Ferdinand is in a bad financial situation in 1625, despite the subsidies received from Spain and the Pope.

In order to muster an imperial army to continue the war, he has applied to Wallenstein, now one of the richest men in Bohemia: the latter accepts on condition that he can keep total control over the direction of the war, as well as over the booty taken during the operations.

In order to aid the emperor against the Northern Protestants and to produce a balance in the Army of the Catholic League under Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly, Wallenstein has offered to raise a whole army for the imperial service following the bellum se ipsum alet principle.

The Latin phrase bellum se ipsum alet or bellum se ipsum alit (English: War feeds itself, French: La guerre doit se nourrir elle-même), and its German rendering Der Krieg ernährt den Krieg, describe the military strategy of feeding and funding armies primarily with the potentials of occupied territories.

The phrase, coined by the ancient Roman statesman Cato the Elder, is primarily associated with the Thirty Years' War.

Appointed imperial generalissimo on April 7, 1625, Wallenstein, viewing the war as a business enterprise, has raised a huge new imperial army at his own expense; he will take his profits in the form of levies imposed on conquered territories.

After receiving his final commission on July 25, 1625, his popularity soon recruits thirty thousand (not long afterwards fifty thousand) men.

The territorial ambitions of Druze leader Fakhr ad-Din II in the region of present Lebanon continue to offend his local enemies, whom he suppresses in 1625 despite assistance from the pasha of Damascus.

In addition to building up the army, Fakhr ad Din, who had become acquainted with Italian culture during his stay in Tuscany, has initiated measures to modernize the country, bringing in architects, irrigation engineers, and agricultural experts from Italy in an effort to promote prosperity in the country.

He also strengthens Lebanon's strategic position by expanding its territory, building forts as far away as Palmyra in Syria, and gaining control of Palestine.

'Abbas had been distracted by the rebellion in Georgia in 1624, which had allowed an Ottoman force to besiege Baghdad, but the shah comes to its relief in 1625 and decisively crushes the Turkish army.

The Ottomans, intent on the recovery of Baghdad and other areas in Persian hands, mount a campaign in 1625.

The Dutch capture the Gold Coast, parts of Angola and half of Brazil from the Portuguese.

Pieter Lastman is the son of a town-beadle, who was fired in 1578 because he stayed Catholic; his mother was an appraiser of paintings and goods.

His apprenticeship was with Gerrit Sweelinck, the brother of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck.

Between approximately 1604 and 1607 Lastman had been in Italy, where he had been influenced by Caravaggio (as were the painters of the Utrecht School a few years later) and by Adam Elsheimer.

Because Rembrandt has never visited Italy (nor will he ever), it is likely that he is influenced by Caravaggio mainly or significantly via Lastman.

Gerard van Honthorst, initially trained at the school of Abraham Bloemaert, who exchanged the style of the Franckens for Italianate models at the beginning of the sixteenth century, had traveled to Italy in 1616, where he had been influenced heavily by the style of Caravaggio.

Returning home in about 1620, after acquiring a considerable practice in Rome, he has set up a flourishing school in Utrecht.

Together with his colleague Hendrick ter Brugghen, he represents the so-called Dutch Caravaggisti.

He was in 1623 president of the Guild of St. Luke in Utrecht, when he also married.

He soon become so fashionable that Sir Dudley Carleton, English envoy at The Hague, recommends his works to the Earl of Arundel and Lord Dorchester.

He hosts a dinner for Rubens in 1626, and paints him as the honest man sought for and found by Diogenes.

His The Matchmaker, painted in 1625, shows the use of Caravaggio-inspired chiaroscuro.

The Queen Mother of France, Marie de' Medici, had commissioned Rubens in 1621 to paint two large allegorical cycles celebrating her life and the life of her late husband, Henry IV, for the Luxembourg Palace in Paris.

The Marie de' Medici cycle (now in the Louvre) is installed in 1625, and although he begins work on the second series it is never completed.

(Marie will be exiled from France in 1630 by her son, Louis XIII, and die in 1642 in the same house in Cologne where Rubens had lived as a child.)

Jan Brueghel the Younger, trained by his father, will spend his career producing works in a similar style.

Along with his brother Ambrosius, he produces landscapes, allegorical scenes and other works of meticulous detail.

Brueghel also copies works by his father and sells them with his father's signature.

His work is distinguishable from that of his parent by being less well executed and lighter.

Jan the Younger is traveling in Italy when his father dies of cholera in 1625 and swiftly returns to take control of the Antwerp studio.

The territory of Novo Belgio or New Netherland, comprising the Northeast's largest rivers with access to the beaver trade, is provisionally a private, profit-making commercial enterprise focusing on cementing alliances and conducting trade with the diverse native tribes.

They had enabled the serendipitous surveying and exploration of the region as a prelude to anticipated official settlement by the Dutch Republic.

The Dutch West India Company had been founded immediately after the armistice period between the Dutch Republic and Spain (1609–1621).

Orders had been given in 1621 as well as in 1622 and 1623, to the private, commercial traders to vacate the territory, thus opening up the territory to the transplantation of Dutch culture onto the North American continent whereon the laws and ordinances of the states of Holland would now apply.

Previously, during the private, commercial period, only the law of the ship had applied.

The mouth of the Hudson River has been selected as the most perfect place for initial settlement as it has easy access to the ocean while securing an ice free lifeline to the beaver-rich, unexploited forests farther north where the company's traders could be in close contact with the native hunters who supply them with pelts in exchange for European-made trade goods for barter and wampum, which is soon being "minted" under Dutch auspices on Long Island.

Thus in 1624 when the first group of families had arrived on Governors Island, followed by the second group of settlers to the island in 1625, in order to take possession of the New Netherland territory and to operate various trading posts, they are spread out to Verhulsten Island (Burlington Island) in the South River (Delaware River), to ...