278 THE AGE OF HAPSBURG ASCENDENCY Wallenstein wanted the control of North Germany and the command of the Baltic. The maritime towns of the Hanseatic Waiienstein's League refused to be attracted to the Imperial side, Policy. an d he met his first rebuff when Stralsund refused to open its gates and successfully defied siege. Wallenstein had made it clear that he cared nothing about religious differences. He meant to have an overwhelmingly strong army, with the most efficient officers and men, whether they were Protestants or Catholics, maintained not exclusively by pillage as had been the case with the troops of the Protestant leaders, and even with Tilly's troops, but by forced contributions from Catholics and Protestants alike. He would have created a military empire in which the real ruler would have been the captain of the Imperial army. Ferdinand, on the other hand, influenced by the League, took this opportunity in 1629 to issue what is called the Edict of Restitution, which restored to the Catholics all those bishoprics which had passed into Protestant hands during the last seventy years. This would have created a number of Catholic principalities in the heart of the Protestant north. On the one hand this was obviously incompatible with Waiienstein's plans, so far as they disregarded the religious question ; on the other, it gave an impulse to a more active combination among the Protestants. Although Richelieu was suppressing Protestants in France, he desired the comparative success of Protestantism in Germany as Richelieu a check on the Hapsburgs, and he negotiated a and the War. peace between Sweden and Poland which set Gustavus Adolphus free to throw his sword in the scale. This the Swedish king was the more eager to do, not only from his honest zeal for Protestantism, but because the Imperial scheme Gustavus vvas a serious threat to Sweden and her power in Adolphus. the Baltic. The great Swedish soldier landed in Pomerania, just when the German Catholic princes had forced Wallenstein into retirement. For some time, however, Gustavus was compelled to remain inactive by the persistent neutrality of Saxony and Brandenburg, while the great city of Magdeburg was besieged, stormed, and sacked, with a ferocity almost unparalleled. That turned the scale at last. Saxony joined Gustavus, and the
