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+The Project Gutenberg EBook The Thirty Years War, by Schiller, Book V.
+
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+Title: The Thirty Years War, Book V.
+
+Author: Frederich Schiller
+
+Release Date: Oct, 2004  [EBook #6774]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on January 14, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
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+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30 YEARS WAR, BY SCHILLER, BOOK V. ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger, widger@cecomet.net
+
+
+
+
+
+                               THE WORKS
+
+                                   OF
+
+                           FREDERICK SCHILLER
+
+
+
+                       Translated from the German
+
+
+
+                              Illustrated
+
+
+               HISTORY OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR IN GERMANY.
+
+
+
+
+                               BOOK V.
+
+
+
+Wallenstein's death rendered necessary the appointment of a new
+generalissimo; and the Emperor yielded at last to the advice of the
+Spaniards, to raise his son Ferdinand, King of Hungary, to that dignity.
+Under him, Count Gallas commanded, who performed the functions of
+commander-in-chief, while the prince brought to this post nothing but
+his name and dignity.  A considerable force was soon assembled under
+Ferdinand; the Duke of Lorraine brought up a considerable body of
+auxiliaries in person, and the Cardinal Infante joined him from Italy
+with 10,000 men.  In order to drive the enemy from the Danube, the new
+general undertook the enterprise in which his predecessor had failed,
+the siege of Ratisbon.  In vain did Duke Bernard of Weimar penetrate
+into the interior of Bavaria, with a view to draw the enemy from the
+town; Ferdinand continued to press the siege with vigour, and the city,
+after a most obstinate resistance, was obliged to open its gates to him.
+Donauwerth soon shared the same fate, and Nordlingen in Swabia was now
+invested.  The loss of so many of the imperial cities was severely felt
+by the Swedish party; as the friendship of these towns had so largely
+contributed to the success of their arms, indifference to their fate
+would have been inexcusable.  It would have been an indelible disgrace,
+had they deserted their confederates in their need, and abandoned them
+to the revenge of an implacable conqueror.  Moved by these
+considerations, the Swedish army, under the command of Horn, and Bernard
+of Weimar, advanced upon Nordlingen, determined to relieve it even at
+the expense of a battle.
+
+The undertaking was a dangerous one, for in numbers the enemy was
+greatly superior to that of the Swedes.  There was also a further reason
+for avoiding a battle at present; the enemy's force was likely soon to
+divide, the Italian troops being destined for the Netherlands.  In the
+mean time, such a position might be taken up, as to cover Nordlingen,
+and cut off their supplies.  All these grounds were strongly urged by
+Gustavus Horn, in the Swedish council of war; but his remonstrances were
+disregarded by men who, intoxicated by a long career of success, mistook
+the suggestions of prudence for the voice of timidity.  Overborne by the
+superior influence of Duke Bernard, Gustavus Horn was compelled to risk
+a contest, whose unfavourable issue, a dark foreboding seemed already to
+announce.  The fate of the battle depended upon the possession of a
+height which commanded the imperial camp.  An attempt to occupy it
+during the night failed, as the tedious transport of the artillery
+through woods and hollow ways delayed the arrival of the troops.  When
+the Swedes arrived about midnight, they found the heights in possession
+of the enemy, strongly entrenched.  They waited, therefore, for
+daybreak, to carry them by storm.  Their impetuous courage surmounted
+every obstacle; the entrenchments, which were in the form of a crescent,
+were successfully scaled by each of the two brigades appointed to the
+service; but as they entered at the same moment from opposite sides,
+they met and threw each other into confusion.  At this unfortunate
+moment, a barrel of powder blew up, and created the greatest disorder
+among the Swedes.  The imperial cavalry charged upon their broken ranks,
+and the flight became universal.  No persuasion on the part of their
+general could induce the fugitives to renew the assault.
+
+He resolved, therefore, in order to carry this important post, to lead
+fresh troops to the attack.  But in the interim, some Spanish regiments
+had marched in, and every attempt to gain it was repulsed by their
+heroic intrepidity.  One of the duke's own regiments advanced seven
+times, and was as often driven back.  The disadvantage of not occupying
+this post in time, was quickly and sensibly felt.  The fire of the
+enemy's artillery from the heights, caused such slaughter in the
+adjacent wing of the Swedes, that Horn, who commanded there, was forced
+to give orders to retire.  Instead of being able to cover the retreat of
+his colleague, and to check the pursuit of the enemy, Duke Bernard,
+overpowered by numbers, was himself driven into the plain, where his
+routed cavalry spread confusion among Horn's brigade, and rendered the
+defeat complete.  Almost the entire infantry were killed or taken
+prisoners.  More than 12,000 men remained dead upon the field of battle;
+80 field pieces, about 4,000 waggons, and 300 standards and colours fell
+into the hands of the Imperialists.  Horn himself, with three other
+generals, were taken prisoners.  Duke Bernard with difficulty saved a
+feeble remnant of his army, which joined him at Frankfort.
+
+The defeat at Nordlingen, cost the Swedish Chancellor the second
+sleepless night he had passed in Germany.--[The first was occasioned by
+the death of Gustavus Adolphus.]--The consequences of this disaster were
+terrible.  The Swedes had lost by it at once their superiority in the
+field, and with it the confidence of their confederates, which they had
+gained solely by their previous military success.  A dangerous division
+threatened the Protestant Confederation with ruin.  Consternation and
+terror seized upon the whole party; while the Papists arose with
+exulting triumph from the deep humiliation into which they had sunk.
+Swabia and the adjacent circles first felt the consequences of the
+defeat of Nordlingen; and Wirtemberg, in particular, was overrun by the
+conquering army.  All the members of the League of Heilbronn trembled at
+the prospect of the Emperor's revenge; those who could, fled to
+Strasburg, while the helpless free cities awaited their fate with alarm.
+A little more of moderation towards the conquered, would have quickly
+reduced all the weaker states under the Emperor's authority; but the
+severity which was practised, even against those who voluntarily
+surrendered, drove the rest to despair, and roused them to a vigorous
+resistance.
+
+In this perplexity, all looked to Oxenstiern for counsel and assistance;
+Oxenstiern applied for both to the German States.  Troops were wanted;
+money likewise, to raise new levies, and to pay to the old the arrears
+which the men were clamorously demanding.  Oxenstiern addressed himself
+to the Elector of Saxony; but he shamefully abandoned the Swedish cause,
+to negociate for a separate peace with the Emperor at Pirna.  He
+solicited aid from the Lower Saxon States; but they, long wearied of the
+Swedish pretensions and demands for money, now thought only of
+themselves; and George, Duke of Lunenburg, in place of flying to the
+assistance of Upper Germany, laid siege to Minden, with the intention of
+keeping possession of it for himself.  Abandoned by his German allies,
+the chancellor exerted himself to obtain the assistance of foreign
+powers.  England, Holland, and Venice were applied to for troops and
+money; and, driven to the last extremity, the chancellor reluctantly
+resolved to take the disagreeable step which he had so long avoided, and
+to throw himself under the protection of France.
+
+The moment had at last arrived which Richelieu had long waited for with
+impatience.  Nothing, he was aware, but the impossibility of saving
+themselves by any other means, could induce the Protestant States in
+Germany to support the pretensions of France upon Alsace.  This extreme
+necessity had now arrived; the assistance of that power was
+indispensable, and she was resolved to be well paid for the active part
+which she was about to take in the German war.  Full of lustre and
+dignity, it now came upon the political stage.  Oxenstiern, who felt
+little reluctance in bestowing the rights and possessions of the empire,
+had already ceded the fortress of Philipsburg, and the other long
+coveted places.  The Protestants of Upper Germany now, in their own
+names, sent a special embassy to Richelieu, requesting him to take
+Alsace, the fortress of Breyssach, which was still to be recovered from
+the enemy, and all the places upon the Upper Rhine, which were the keys
+of Germany, under the protection of France.  What was implied by French
+protection had been seen in the conduct of France towards the bishoprics
+of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, which it had held for centuries against the
+rightful owners.  Treves was already in the possession of French
+garrisons; Lorraine was in a manner conquered, as it might at any time
+be overrun by an army, and could not, alone, and with its own strength,
+withstand its formidable neighbour.  France now entertained the hope of
+adding Alsace to its large and numerous possessions, and,--since a
+treaty was soon to be concluded with the Dutch for the partition of the
+Spanish Netherlands--the prospect of making the Rhine its natural
+boundary towards Germany.  Thus shamefully were the rights of Germany
+sacrificed by the German States to this treacherous and grasping power,
+which, under the mask of a disinterested friendship, aimed only at its
+own aggrandizement; and while it boldly claimed the honourable title of
+a Protectress, was solely occupied with promoting its own schemes, and
+advancing its own interests amid the general confusion.
