The Catholic reconquest of Germany had resumed in the 1620s with the destruction of Protestantism in Bohemia and the Palatinate.

With Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II’s Edict of Restitution in 1629, its basis seems complete.

These same years have seen, in central Europe at least, the worst of all witch-persecutions, the climax of the European craze.

Many of the witch-trials of the 1620s have multiplied with the Catholic reconquest.

In some areas, the lord or bishop is the instigator, in others the Jesuits.

Sometimes local witch-committees are set up to further the work.

The first persecutions for witchcraft in Würzburg had started in 1616-1617 in the territory around the city with the consent of Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn, Prince bishop of Würzburg, and, following an isolated witch trial in 1625, gives way to the great hysteria beginning in 1626.

As so often with the mass trials of sorcery, the victims soon count people from all society; also nobles, councilmen and mayors.

This is during a witch hysteria that causes a series of witch trials in South Germany, such as in Mainz, Bamberg, ...

...Ellwangen, and ...

...Eichstätt, a Bavarian prince-bishopric where a judge claims the death of two hundred and seventy-four witches in 1629.

At least thirty accused witches are burned in 1629 at Schlettstadt—the beginning of a five-year persecution.

In Mainz, too, the burnings are renewed.

The city fathers at Cologne had always been merciful towards those accused of witchcraft, much to the annoyance of the prince-archbishop, but in 1627 he had been able to put pressure on the city and it had succumbed.

Naturally enough, ...

...the persecution has raged most violently in Bonn, his own capital, where the chancellor and his wife and the archbishop’s secretary’s wife are executed, children of three and four years are accused of having devils for their paramours, and students and small boys of noble birth sent to the bonfire.

The years 1627–29 have been dreadful in Baden, recently reconquered for Catholicism by Tilly: there are seventy victims of witch trials in the Ortenau; seventy-nine in Offenburg.

The fires have also been rekindled in the three prince-archbishoprics of the Rhineland.

Twenty-four witches are burnt in 1629 at Coblenz, the seat of the Prince-Archbishop of Trier.

Fifty people accused of witchcraft are executed between November 1628 and August 1630 at Reichertsofen an der Paar, in the district of Neuburg, after which the witch-hunting madness evaporates.

The witch-hunting craze of the 1620s is not confined to Germany: it rages also across the Rhine in Alsace, Lorraine and Franche-Comté.

In the lands ruled by the abbey of Luxueuil, in Franche-Comté, the years 1628–30 have been described as an “épidémie démoniaque.”