By 1643 the Thirty Years War was gradually winding down. Military activity within the Holy Roman Empire was much reduced while peace negotiations had begun in August 1643 in Westphalia, even if the full meeting of the Westphalian Peace Conference had to wait another two years. By then many of the Reformed refugees from the Palatinate had returned home from their prolonged exile in and around Nuremberg and Hanau, or were in the process of doing so. These events were accompanied by the gradual disappearance of the great charitable endeavour for these refugees which had been the focus for the ‘Brethren in Christ’ across Europe for twenty years. Simultaneously the Calvinist network of merchants and ministers who had sustained this scheme began to falter.