+
+In return for these important cessions, France engaged to effect a
+diversion in favour of the Swedes, by commencing hostilities against the
+Spaniards; and if this should lead to an open breach with the Emperor,
+to maintain an army upon the German side of the Rhine, which was to act
+in conjunction with the Swedes and Germans against Austria.  For a war
+with Spain, the Spaniards themselves soon afforded the desired pretext.
+Making an inroad from the Netherlands, upon the city of Treves, they cut
+in pieces the French garrison; and, in open violation of the law of
+nations, made prisoner the Elector, who had placed himself under the
+protection of France, and carried him into Flanders.  When the Cardinal
+Infante, as Viceroy of the Spanish Netherlands, refused satisfaction for
+these injuries, and delayed to restore the prince to liberty, Richelieu,
+after the old custom, formally proclaimed war at Brussels by a herald,
+and the war was at once opened by three different armies in Milan, in
+the Valteline, and in Flanders.  The French minister was less anxious to
+commence hostilities with the Emperor, which promised fewer advantages,
+and threatened greater difficulties.  A fourth army, however, was
+detached across the Rhine into Germany, under the command of Cardinal
+Lavalette, which was to act in conjunction with Duke Bernard, against
+the Emperor, without a previous declaration of war.
+
+A heavier blow for the Swedes, than even the defeat of Nordlingen, was
+the reconciliation of the Elector of Saxony with the Emperor.  After
+many fruitless attempts both to bring about and to prevent it, it was at
+last effected in 1634, at Pirna, and, the following year, reduced into a
+formal treaty of peace, at Prague.  The Elector of Saxony had always
+viewed with jealousy the pretensions of the Swedes in Germany; and his
+aversion to this foreign power, which now gave laws within the Empire,
+had grown with every fresh requisition that Oxenstiern was obliged to
+make upon the German states.  This ill feeling was kept alive by the
+Spanish court, who laboured earnestly to effect a peace between Saxony
+and the Emperor.  Wearied with the calamities of a long and destructive
+contest, which had selected Saxony above all others for its theatre;
+grieved by the miseries which both friend and foe inflicted upon his
+subjects, and seduced by the tempting propositions of the House of
+Austria, the Elector at last abandoned the common cause, and, caring
+little for the fate of his confederates, or the liberties of Germany,
+thought only of securing his own advantages, even at the expense of the
+whole body.
+
+In fact, the misery of Germany had risen to such a height, that all
+clamorously vociferated for peace; and even the most disadvantageous
+pacification would have been hailed as a blessing from heaven.  The
+plains, which formerly had been thronged with a happy and industrious
+population, where nature had lavished her choicest gifts, and plenty and
+prosperity had reigned, were now a wild and desolate wilderness.  The
+fields, abandoned by the industrious husbandman, lay waste and
+uncultivated; and no sooner had the young crops given the promise of a
+smiling harvest, than a single march destroyed the labours of a year,
+and blasted the last hope of an afflicted peasantry.  Burnt castles,
+wasted fields, villages in ashes, were to be seen extending far and wide
+on all sides, while the ruined peasantry had no resource left but to
+swell the horde of incendiaries, and fearfully to retaliate upon their
+fellows, who had hitherto been spared the miseries which they themselves
+had suffered.  The only safeguard against oppression was to become an
+oppressor.  The towns groaned under the licentiousness of undisciplined
+and plundering garrisons, who seized and wasted the property of the
+citizens, and, under the license of their position, committed the most
+remorseless devastation and cruelty.  If the march of an army converted
+whole provinces into deserts, if others were impoverished by winter
+quarters, or exhausted by contributions, these still were but passing
+evils, and the industry of a year might efface the miseries of a few
+months.  But there was no relief for those who had a garrison within
+their walls, or in the neighbourhood; even the change of fortune could
+not improve their unfortunate fate, since the victor trod in the steps
+of the vanquished, and friends were not more merciful than enemies.  The
+neglected farms, the destruction of the crops, and the numerous armies
+which overran the exhausted country, were inevitably followed by
+scarcity and the high price of provisions, which in the later years was
+still further increased by a general failure in the crops.  The crowding
+together of men in camps and quarters--want upon one side, and excess
+on the other, occasioned contagious distempers, which were more fatal
+than even the sword.  In this long and general confusion, all the bonds
+of social life were broken up;--respect for the rights of their fellow
+men, the fear of the laws, purity of morals, honour, and religion, were
+laid aside, where might ruled supreme with iron sceptre.  Under the
+shelter of anarchy and impunity, every vice flourished, and men became
+as wild as the country.  No station was too dignified for outrage, no
+property too holy for rapine and avarice.  In a word, the soldier
+reigned supreme; and that most brutal of despots often made his own
+officer feel his power.  The leader of an army was a far more important
+person within any country where he appeared, than its lawful governor,
+who was frequently obliged to fly before him into his own castles for
+safety.  Germany swarmed with these petty tyrants, and the country
+suffered equally from its enemies and its protectors.  These wounds
+rankled the deeper, when the unhappy victims recollected that Germany
+was sacrificed to the ambition of foreign powers, who, for their own
+ends, prolonged the miseries of war.  Germany bled under the scourge, to
+extend the conquests and influence of Sweden; and the torch of discord
+was kept alive within the Empire, that the services of Richelieu might
+be rendered indispensable in France.
+
+But, in truth, it was not merely interested voices which opposed a
+peace; and if both Sweden and the German states were anxious, from
+corrupt motives, to prolong the conflict, they were seconded in their
+views by sound policy.  After the defeat of Nordlingen, an equitable
+peace was not to be expected from the Emperor; and, this being the case,
+was it not too great a sacrifice, after seventeen years of war, with all
+its miseries, to abandon the contest, not only without advantage, but
+even with loss?  What would avail so much bloodshed, if all was to
+remain as it had been; if their rights and pretensions were neither
+larger nor safer; if all that had been won with so much difficulty was
+to be surrendered for a peace at any cost? Would it not be better to
+endure, for two or three years more, the burdens they had borne so long,
+and to reap at last some recompense for twenty years of suffering?
+Neither was it doubtful, that peace might at last be obtained on
+favourable terms, if only the Swedes and the German Protestants should
+continue united in the cabinet and in the field, and pursued their
+common interests with a reciprocal sympathy and zeal.  Their divisions
+alone, had rendered the enemy formidable, and protracted the acquisition
+of a lasting and general peace.  And this great evil the Elector of
+Saxony had brought upon the Protestant cause by concluding a separate
+treaty with Austria.
+
+He, indeed, had commenced his negociations with the Emperor, even before
+the battle of Nordlingen; and the unfortunate issue of that battle only
+accelerated their conclusion.  By it, all his confidence in the Swedes
+was lost; and it was even doubted whether they would ever recover from
+the blow.  The jealousies among their generals, the insubordination of
+the army, and the exhaustion of the Swedish kingdom, shut out any
+reasonable prospect of effective assistance on their part.  The Elector
+hastened, therefore, to profit by the Emperor's magnanimity, who, even
+after the battle of Nordlingen, did not recall the conditions previously
+offered.  While Oxenstiern, who had assembled the estates in Frankfort,
+made further demands upon them and him, the Emperor, on the contrary,
+made concessions; and therefore it required no long consideration to
+decide between them.
+
+In the mean time, however, he was anxious to escape the charge of
+sacrificing the common cause and attending only to his own interests.
