and tragic depopulation of all the German states, during a war which some estimates put the civilian loss of life as high as 50% overall. Studies mostly cite the causes of death due to starvation or as caused (ultimately by the lack-of-food induced) weakening of resistance to endemic diseases which repeatedly reached epidemic proportions among the general Central European population—the German states were the battle ground and staging areas for the largest mercenary armies theretofore, and the armies foraged among the many provinces stealing the food of those people forced onto the roads as refugees, or still on the lands, regardless of their faith and allegiances. Both townsmen and farmers were repeatedly ravaged and victimized by the armies on both sides leaving little for the populations already stressed by the refugees from the war or fleeing the Catholic counter-reformation repressions under Ferdinand's governance. Dynastic succession and redivision of the lands The Austrian lands finally came under one archduchy in 1620, but Ferdinand II quickly redivided them in 1623 in the Habsburg tradition by parcelling out "Upper Austria" (Further Austria and Tirol) to his younger brother Leopold V (1623–1632) who was already governor there. Upper Austria would remain under Leopold's successors till 1665 when it reverted to the senior line under Leopold I. Leopold V's son Ferdinand Charles succeeded him in Upper Austria in 1632. However he was only four at the time, leaving his mother Claudia de' Medici as regent till 1646. Establishing the monarchy: Austria's rise to power (1648–1740) Despite the setbacks of the Thirty Years' War, Austria was able to recover economically and demographically and consolidate the new hegemony often referred to as Austrian Baroque. By 1714 Austria had become a great power again. Yet the roots of Habsburg legitimacy, with its reliance on religious and political conformity, was to make it increasingly anachronistic in the Age of Enlightenment. Nevertheless, in the arts and architecture the baroque flourished in Austria. In peacetime Ferdinand III (1637–1657) proved to be a great patron of the arts and a musician. Upon Ferdinand's death in 1657 he was succeeded by his son Leopold I (1657–1705), whose reign was relatively long. Meanwhile, in "Upper Austria" Ferdinand Charles (1632–1662) although also an arts patron ruled in an absolutist and extravagant style. His brother Sigismund Francis (1662–1665) succeeded him briefly in 1662, but dying without heir in 1665 his lands reverted to Leopold I. Thus