Iiil2] on the Effects of the Thirty Years' War. 873 



pointed init, together with an actual decrease, the failure of the ordi- 

 nary increase of population, even if this be taken at a very low rate 

 indeed. It covers, as a matter of course, the loss of female as well 

 as of male population, or rather it makes no distinction between them 

 — a rather curious omission, since, besides the number (actually calcu- 

 lated) of the men who fell arms in hand, one would have expected 

 the number of men whom the War struck down to have been greater 

 than that of women — unless indeed Disease and its parent AVant acted 

 with cctmpcnsating intensity in the case of the weaker and probably 

 worse-fed sex. This points at what in fact is one of the chief diffi- 

 culties against forming an even approximately correct estimate of the 

 loss of population. But, in conditions such as those of a destructive 

 war which disturbs and dislocates all order and system, the statistics of 

 disease are usually l^eyond reach, while those of deaths under arms or 

 from the conquerors of battle are proverbially doubtful, and especially 

 so in the case of armies lined and organized (sometimes in half-bogus 

 companies or regiments) like the mercenary hosts of the earlier part 

 of the Great War. Yet the attempt, as observed, was made even at 

 the time to arrive at results which at least seemed accurate ; and, 

 while one daring — but, at the same time, temperate — statistician in 

 1681 reckoned the Emperor's military losses during the first nine 

 years of the war at 51,011 men, he stated those of the chief leaders 

 on the Protestant side (exclusive it would seem of the Bohemians 

 in the first phase of the war) during the same period to have reached 

 57,68G. This arouses no confidence, though, curiously enough, we 

 have the author of a broadside, printed in the last year of the War, 

 extending the number of those who were killed during its course as 

 " at least " 825,000 — a number not much out of proportion to the 

 earher calculation. Another difficulty, at which I have also already 

 hinted, is that of the varying incidence of the inflictions due to the 

 War upon the different parts of the Empire, and the consequent 

 dangerousness of generalizing from particular data. The law of 

 average could never have been more severely tried. On the other 

 hand, a large number of statements as to actual loss of population 

 from divers causes are at the same time so overpowering in their 

 magnitude, and so reasonably well authenticated, proceeding as they 

 do from actually official sources — administrative statistics, ecclesiastical 

 registers, municipal records and the like — that it is futile either to 

 seek to discredit them one and all, or to treat them as mere isolated 

 phenomena from which no general conclusions are to be drawn. 

 Such, for instance, are many of the detailed items supporting the 

 total figures which are given as to the decrease in the population of 

 the sorely-tried Palatinate — a decrease from something like half a 

 million to less than a tithe of that number ; or in that of electoral 

 Saxony, where, in the critical years 1G31 and 1632, when it was 

 successively occupied by the Imperial and Liguistic forces, more than 

 900, 300 lives are said to have succumbed to the sword or sickness 



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