+All the German states, and even the Swedes, were publicly invited to
+become parties to this peace, although Saxony and the Emperor were the
+only powers who deliberated upon it, and who assumed the right to give
+law to Germany.  By this self-appointed tribunal, the grievances of the
+Protestants were discussed, their rights and privileges decided, and
+even the fate of religions determined, without the presence of those who
+were most deeply interested in it.  Between them, a general peace was
+resolved on, and it was to be enforced by an imperial army of execution,
+as a formal decree of the Empire.  Whoever opposed it, was to be treated
+as a public enemy; and thus, contrary to their rights, the states were
+to be compelled to acknowledge a law, in the passing of which they had
+no share.  Thus, even in form, the pacification at Prague was an
+arbitrary measure; nor was it less so in its contents.  The Edict of
+Restitution had been the chief cause of dispute between the Elector and
+the Emperor; and therefore it was first considered in their
+deliberations.  Without formally annulling it, it was determined by the
+treaty of Prague, that all the ecclesiastical domains holding
+immediately of the Empire, and, among the mediate ones, those which had
+been seized by the Protestants subsequently to the treaty at Passau,
+should, for forty years, remain in the same position as they had been in
+before the Edict of Restitution, but without any formal decision of the
+diet to that effect.  Before the expiration of this term a commission,
+composed of equal numbers of both religions, should proceed to settle
+the matter peaceably and according to law; and if this commission should
+be unable to come to a decision, each party should remain in possession
+of the rights which it had exercised before the Edict of Restitution.
+This arrangement, therefore, far from removing the grounds of
+dissension, only suspended the dispute for a time; and this article of
+the treaty of Prague only covered the embers of a future war.
+
+The archbishopric of Magdeburg remained in possession of Prince Augustus
+of Saxony, and Halberstadt in that of the Archduke Leopold William.
+Four estates were taken from the territory of Magdeburg, and given to
+Saxony, for which the Administrator of Magdeburg, Christian William of
+Brandenburg, was otherwise to be indemnified.  The Dukes of Mecklenburg,
+upon acceding to this treaty, were to be acknowledged as rightful
+possessors of their territories, in which the magnanimity of Gustavus
+Adolphus had long ago reinstated them.  Donauwerth recovered its
+liberties.  The important claims of the heirs of the Palatine, however
+important it might be for the Protestant cause not to lose this
+electorate vote in the diet, were passed over in consequence of the
+animosity subsisting between the Lutherans and the Calvinists.  All the
+conquests which, in the course of the war, had been made by the German
+states, or by the League and the Emperor, were to be mutually restored;
+all which had been appropriated by the foreign powers of France and
+Sweden, was to be forcibly wrested from them by the united powers.  The
+troops of the contracting parties were to be formed into one imperial
+army, which, supported and paid by the Empire, was, by force of arms, to
+carry into execution the covenants of the treaty.
+
+As the peace of Prague was intended to serve as a general law of the
+Empire, those points, which did not immediately affect the latter,
+formed the subject of a separate treaty.  By it, Lusatia was ceded to
+the Elector of Saxony as a fief of Bohemia, and special articles
+guaranteed the freedom of religion of this country and of Silesia.
+
+All the Protestant states were invited to accede to the treaty of
+Prague, and on that condition were to benefit by the amnesty.  The
+princes of Wurtemberg and Baden, whose territories the Emperor was
+already in possession of, and which he was not disposed to restore
+unconditionally; and such vassals of Austria as had borne arms against
+their sovereign; and those states which, under the direction of
+Oxenstiern, composed the council of the Upper German Circle, were
+excluded from the treaty,--not so much with the view of continuing the
+war against them, as of compelling them to purchase peace at a dearer
+rate.  Their territories were to be retained in pledge, till every thing
+should be restored to its former footing.  Such was the treaty of
+Prague.  Equal justice, however, towards all, might perhaps have
+restored confidence between the head of the Empire and its members--
+between the Protestants and the Roman Catholics--between the Reformed
+and the Lutheran party; and the Swedes, abandoned by all their allies,
+would in all probability have been driven from Germany with disgrace.
+But this inequality strengthened, in those who were more severely
+treated, the spirit of mistrust and opposition, and made it an easier
+task for the Swedes to keep alive the flame of war, and to maintain a
+party in Germany.
+
+The peace of Prague, as might have been expected, was received with very
+various feelings throughout Germany.  The attempt to conciliate both
+parties, had rendered it obnoxious to both.  The Protestants complained
+of the restraints imposed upon them; the Roman Catholics thought that
+these hated sectaries had been favoured at the expense of the true
+church.  In the opinion of the latter, the church had been deprived of
+its inalienable rights, by the concession to the Protestants of forty
+years' undisturbed possession of the ecclesiastical benefices; while the
+former murmured that the interests of the Protestant church had been
+betrayed, because toleration had not been granted to their
+co-religionists in the Austrian dominions.  But no one was so bitterly
+reproached as the Elector of Saxony, who was publicly denounced as a
+deserter, a traitor to religion and the liberties of the Empire, and a
+confederate of the Emperor.
+
+In the mean time, he consoled himself with the triumph of seeing most of
+the Protestant states compelled by necessity to embrace this peace.  The
+Elector of Brandenburg, Duke William of Weimar, the princes of Anhalt,
+the dukes of Mecklenburg, the dukes of Brunswick Lunenburg, the Hanse
+towns, and most of the imperial cities, acceded to it.  The Landgrave
+William of Hesse long wavered, or affected to do so, in order to gain
+time, and to regulate his measures by the course of events.  He had
+conquered several fertile provinces of Westphalia, and derived from them
+principally the means of continuing the war; these, by the terms of the
+treaty, he was bound to restore.  Bernard, Duke of Weimar, whose states,
+as yet, existed only on paper, as a belligerent power was not affected
+by the treaty, but as a general was so materially; and, in either view,
+he must equally be disposed to reject it.  His whole riches consisted in
+his bravery, his possessions in his sword.  War alone gave him greatness
+and importance, and war alone could realize the projects which his
+ambition suggested.
+
+But of all who declaimed against the treaty of Prague, none were so loud
+in their clamours as the Swedes, and none had so much reason for their
+opposition.  Invited to Germany by the Germans themselves, the champions
+of the Protestant Church, and the freedom of the States, which they had
+defended with so much bloodshed, and with the sacred life of their king,
+they now saw themselves suddenly and shamefully abandoned, disappointed
+in all their hopes, without reward and without gratitude driven from the
+empire for which they had toiled and bled, and exposed to the ridicule
+of the enemy by the very princes who owed every thing to them.  No
+satisfaction, no indemnification for the expenses which they had
+incurred, no equivalent for the conquests which they were to leave
+behind them, was provided by the treaty of Prague.  They were to be
+dismissed poorer than they came, or, if they resisted, to be expelled by
+the very powers who had invited them.  The Elector of Saxony at last
+spoke of a pecuniary indemnification, and mentioned the small sum of two
+millions five hundred thousand florins; but the Swedes had already
+expended considerably more, and this disgraceful equivalent in money was
+both contrary to their true interests, and injurious to their pride.
+"The Electors of Bavaria and Saxony," replied Oxenstiern, "have been
+paid for their services, which, as vassals, they were bound to render
+the Emperor, with the possession of important provinces; and shall we,
+who have sacrificed our king for Germany, be dismissed with the
+miserable sum of 2,500,000 florins?"  The disappointment of their
+expectations was the more severe, because the Swedes had calculated upon
+being recompensed with the Duchy of Pomerania, the present possessor of
+which was old and without heirs.  But the succession of this territory
+was confirmed by the treaty of Prague to the Elector of Brandenburg; and
+all the neighbouring powers declared against allowing the Swedes to
+obtain a footing within the empire.
+
+Never, in the whole course of the war, had the prospects of the Swedes
+looked more gloomy, than in the year 1635, immediately after the
+conclusion of the treaty of Prague.  Many of their allies, particularly
+among the free cities, abandoned them to benefit by the peace; others
+were compelled to accede to it by the victorious arms of the Emperor.
+Augsburg, subdued by famine, surrendered under the severest conditions;
+Wurtzburg and Coburg were lost to the Austrians.  The League of
+Heilbronn was formally dissolved.  Nearly the whole of Upper Germany,
+the chief seat of the Swedish power, was reduced under the Emperor.
+Saxony, on the strength of the treaty of Prague, demanded the evacuation
+of Thuringia, Halberstadt, and Magdeburg.  Philipsburg, the military
+depot of France, was surprised by the Austrians, with all the stores it
+contained; and this severe loss checked the activity of France.  To
+complete the embarrassments of Sweden, the truce with Poland was drawing
+to a close.  To support a war at the same time with Poland and in
+Germany, was far beyond the power of Sweden; and all that remained was
+to choose between them.  Pride and ambition declared in favour of
+continuing the German war, at whatever sacrifice on the side of Poland.
