one man.........................

 But all made one error: they calculated without the human element.  Seldom in the history of Europe has the insignificance of one man had so profound an effect upon his period.  Frederick was no leader; indeed he was a man of so blank a personality as to defy all attempts to make him one.  In vain to say that the occasion mattered more than the man.  In the long run the enemies of the Hapsburg must be drawn into Frederick's quarrel or perish, but afraid to trust so mild a leader they hesitated until Frederick had fallen, until Bohemia and the Palatine were lost, and then spent a generation in trying to fill the breach which had been made.

-C. V. Wedgwood, The Thirty Years War