"This snow king will go on melting as he comes south," said the emperor, Ferdinand, on hearing that Gustavus Adolphus had disembarked; but Mecklenburg was already in his hands, and the Elector of Brandenburg had just declared in his favor: he everywhere made proclamation, "that the inhabitants were to come forward and join him to take the part of their princes, whom he was coming to replace in possession." He was investing all parts of Austria, whose hereditary dominions he had not yet attacked; it was in the name of the empire that he fought against the emperor.
The diet was terminating at Ratisbonne, and it had just struck a fatal blow at the imperial cause.

The electors, Catholic and Protestant, jealous of the power as well as of the glory of the celebrated Wallenstein, creator and commander-in-chief of the emperor's army, who had made him Duke of Friedland, and endowed him with the duchies of Mecklenburg, had obliged Ferdinand II.

to withdraw from him the command of the forces.

At this price he had hoped to obtain their votes to designate his son King of the Romans; the first step towards hereditary empire had failed, thanks to the ability of Father Joseph.

"This poor Capuchin has disarmed me with his chaplet," said the emperor, "and for all that his cowl is so narrow he has managed to get six electoral hats into it." The treaty he had concluded, disavowed by France, did not for an instant hinder the progress of the King of Sweden; and the cardinal lost no time in letting him know that "the king's intention was in no wise to abandon him, but to assist him more than ever, insomuch as he deemed it absolutely necessary in order to thwart the designs of those who had no end in view but their own augmentation, to the prejudice of all the other princes of Europe." On the 25th of January, 1631, at Bernwald, the treaty of alliance between France and Sweden was finally signed.