+An army, however, was necessary to command the respect of Poland, and to
+give weight to Sweden in any negotiations for a truce or a peace.
+
+The mind of Oxenstiern, firm, and inexhaustible in expedients, set
+itself manfully to meet these calamities, which all combined to
+overwhelm Sweden; and his shrewd understanding taught him how to turn
+even misfortunes to his advantage.  The defection of so many German
+cities of the empire deprived him, it is true, of a great part of his
+former allies, but at the same time it freed him from the necessity of
+paying any regard to their interests.  The more the number of his
+enemies increased, the more provinces and magazines were opened to his
+troops.  The gross ingratitude of the States, and the haughty contempt
+with which the Emperor behaved, (who did not even condescend to treat
+directly with him about a peace,) excited in him the courage of despair,
+and a noble determination to maintain the struggle to the last.  The
+continuance of war, however unfortunate it might prove, could not render
+the situation of Sweden worse than it now was; and if Germany was to be
+evacuated, it was at least better and nobler to do so sword in hand, and
+to yield to force rather than to fear.
+
+In the extremity in which the Swedes were now placed by the desertion of
+their allies, they addressed themselves to France, who met them with the
+greatest encouragement.  The interests of the two crowns were closely
+united, and France would have injured herself by allowing the Swedish
+power in Germany to decline.  The helpless situation of the Swedes, was
+rather an additional motive with France to cement more closely their
+alliance, and to take a more active part in the German war.  Since the
+alliance with Sweden, at Beerwald, in 1632, France had maintained the
+war against the Emperor, by the arms of Gustavus Adolphus, without any
+open or formal breach, by furnishing subsidies and increasing the number
+of his enemies.  But alarmed at the unexpected rapidity and success of
+the Swedish arms, France, in anxiety to restore the balance of power,
+which was disturbed by the preponderance of the Swedes, seemed, for a
+time, to have lost sight of her original designs.  She endeavoured to
+protect the Roman Catholic princes of the empire against the Swedish
+conqueror, by the treaties of neutrality, and when this plan failed, she
+even meditated herself to declare war against him.  But no sooner had
+the death of Gustavus Adolphus, and the desperate situation of the
+Swedish affairs, dispelled this apprehension, than she returned with
+fresh zeal to her first design, and readily afforded in this misfortune
+the aid which in the hour of success she had refused.  Freed from the
+checks which the ambition and vigilance of Gustavus Adolphus placed upon
+her plans of aggrandizement, France availed herself of the favourable
+opportunity afforded by the defeat of Nordlingen, to obtain the entire
+direction of the war, and to prescribe laws to those who sued for her
+powerful protection.  The moment seemed to smile upon her boldest plans,
+and those which had formerly seemed chimerical, now appeared to be
+justified by circumstances.  She now turned her whole attention to the
+war in Germany; and, as soon as she had secured her own private ends by
+a treaty with the Germans, she suddenly entered the political arena as
+an active and a commanding power.  While the other belligerent states
+had been exhausting themselves in a tedious contest, France had been
+reserving her strength, and maintained the contest by money alone; but
+now, when the state of things called for more active measures, she
+seized the sword, and astonished Europe by the boldness and magnitude of
+her undertakings.  At the same moment, she fitted out two fleets, and
+sent six different armies into the field, while she subsidized a foreign
+crown and several of the German princes.  Animated by this powerful
+co-operation, the Swedes and Germans awoke from the consternation, and
+hoped, sword in hand, to obtain a more honourable peace than that of
+Prague.  Abandoned by their confederates, who had been reconciled to the
+Emperor, they formed a still closer alliance with France, which
+increased her support with their growing necessities, at the same time
+taking a more active, although secret share in the German war, until at
+last, she threw off the mask altogether, and in her own name made an
+unequivocal declaration of war against the Emperor.
+
+To leave Sweden at full liberty to act against Austria, France commenced
+her operations by liberating it from all fear of a Polish war.  By means
+of the Count d'Avaux, its minister, an agreement was concluded between
+the two powers at Stummsdorf in Prussia, by which the truce was
+prolonged for twenty-six years, though not without a great sacrifice on
+the part of the Swedes, who ceded by a single stroke of the pen almost
+the whole of Polish Prussia, the dear-bought conquest of Gustavus
+Adolphus.  The treaty of Beerwald was, with certain modifications, which
+circumstances rendered necessary, renewed at different times at
+Compiegne, and afterwards at Wismar and Hamburg.  France had already
+come to a rupture with Spain, in May, 1635, and the vigorous attack
+which it made upon that power, deprived the Emperor of his most valuable
+auxiliaries from the Netherlands.  By supporting the Landgrave William
+of Cassel, and Duke Bernard of Weimar, the Swedes were enabled to act
+with more vigour upon the Elbe and the Danube, and a diversion upon the
+Rhine compelled the Emperor to divide his force.
+
+The war was now prosecuted with increasing activity.  By the treaty of
+Prague, the Emperor had lessened the number of his adversaries within
+the Empire; though, at the same time, the zeal and activity of his
+foreign enemies had been augmented by it.  In Germany, his influence was
+almost unlimited, for, with the exception of a few states, he had
+rendered himself absolute master of the German body and its resources,
+and was again enabled to act in the character of emperor and sovereign.
+The first fruit of his power was the elevation of his son, Ferdinand
+III., to the dignity of King of the Romans, to which he was elected by a
+decided majority of votes, notwithstanding the opposition of Treves, and
+of the heirs of the Elector Palatine.  But, on the other hand, he had
+exasperated the Swedes to desperation, had armed the power of France
+against him, and drawn its troops into the heart of the kingdom.  France
+and Sweden, with their German allies, formed, from this moment, one firm
+and compactly united power; the Emperor, with the German states which
+adhered to him, were equally firm and united.  The Swedes, who no longer
+fought for Germany, but for their own lives, showed no more indulgence;
+relieved from the necessity of consulting their German allies, or
+accounting to them for the plans which they adopted, they acted with
+more precipitation, rapidity, and boldness.  Battles, though less
+decisive, became more obstinate and bloody; greater achievements, both
+in bravery and military skill, were performed; but they were but
+insulated efforts; and being neither dictated by any consistent plan,
+nor improved by any commanding spirit, had comparatively little
+influence upon the course of the war.
+
+Saxony had bound herself, by the treaty of Prague, to expel the Swedes
+from Germany.  From this moment, the banners of the Saxons and
+Imperialists were united:  the former confederates were converted into
+implacable enemies.  The archbishopric of Magdeburg which, by the
+treaty, was ceded to the prince of Saxony, was still held by the Swedes,
+and every attempt to acquire it by negociation had proved ineffectual.
+Hostilities commenced, by the Elector of Saxony recalling all his
+subjects from the army of Banner, which was encamped upon the Elbe.  The
+officers, long irritated by the accumulation of their arrears, obeyed
+the summons, and evacuated one quarter after another.  As the Saxons, at
+the same time, made a movement towards Mecklenburg, to take Doemitz, and
+to drive the Swedes from Pomerania and the Baltic, Banner suddenly
+marched thither, relieved Doemitz, and totally defeated the Saxon
+General Baudissin, with 7000 men, of whom 1000 were slain, and about the
+same number taken prisoners.  Reinforced by the troops and artillery,
+which had hitherto been employed in Polish Prussia, but which the treaty
+of Stummsdorf rendered unnecessary, this brave and impetuous general
+made, the following year (1636), a sudden inroad into the Electorate of
+Saxony, where he gratified his inveterate hatred of the Saxons by the
+most destructive ravages.  Irritated by the memory of old grievances
+which, during their common campaigns, he and the Swedes had suffered
+from the haughtiness of the Saxons, and now exasperated to the utmost by
+the late defection of the Elector, they wreaked upon the unfortunate
+inhabitants all their rancour.  Against Austria and Bavaria, the Swedish
+soldier had fought from a sense, as it were, of duty; but against the
+Saxons, they contended with all the energy of private animosity and
+personal revenge, detesting them as deserters and traitors; for the
+hatred of former friends is of all the most fierce and irreconcileable.
