In a country where nine-tenths of the population were Protestants it was permitted to Protestants to build churches and to worship God in them unmolested.

But these privileges had been extorted by force, and there was a sullen, dogged determination which might be easily guessed at to revoke them should it ever become possible.

The House of Austria, reigning in Spain, Italy, and Germany, was bound by the very law of their being to the Roman religion.

Toleration of other worship signified in their eyes both a defeat and a crime.
Thus the great conflict, to be afterwards known as the Thirty Years' War, had in reality begun already, and the Netherlands, in spite of the truce, were half unconsciously taking a leading part in it.

The odds at that moment in Germany seemed desperately against the House of Austria, so deep and wide was the abyss between throne and subjects which religious difference had created.