sentences:  Like all the villages in the area, Altenkirchen, too, suffered greatly from the effects of the harrowing Thirty Years' War, which, it is said, left Altenkirchen with only five families by the time it ended, whereas many local villages in the Kusel area had been utterly wiped out in the war.Newcomers to the area settled in Altenkirchen, thus building the population back up, but then came more war in the late 17th century as King Louis XIV's French troops swept across the land, leaving devastation behind them.Only in the early 18th century was there once again a steady rise in population.