+The powerful diversion made by the Duke of Weimar, and the Landgrave of
+Hesse, upon the Rhine and in Westphalia, prevented the Emperor from
+affording the necessary assistance to Saxony, and left the whole
+Electorate exposed to the destructive ravages of Banner's army.
+
+At length, the Elector, having formed a junction with the Imperial
+General Hatzfeld, advanced against Magdeburg, which Banner in vain
+hastened to relieve.  The united army of the Imperialists and the Saxons
+now spread itself over Brandenburg, wrested several places from the
+Swedes, and almost drove them to the Baltic.  But, contrary to all
+expectation, Banner, who had been given up as lost, attacked the allies,
+on the 24th of September, 1636, at Wittstock, where a bloody battle took
+place.  The onset was terrific; and the whole force of the enemy was
+directed against the right wing of the Swedes, which was led by Banner
+in person.  The contest was long maintained with equal animosity and
+obstinacy on both sides.  There was not a squadron among the Swedes,
+which did not return ten times to the charge, to be as often repulsed;
+when at last, Banner was obliged to retire before the superior numbers
+of the enemy.  His left wing sustained the combat until night, and the
+second line of the Swedes, which had not as yet been engaged, was
+prepared to renew it the next morning.  But the Elector did not wait for
+a second attack.  His army was exhausted by the efforts of the preceding
+day; and, as the drivers had fled with the horses, his artillery was
+unserviceable.  He accordingly retreated in the night, with Count
+Hatzfeld, and relinquished the ground to the Swedes.  About 5000 of the
+allies fell upon the field, exclusive of those who were killed in the
+pursuit, or who fell into the hands of the exasperated peasantry.  One
+hundred and fifty standards and colours, twenty-three pieces of cannon,
+the whole baggage and silver plate of the Elector, were captured, and
+more than 2000 men taken prisoners.  This brilliant victory, achieved
+over an enemy far superior in numbers, and in a very advantageous
+position, restored the Swedes at once to their former reputation; their
+enemies were discouraged, and their friends inspired with new hopes.
+Banner instantly followed up this decisive success, and hastily crossing
+the Elbe, drove the Imperialists before him, through Thuringia and
+Hesse, into Westphalia.  He then returned, and took up his winter
+quarters in Saxony.
+
+But, without the material aid furnished by the diversion upon the Rhine,
+and the activity there of Duke Bernard and the French, these important
+successes would have been unattainable.  Duke Bernard, after the defeat
+of Nordlingen, reorganized his broken army at Wetterau; but, abandoned
+by the confederates of the League of Heilbronn, which had been dissolved
+by the peace of Prague, and receiving little support from the Swedes, he
+found himself unable to maintain an army, or to perform any enterprise
+of importance.  The defeat at Nordlingen had terminated all his hopes on
+the Duchy of Franconia, while the weakness of the Swedes, destroyed the
+chance of retrieving his fortunes through their assistance.  Tired, too,
+of the constraint imposed upon him by the imperious chancellor, he
+turned his attention to France, who could easily supply him with money,
+the only aid which he required, and France readily acceded to his
+proposals.  Richelieu desired nothing so much as to diminish the
+influence of the Swedes in the German war, and to obtain the direction
+of it for himself.  To secure this end, nothing appeared more effectual
+than to detach from the Swedes their bravest general, to win him to the
+interests of France, and to secure for the execution of its projects the
+services of his arm.  From a prince like Bernard, who could not maintain
+himself without foreign support, France had nothing to fear, since no
+success, however brilliant, could render him independent of that crown.
+Bernard himself came into France, and in October, 1635, concluded a
+treaty at St.  Germaine en Laye, not as a Swedish general, but in his
+own name, by which it was stipulated that he should receive for himself
+a yearly pension of one million five hundred thousand livres, and four
+millions for the support of his army, which he was to command under the
+orders of the French king.  To inflame his zeal, and to accelerate the
+conquest of Alsace, France did not hesitate, by a secret article, to
+promise him that province for his services; a promise which Richelieu
+had little intention of performing, and which the duke also estimated at
+its real worth.  But Bernard confided in his good fortune, and in his
+arms, and met artifice with dissimulation.  If he could once succeed in
+wresting Alsace from the enemy, he did not despair of being able, in
+case of need, to maintain it also against a friend.  He now raised an
+army at the expense of France, which he commanded nominally under the
+orders of that power, but in reality without any limitation whatever,
+and without having wholly abandoned his engagements with Sweden.  He
+began his operations upon the Rhine, where another French army, under
+Cardinal Lavalette, had already, in 1635, commenced hostilities against
+the Emperor.
+
+Against this force, the main body of the Imperialists, after the great
+victory of Nordlingen, and the reduction of Swabia and Franconia had
+advanced under the command of Gallas, had driven them as far as Metz,
+cleared the Rhine, and took from the Swedes the towns of Metz and
+Frankenthal, of which they were in possession.  But frustrated by the
+vigorous resistance of the French, in his main object, of taking up his
+winter quarters in France, he led back his exhausted troops into Alsace
+and Swabia.  At the opening of the next campaign, he passed the Rhine at
+Breysach, and prepared to carry the war into the interior of France.  He
+actually entered Burgundy, while the Spaniards from the Netherlands made
+progress in Picardy; and John De Werth, a formidable general of the
+League, and a celebrated partisan, pushed his march into Champagne, and
+spread consternation even to the gates of Paris.  But an insignificant
+fortress in Franche Comte completely checked the Imperialists, and they
+were obliged, a second time, to abandon their enterprise.
+
+The activity of Duke Bernard had hitherto been impeded by his dependence
+on a French general, more suited to the priestly robe, than to the baton
+of command; and although, in conjunction with him, he conquered Alsace
+Saverne, he found himself unable, in the years 1636 and 1637, to
+maintain his position upon the Rhine.  The ill success of the French
+arms in the Netherlands had cheated the activity of operations in Alsace
+and Breisgau; but in 1638, the war in that quarter took a more brilliant
+turn.  Relieved from his former restraint, and with unlimited command of
+his troops, Duke Bernard, in the beginning of February, left his winter
+quarters in the bishopric of Basle, and unexpectedly appeared upon the
+Rhine, where, at this rude season of the year, an attack was little
+anticipated.  The forest towns of Laufenburg, Waldshut, and Seckingen,
+were surprised, and Rhinefeldt besieged.  The Duke of Savelli, the
+Imperial general who commanded in that quarter, hastened by forced
+marches to the relief of this important place, succeeded in raising the
+siege, and compelled the Duke of Weimar, with great loss to retire.
+But, contrary to all human expectation, he appeared on the third day
+after, (21st February, 1638,) before the Imperialists, in order of
+battle, and defeated them in a bloody engagement, in which the four
+Imperial generals, Savelli, John De Werth, Enkeford, and Sperreuter,
+with 2000 men, were taken prisoners.  Two of these, De Werth and
+Enkeford, were afterwards sent by Richelieu's orders into France, in
+order to flatter the vanity of the French by the sight of such
+distinguished prisoners, and by the pomp of military trophies, to
+withdraw the attention of the populace from the public distress.  The
+captured standards and colours were, with the same view, carried in
+solemn procession to the church of Notre Dame, thrice exhibited before
+the altar, and committed to sacred custody.
+
+The taking of Rhinefeldt, Roeteln, and Fribourg, was the immediate
+consequence of the duke's victory.  His army now increased by
+considerable recruits, and his projects expanded in proportion as
+fortune favoured him.  The fortress of Breysach upon the Rhine was
+looked upon as holding the command of that river, and as the key of
+Alsace.  No place in this quarter was of more importance to the Emperor,
+and upon none had more care been bestowed.  To protect Breysach, was the
+principal destination of the Italian army, under the Duke of Feria; the
+strength of its works, and its natural defences, bade defiance to
+assault, while the Imperial generals who commanded in that quarter had
+orders to retain it at any cost.  But the duke, trusting to his good
+fortune, resolved to attempt the siege.  Its strength rendered it
+impregnable; it could, therefore, only be starved into a surrender; and
+this was facilitated by the carelessness of the commandant, who,
+expecting no attack, had been selling off his stores.  As under these
+circumstances the town could not long hold out, it must be immediately
+relieved or victualled.  Accordingly, the Imperial General Goetz rapidly
+advanced at the head of 12,000 men, accompanied by 3000 waggons loaded
+with provisions, which he intended to throw into the place.  But he was
+attacked with such vigour by Duke Bernard at Witteweyer, that he lost
+his whole force, except 3000 men, together with the entire transport.  A
+similar fate at Ochsenfeld, near Thann, overtook the Duke of Lorraine,
+who, with 5000 or 6000 men, advanced to relieve the fortress.  After a
+third attempt of general Goetz for the relief of Breysach had proved
+ineffectual, the fortress, reduced to the greatest extremity by famine,
+surrendered, after a blockade of four months, on the 17th December 1638,
+to its equally persevering and humane conqueror.
