- pen, near Diisseldorf. and in May, 1643, the Duke d'Enghien (the future Conde) won a sig- nal victory over the Spaniards at Rocroi, but on November' 24, 1643, the French-Weimar forces suffered a great defeat at Tuttlingen, in Swabia, at the hands of Johann von Werth and Mercy. Conde and Turenne restored the fortunes of the French by a victory at Allersheim. near Niird- lingen. August 3, 1645. The Emperor was now deserted by all his allies except the Duke of Bavaria, whose territories were already mostly in the hands of Turenne and the Swedish gen- eral Wrangel; and a combined invasion of Aus- tria from the west and north was on the point of being executed, when the diplomatic represen- tatives of the different governments, who had been at work for seven years at Miinster, in Westphalia, and at Osn'abriick, agreed upon terms of peace which closed the struggle. See Westphalia, Peace of. Aside from the political disintegration of Ger- many which resulted from the war. the thirty years' struggle had brought desolation upon the country. Scarcely any part of the Empire had escaped the horrors of the conflict, and the people had been made the victims of an un- bridled and licentious soldiery whose excesses have remained in popular memory to the pres- ent day. Whole regions were laid waste, pros- perous towns were wiped out, commerce and industry were destroyed. Germany lost half of her population and two-thirds of her wealth, while in some regions the decrease in population rose to two-thirds, as in Bohemia, or even higher. Religion and morality sank to a low ebb, and the loss entailed on the intellectual side was one which it took generations to make good. Consult: Gardiner, The Thirty Tears' War (London, 1874), a convenient and reliable brief account : Gindely, Geschichte des dreissigjUhr- iqen Kriegs (Prague. 1869-80), trans, by Ten Brook (New York. 1884). by a recognized au- thority, a Bohemian, who made this his life study. Consult also references under GrSTAVtrs Adolphus : Richelieu ; Wallensteik, etc. THISBE. See Pykamus and Thisbe. THISTLE (AS. pistcl, OHG. distuta. disiU, Ger. Distel, thistle). A popular name for va- rious plants of the natural order Compositse. They have either stout, spiny herbage or llower- ing bracts. They are ^videly distributed, mostly as weeds. In the United States the name applies to the species of Cnicus, Carduus, Onopordon, Centaurea, and Sonchus. By some botanists the first two genera are combined under the name Carduus. The principal distinction between these two is that Cnicus has plumose pappus and hence is often called plume thistle, while Car- diuis has bristly pappus. The species belonging to the other genera are all introduced from the Old World. The pasture thistle iCnictts piimi- his.), yellow thistle (Carduus horridulus), hul thistle {Carduus Uiiiceolatus) , and others are common and troublesome in pastures and on roadsides. Carduus arvensis, the so-called Can- ada thistle, a European species, is one of the most troublesome and difficult to eradicate of all. It is a slender perennial, one to three feet high, with ratlier small, rose-colored flowers. It spreads prin- cipally by its spreading rootstocks, but can be eradicated by persistent cultivation. The heads are imperfectly diiecious and not all produce seed. Among the other common European thistles found in the Vnited States is the milk thistle [Silybum Marianum) , a biennial plant four to six feet tall. The leaves are some- times used as salads, or as pot herbs. Tlie roots. ""*»■«■ thistle (rardaus for which it was formerly cultivated, were used like salsify. The blessed this- tle (Carietiia ienedictu ) , native of Asia, was for- merly considered to have medicinal properties. It resembles the star thistle (Centaurea), of which there are many species, the best-known of which are Centaurea Calcitrapa and Centaurea Cyanus, the blue-bottle thistle. The cotton or Scotch this- tle [Onopordon Acanthium) is recognized by its deeply honeycombed receptacle and cottony or woolly leaves. It is said to be the emblem of Scotland, but Cnicus acaulis, a stemless thistle common in Scotland, seems more worthy this designation. The Carline thistle (Carlina vul- garis) is a rather troublesome weed in poor soils in Europe, and was named Carline thistle because Charlemagne, according to tradition, used its roots as a cure for the plague. Species of Sonchus are called sow thistle, of which three are found in the United States, l^onchui olera- ccus, the common sow thistle, Sonchus asper, the spiny leaved sow thistle, and Sonchus arvensis, the field sow thistle. Other plants of different orders are sometimes called thistles, as species of Dipsaeus (see Teasel) and blue thistle (Echium vtilgare) , the latter belonging to the order Boraginaceae. See Plate of Tansy, etc. THISTLE. A steel yacht built in 1887 at Glasgow. She lost the contest for the America's cup to the Volunteer, and afterwards became the property of the German Emperor under the name of Meteor.
