712 THIRTY YEARS' WAR THISTLE Europe was represented. Holland and Switz- erland were declared independent of the em- pire. France gained Alsace, and was con- firmed in the possession of the bishoprics of Toul, Metz, and Verdun. Sweden received Pomerania W. of the Oder, together with Stet- tin and other towns, the island of Riigen, Wis- mar, and the secularized sees of Bremen and Verden ; the whole to be held as a fief of the empire, with three votes in the diet. The Swedes were furthermore accorded 5,000,000 thalers. Brandenburg retained further Pome- rania, received the secularized sees of Halber- stadt, Minden, and Oammin, and secured the succession to the see of Magdeburg. The elector of Saxony was to retain Lusatia and some minor acquisitions ; and the secularized bishoprics of Schwerin and Ratzeburg were allotted to Mecklenburg. The Upper Pala- tinate with the dignity of elector was con- firmed to Maximilian of Bavaria, and an eighth electorate was erected for Charles Louis, son of Frederick V., who recovered the Lower Palatinate. By a singular article the see of Osnabriick was to be alternately vested in a Catholic bishop and a prince of the house of Brunswick-Liineburg. The possession of the ecclesiastical benefices was placed on the basis of Jan. 1 (N. S.), 1624; and in the case of the Palatinate, Baden-Durlach, and Wiirtemberg, the Catholics were obliged to accept 1618 as the normal year. The treaty introduced an age of more general toleration 1 in Germany. The peace of religion of 1555 was confirmed and extended to the Calvinists, and the equality of the Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed creeds was established. In all religious questions the Protestants were to have an equal weight with the Catholics in the diet and high courts of the empire. Each state of the empire was to ex- ercise the right of sovereignty, with the liberty of concluding treaties and alliances. The au- tonomy thus accorded to the states, and the still further diminution of the emperor's au- thority, weakened the structure of the Ger- manic body, and paved the way for foreign intervention. The constitutional provisions of the treaty became the fundamental law of the empire. The peace of Westphalia termi- nated the religious wars of Europe, and forms a grand landmark in its history. The em- pire had declined into little more than a con- federation of states, and the era of French greatness succeeded to that of Hapsburg ascen- dancy. Spain acknowledged the independence of Holland, and continued the war against France with disastrous results. See the his- tories of the thirty years' war by Schiller, K. A. Menzel (3 vols., Breslau, 1835-'9), Gindely (Prague, 1869), and S. R. Gardiner (London, 1874) ; also Sir Edward Cust, " Lives of the Warriors of the Thirty Years' War " (London, 1865); Ranke, GescMchte Wallemteiw (Leip- sic, 1869); and Felix Stieve, Ursprung des dreimirijahrifien Krieges, 1607-1619 (vol. i., Munich, 1875). TIIISBE. See PYKA.MTJS AND THISBE. THISTLE, the common name for plants of the genus cnicus (Gr. nvi&iv, to prick), of the composite family. In most works the Ameri- can species are placed under cirsium, a genus mainly differing from cnicus by the character of the pappus, and some European authors unite all the thistles under carduus. Gray in a late revision of the North American thistles (" Proceedings of the American Academy ") restores them to the Linnasan genus cnicus. The name is sometimes used in combination for plants not closely related ; thus the teasle is called fuller's thistle. The thistles are herbs, often with perennial roots, with sessile alter- nate leaves which are often much divided and prickly ; the branches of the stem terminated by heads of flowers (often very large), with an ovoid or spherical involucre, the scales to which are imbricated in many rows, and tipped with a point or prickle; the flowers in the head are all tubular and similar, usually perfect, but sometimes dioecious; their usual color is purple, but in some species they are yellowish or cream-colored ; the receptacle on which the flowers are placed is furnished with numerous soft bristles ; the one-seeded akenes bear at the top a pappus, or tuft of numerous hairs, which are united into a ring at the base and are feathery with smaller hairs, forming the well known thistle down. About 30 species are found in the United States; two of them are introduced, and are among the most com- mon and most annoying weeds. The common thistle (0. lanceolatus), often called in this Common Thistle (Cnicus lanceolatus). country bull thistle, is one of these, and the most frequent of all the species. The large leaves are decurrent, *'. e., their bases are pro- longed downward upon the stem as a spiny, lobed wing; they are prickly on the upper surface and covered below with cobwebby hairs; the heads, about an inch in diameter, have all the scales tipped with prickles, the