+
+The capture of Breysach opened a boundless field to the ambition of the
+Duke of Weimar, and the romance of his hopes was fast approaching to
+reality.  Far from intending to surrender his conquests to France, he
+destined Breysach for himself, and revealed this intention, by exacting
+allegiance from the vanquished, in his own name, and not in that of any
+other power.  Intoxicated by his past success, and excited by the
+boldest hopes, he believed that he should be able to maintain his
+conquests, even against France herself.  At a time when everything
+depended upon bravery, when even personal strength was of importance,
+when troops and generals were of more value than territories, it was
+natural for a hero like Bernard to place confidence in his own powers,
+and, at the head of an excellent army, who under his command had proved
+invincible, to believe himself capable of accomplishing the boldest and
+largest designs.  In order to secure himself one friend among the crowd
+of enemies whom he was about to provoke, he turned his eyes upon the
+Landgravine Amelia of Hesse, the widow of the lately deceased Landgrave
+William, a princess whose talents were equal to her courage, and who,
+along with her hand, would bestow valuable conquests, an extensive
+principality, and a well disciplined army.  By the union of the
+conquests of Hesse, with his own upon the Rhine, and the junction of
+their forces, a power of some importance, and perhaps a third party,
+might be formed in Germany, which might decide the fate of the war.  But
+a premature death put a period to these extensive schemes.
+
+"Courage, Father Joseph, Breysach is ours!" whispered Richelieu in the
+ear of the Capuchin, who had long held himself in readiness to be
+despatched into that quarter; so delighted was he with this joyful
+intelligence.  Already in imagination he held Alsace, Breisgau, and all
+the frontiers of Austria in that quarter, without regard to his promise
+to Duke Bernard.  But the firm determination which the latter had
+unequivocally shown, to keep Breysach for himself, greatly embarrassed
+the cardinal, and no efforts were spared to retain the victorious
+Bernard in the interests of France.  He was invited to court, to witness
+the honours by which his triumph was to be commemorated; but he
+perceived and shunned the seductive snare.  The cardinal even went so
+far as to offer him the hand of his niece in marriage; but the proud
+German prince declined the offer, and refused to sully the blood of
+Saxony by a misalliance.  He was now considered as a dangerous enemy,
+and treated as such.  His subsidies were withdrawn; and the Governor of
+Breysach and his principal officers were bribed, at least upon the event
+of the duke's death, to take possession of his conquests, and to secure
+his troops.  These intrigues were no secret to the duke, and the
+precautions he took in the conquered places, clearly bespoke the
+distrust of France.  But this misunderstanding with the French court had
+the most prejudicial influence upon his future operations.  The
+preparations he was obliged to make, in order to secure his conquests
+against an attack on the side of France, compelled him to divide his
+military strength, while the stoppage of his subsidies delayed his
+appearance in the field.  It had been his intention to cross the Rhine,
+to support the Swedes, and to act against the Emperor and Bavaria on the
+banks of the Danube.  He had already communicated his plan of operations
+to Banner, who was about to carry the war into the Austrian territories,
+and had promised to relieve him so, when a sudden death cut short his
+heroic career, in the 36th year of his age, at Neuburgh upon the Rhine
+(in July, 1639).
+
+He died of a pestilential disorder, which, in the course of two days,
+had carried off nearly 400 men in his camp.  The black spots which
+appeared upon his body, his own dying expressions, and the advantages
+which France was likely to reap from his sudden decease, gave rise to a
+suspicion that he had been removed by poison--a suspicion sufficiently
+refuted by the symptoms of his disorder.  In him, the allies lost their
+greatest general after Gustavus Adolphus, France a formidable competitor
+for Alsace, and the Emperor his most dangerous enemy.  Trained to the
+duties of a soldier and a general in the school of Gustavus Adolphus, he
+successfully imitated his eminent model, and wanted only a longer life
+to equal, if not to surpass it.  With the bravery of the soldier, he
+united the calm and cool penetration of the general and the persevering
+fortitude of the man, with the daring resolution of youth; with the wild
+ardour of the warrior, the sober dignity of the prince, the moderation
+of the sage, and the conscientiousness of the man of honour.
+Discouraged by no misfortune, he quickly rose again in full vigour from
+the severest defeats; no obstacles could check his enterprise, no
+disappointments conquer his indomitable perseverance.  His genius,
+perhaps, soared after unattainable objects; but the prudence of such
+men, is to be measured by a different standard from that of ordinary
+people.  Capable of accomplishing more, he might venture to form more
+daring plans.  Bernard affords, in modern history, a splendid example of
+those days of chivalry, when personal greatness had its full weight and
+influence, when individual bravery could conquer provinces, and the
+heroic exploits of a German knight raised him even to the Imperial
+throne.
+
+The best part of the duke's possessions were his army, which, together
+with Alsace, he bequeathed to his brother William.  But to this army,
+both France and Sweden thought that they had well-grounded claims; the
+latter, because it had been raised in name of that crown, and had done
+homage to it; the former, because it had been supported by its
+subsidies.  The Electoral Prince of the Palatinate also negociated for
+its services, and attempted, first by his agents, and latterly in his
+own person, to win it over to his interests, with the view of employing
+it in the reconquest of his territories.  Even the Emperor endeavoured
+to secure it, a circumstance the less surprising, when we reflect that
+at this time the justice of the cause was comparatively unimportant, and
+the extent of the recompense the main object to which the soldier
+looked; and when bravery, like every other commodity, was disposed of to
+the highest bidder.  But France, richer and more determined, outbade all
+competitors:  it bought over General Erlach, the commander of Breysach,
+and the other officers, who soon placed that fortress, with the whole
+army, in their hands.
+
+The young Palatine, Prince Charles Louis, who had already made an
+unsuccessful campaign against the Emperor, saw his hopes again deceived.
+Although intending to do France so ill a service, as to compete with her
+for Bernard's army, he had the imprudence to travel through that
+kingdom.  The cardinal, who dreaded the justice of the Palatine's cause,
+was glad to seize any opportunity to frustrate his views.  He
+accordingly caused him to be seized at Moulin, in violation of the law
+of nations, and did not set him at liberty, until he learned that the
+army of the Duke of Weimar had been secured.  France was now in
+possession of a numerous and well disciplined army in Germany, and from
+this moment began to make open war upon the Emperor.
+
+But it was no longer against Ferdinand II.  that its hostilities were to
+be conducted; for that prince had died in February, 1637, in the 59th
+year of his age.  The war which his ambition had kindled, however,
+survived him.  During a reign of eighteen years he had never once laid
+aside the sword, nor tasted the blessings of peace as long as his hand
+swayed the imperial sceptre.  Endowed with the qualities of a good
+sovereign, adorned with many of those virtues which ensure the happiness
+of a people, and by nature gentle and humane, we see him, from erroneous
+ideas of the monarch's duty, become at once the instrument and the
+victim of the evil passions of others; his benevolent intentions
+frustrated, and the friend of justice converted into the oppressor of
+mankind, the enemy of peace, and the scourge of his people.  Amiable in
+domestic life, and respectable as a sovereign, but in his policy ill
+advised, while he gained the love of his Roman Catholic subjects, he
+incurred the execration of the Protestants.  History exhibits many and
+greater despots than Ferdinand II., yet he alone has had the unfortunate
+celebrity of kindling a thirty years' war; but to produce its lamentable
+consequences, his ambition must have been seconded by a kindred spirit
+of the age, a congenial state of previous circumstances, and existing
+seeds of discord.  At a less turbulent period, the spark would have
+found no fuel; and the peacefulness of the age would have choked the
+voice of individual ambition; but now the flash fell upon a pile of
+accumulated combustibles, and Europe was in flames.
+
+His son, Ferdinand III., who, a few months before his father's death,
+had been raised to the dignity of King of the Romans, inherited his
+throne, his principles, and the war which he had caused.  But Ferdinand
+III.  had been a closer witness of the sufferings of the people, and the
+devastation of the country, and felt more keenly and ardently the
+necessity of peace.  Less influenced by the Jesuits and the Spaniards,
+and more moderate towards the religious views of others, he was more
+likely than his father to listen to the voice of reason.  He did so, and
+ultimately restored to Europe the blessing of peace, but not till after
+a contest of eleven years waged with sword and pen; not till after he
+had experienced the impossibility of resistance, and necessity had laid
+upon him its stern laws.
+
+Fortune favoured him at the commencement of his reign, and his arms were
+victorious against the Swedes.  The latter, under the command of the
+victorious Banner, had, after their success at Wittstock, taken up their
+winter quarters in Saxony; and the campaign of 1637 opened with the
+siege of Leipzig.  The vigorous resistance of the garrison, and the
+approach of the Electoral and Imperial armies, saved the town, and
+Banner, to prevent his communication with the Elbe being cut off, was
+compelled to retreat into Torgau.  But the superior number of the
+Imperialists drove him even from that quarter; and, surrounded by the
+enemy, hemmed in by rivers, and suffering from famine, he had no course
+open to him but to attempt a highly dangerous retreat into Pomerania, of
+which, the boldness and successful issue border upon romance.  The whole
+army crossed the Oder, at a ford near Furstenberg; and the soldiers,
+wading up to the neck in water, dragged the artillery across, when the
+horses refused to draw.  Banner had expected to be joined by General
+Wrangel, on the farther side of the Oder in Pomerania; and, in
+conjunction with him, to be able to make head against the enemy.  But
+Wrangel did not appear; and in his stead, he found an Imperial army
+posted at Landsberg, with a view to cut off the retreat of the Swedes.
+Banner now saw that he had fallen into a dangerous snare, from which
+escape appeared impossible.  In his rear lay an exhausted country, the
+Imperialists, and the Oder on his left; the Oder, too, guarded by the
+Imperial General Bucheim, offered no retreat; in front, Landsberg,
+Custrin, the Warta, and a hostile army; and on the right, Poland, in
+which, notwithstanding the truce, little confidence could be placed.  In
+these circumstances, his position seemed hopeless, and the Imperialists
+were already triumphing in the certainty of his fall.  Banner, with just
+indignation, accused the French as the authors of this misfortune.  They
+had neglected to make, according to their promise, a diversion upon the
+Rhine; and, by their inaction, allowed the Emperor to combine his whole
+force upon the Swedes.  "When the day comes," cried the incensed General
+to the French Commissioner, who followed the camp, "that the Swedes and
+Germans join their arms against France, we shall cross the Rhine with
+less ceremony."  But reproaches were now useless; what the emergency
+demanded was energy and resolution.  In the hope of drawing the enemy by
+stratagem from the Oder, Banner pretended to march towards Poland, and
+despatched the greater part of his baggage in this direction, with his
+own wife, and those of the other officers.  The Imperialists immediately
+broke up their camp, and hurried towards the Polish frontier to block up
+the route; Bucheim left his station, and the Oder was stripped of its
+defenders.  On a sudden, and under cloud of night, Banner turned towards
+that river, and crossed it about a mile above Custrin, with his troops,
+baggage, and artillery, without bridges or vessels, as he had done
+before at Furstenberg.  He reached Pomerania without loss, and prepared
+to share with Wrangel the defence of that province.
+
+But the Imperialists, under the command of Gallas, entered that duchy at
+Ribses, and overran it by their superior strength.  Usedom and Wolgast
+were taken by storm, Demmin capitulated, and the Swedes were driven far
+into Lower Pomerania.  It was, too, more important for them at this
+moment than ever, to maintain a footing in that country, for Bogislaus
+XIV.  had died that year, and Sweden must prepare to establish its title
+to Pomerania.  To prevent the Elector of Brandenburg from making good
+the title to that duchy, which the treaty of Prague had given him,
+Sweden exerted her utmost energies, and supported its generals to the
+extent of her ability, both with troops and money.  In other quarters of
+the kingdom, the affairs of the Swedes began to wear a more favourable
+aspect, and to recover from the humiliation into which they had been
+thrown by the inaction of France, and the desertion of their allies.
+For, after their hasty retreat into Pomerania, they had lost one place
+after another in Upper Saxony; the princes of Mecklenburg, closely
+pressed by the troops of the Emperor, began to lean to the side of
+Austria, and even George, Duke of Lunenburg, declared against them.
+Ehrenbreitstein was starved into a surrender by the Bavarian General de
+Werth, and the Austrians possessed themselves of all the works which had
+been thrown up on the Rhine.  France had been the sufferer in the
+contest with Spain; and the event had by no means justified the pompous
+expectations which had accompanied the opening of the campaign.  Every
+place which the Swedes had held in the interior of Germany was lost; and
+only the principal towns in Pomerania still remained in their hands.
+But a single campaign raised them from this state of humiliation; and
+the vigorous diversion, which the victorious Bernard had effected upon
+the Rhine, gave quite a new turn to affairs.
+
+The misunderstandings between France and Sweden were now at last
+adjusted, and the old treaty between these powers confirmed at Hamburg,
+with fresh advantages for Sweden.  In Hesse, the politic Landgravine
+Amelia had, with the approbation of the Estates, assumed the government
+after the death of her husband, and resolutely maintained her rights
+against the Emperor and the House of Darmstadt.  Already zealously
+attached to the Swedish Protestant party, on religious grounds, she only
+awaited a favourable opportunity openly to declare herself.  By artful
+delays, and by prolonging the negociations with the Emperor, she had
+succeeded in keeping him inactive, till she had concluded a secret
+compact with France, and the victories of Duke Bernard had given a
+favourable turn to the affairs of the Protestants.  She now at once
+threw off the mask, and renewed her former alliance with the Swedish
+crown.  The Electoral Prince of the Palatinate was also stimulated, by
+the success of Bernard, to try his fortune against the common enemy.
+Raising troops in Holland with English money, he formed a magazine at
+Meppen, and joined the Swedes in Westphalia.  His magazine was, however,
+quickly lost; his army defeated near Flotha, by Count Hatzfeld; but his
+attempt served to occupy for some time the attention of the enemy, and
+thereby facilitated the operations of the Swedes in other quarters.
+Other friends began to appear, as fortune declared in their favour, and
+the circumstance, that the States of Lower Saxony embraced a neutrality,
+was of itself no inconsiderable advantage.
+
+Under these advantages, and reinforced by 14,000 fresh troops from
+Sweden and Livonia.  Banner opened, with the most favourable prospects,
+the campaign of 1638.  The Imperialists who were in possession of Upper
+Pomerania and Mecklenburg, either abandoned their positions, or deserted
+in crowds to the Swedes, to avoid the horrors of famine, the most
+formidable enemy in this exhausted country.  The whole country betwixt
+the Elbe and the Oder was so desolated by the past marchings and
+quarterings of the troops, that, in order to support his army on its
+march into Saxony and Bohemia, Banner was obliged to take a circuitous
+route from Lower Pomerania into Lower Saxony, and then into the
+Electorate of Saxony through the territory of Halberstadt.  The
+impatience of the Lower Saxon States to get rid of such troublesome
+guests, procured him so plentiful a supply of provisions, that he was
+provided with bread in Magdeburg itself, where famine had even overcome
+the natural antipathy of men to human flesh.  His approach spread
+consternation among the Saxons; but his views were directed not against
+this exhausted country, but against the hereditary dominions of the
+Emperor.  The victories of Bernard encouraged him, while the prosperity
+of the Austrian provinces excited his hopes of booty.  After defeating
+the Imperial General Salis, at Elsterberg, totally routing the Saxon
+army at Chemnitz, and taking Pirna, he penetrated with irresistible
+impetuosity into Bohemia, crossed the Elbe, threatened Prague, took
+Brandeis and Leutmeritz, defeated General Hofkirchen with ten regiments,
+and spread terror and devastation through that defenceless kingdom.
+Booty was his sole object, and whatever he could not carry off he
+destroyed.  In order to remove more of the corn, the ears were cut from
+the stalks, and the latter burnt.  Above a thousand castles, hamlets,
+and villages were laid in ashes; sometimes more than a hundred were seen
+burning in one night.  From Bohemia he crossed into Silesia, and it was
+his intention to carry his ravages even into Moravia and Austria.  But
+to prevent this, Count Hatzfeld was summoned from Westphalia, and
+Piccolomini from the Netherlands, to hasten with all speed to this
+quarter.  The Archduke Leopold, brother to the Emperor, assumed the
+command, in order to repair the errors of his predecessor Gallas, and to
+raise the army from the low ebb to which it had fallen.
+
+The result justified the change, and the campaign of 1640 appeared to
+take a most unfortunate turn for the Swedes.  They were successively
+driven out of all their posts in Bohemia, and anxious only to secure
+their plunder, they precipitately crossed the heights of Meissen.  But
+being followed into Saxony by the pursuing enemy, and defeated at
+Plauen, they were obliged to take refuge in Thuringia.  Made masters of
+the field in a single summer, they were as rapidly dispossessed; but
+only to acquire it a second time, and to hurry from one extreme to
+another.  The army of Banner, weakened and on the brink of destruction
+in its camp at Erfurt, suddenly recovered itself.  The Duke of Lunenburg
+abandoned the treaty of Prague, and joined Banner with the very troops
+which, the year before, had fought against him.  Hesse Cassel sent
+reinforcements, and the Duke of Longueville came to his support with the
+army of the late Duke Bernard.  Once more numerically superior to the
+Imperialists, Banner offered them battle near Saalfeld; but their
+leader, Piccolomini, prudently declined an engagement, having chosen too
+strong a position to be forced.  When the Bavarians at length separated
+from the Imperialists, and marched towards Franconia, Banner attempted
+an attack upon this divided corps, but the attempt was frustrated by the
+skill of the Bavarian General Von Mercy, and the near approach of the
+main body of the Imperialists.  Both armies now moved into the exhausted
+territory of Hesse, where they formed intrenched camps near each other,
+till at last famine and the severity of the winter compelled them both
+to retire.  Piccolomini chose the fertile banks of the Weser for his
+winter quarters; but being outflanked by Banner, he was obliged to give
+way to the Swedes, and to impose on the Franconian sees the burden of
+maintaining his army.
+
+At this period, a diet was held in Ratisbon, where the complaints of the
+States were to be heard, measures taken for securing the repose of the
+Empire, and the question of peace or war finally settled.  The presence
+of the Emperor, the majority of the Roman Catholic voices in the
+Electoral College, the great number of bishops, and the withdrawal of
+several of the Protestant votes, gave the Emperor a complete command of
+the deliberations of the assembly, and rendered this diet any thing but
+a fair representative of the opinions of the German Empire.  The
+Protestants, with reason, considered it as a mere combination of Austria
+and its creatures against their party; and it seemed to them a laudable
+effort to interrupt its deliberations, and to dissolve the diet itself.
+
+Banner undertook this bold enterprise.  His military reputation had
+suffered by his last retreat from Bohemia, and it stood in need of some
+great exploit to restore its former lustre.  Without communicating his
+designs to any one, in the depth of the winter of 1641, as soon as the
+roads and rivers were frozen, he broke up from his quarters in
+Lunenburg.  Accompanied by Marshal Guebriant, who commanded the armies
+of France and Weimar, he took the route towards the Danube, through
+Thuringia and Vogtland, and appeared before Ratisbon, ere the Diet could
+be apprised of his approach.  The consternation of the assembly was
+indescribable; and, in the first alarm, the deputies prepared for
+flight.  The Emperor alone declared that he would not leave the town,
+and encouraged the rest by his example.  Unfortunately for the Swedes, a
+thaw came on, which broke up the ice upon the Danube, so that it was no
+longer passable on foot, while no boats could cross it, on account of
+the quantities of ice which were swept down by the current.  In order to
+perform something, and to humble the pride of the Emperor, Banner
+discourteously fired 500 cannon shots into the town, which, however, did
+little mischief.  Baffled in his designs, he resolved to penetrate
+farther into Bavaria, and the defenceless province of Moravia, where a
+rich booty and comfortable quarters awaited his troops.  Guebriant,
+however, began to fear that the purpose of the Swedes was to draw the
+army of Bernard away from the Rhine, and to cut off its communication
+with France, till it should be either entirely won over, or
+incapacitated from acting independently.  He therefore separated from
+Banner to return to the Maine; and the latter was exposed to the whole
+force of the Imperialists, which had been secretly drawn together
+between Ratisbon and Ingoldstadt, and was on its march against him.  It
+was now time to think of a rapid retreat, which, having to be effected
+in the face of an army superior in cavalry, and betwixt woods and
+rivers, through a country entirely hostile, appeared almost
+impracticable.  He hastily retired towards the Forest, intending to
+penetrate through Bohemia into Saxony; but he was obliged to sacrifice
+three regiments at Neuburg.  These with a truly Spartan courage,
+defended themselves for four days behind an old wall, and gained time
+for Banner to escape.  He retreated by Egra to Annaberg; Piccolomini
+took a shorter route in pursuit, by Schlakenwald; and Banner succeeded,
+only by a single half hour, in clearing the Pass of Prisnitz, and saving
+his whole army from the Imperialists.  At Zwickau he was again joined by
+Guebriant; and both generals directed their march towards Halberstadt,
+after in vain attempting to defend the Saal, and to prevent the passage
+of the Imperialists.
+
+Banner, at length, terminated his career at Halberstadt, in May 1641, a
+victim to vexation and disappointment.  He sustained with great renown,
+though with varying success, the reputation of the Swedish arms in
+Germany, and by a train of victories showed himself worthy of his great
+master in the art of war.  He was fertile in expedients, which he
+planned with secrecy, and executed with boldness; cautious in the midst
+of dangers, greater in adversity than in prosperity, and never more
+formidable than when upon the brink of destruction.  But the virtues of
+the hero were united with all the railings and vices which a military
+life creates, or at least fosters.  As imperious in private life as he
+was at the head of his army, rude as his profession, and proud as a
+conqueror; he oppressed the German princes no less by his haughtiness,
+than their country by his contributions.  He consoled himself for the
+toils of war in voluptuousness and the pleasures of the table, in which
+he indulged to excess, and was thus brought to an early grave.  But
+though as much addicted to pleasure as Alexander or Mahomet the Second,
+he hurried from the arms of luxury into the hardest fatigues, and placed
+himself in all his vigour at the head of his army, at the very moment
+his soldiers were murmuring at his luxurious excesses.  Nearly 80,000
+men fell in the numerous battles which he fought, and about 600 hostile
+standards and colours, which he sent to Stockholm, were the trophies of
+his victories.  The want of this great general was soon severely felt by
+the Swedes, who feared, with justice, that the loss would not readily be
+replaced.  The spirit of rebellion and insubordination, which had been
+overawed by the imperious demeanour of this dreaded commander, awoke
+upon his death.  The officers, with an alarming unanimity, demanded
+payment of their arrears; and none of the four generals who shared the
+command, possessed influence enough to satisfy these demands, or to
+silence the malcontents.  All discipline was at an end, increasing want,
+and the imperial citations were daily diminishing the number of the
+army; the troops of France and Weimar showed little zeal; those of
+Lunenburg forsook the Swedish colours; the Princes also of the House of
+Brunswick, after the death of Duke George, had formed a separate treaty
+with the Emperor; and at last even those of Hesse quitted them, to seek
+better quarters in Westphalia.  The enemy profited by these calamitous
+divisions; and although defeated with loss in two pitched battles,
+succeeded in making considerable progress in Lower Saxony.
+
+At length appeared the new Swedish generalissimo, with fresh troops and
+money.  This was Bernard Torstensohn, a pupil of Gustavus Adolphus, and
+his most successful imitator, who had been his page during the Polish
+war.  Though a martyr to the gout, and confined to a litter, he
+surpassed all his opponents in activity; and his enterprises had wings,
+while his body was held by the most frightful of fetters.  Under him,
+the scene of war was changed, and new maxims adopted, which necessity
+dictated, and the issue justified.  All the countries in which the
+contest had hitherto raged were exhausted; while the House of Austria,
+safe in its more distant territories, felt not the miseries of the war
+under which the rest of Germany groaned.  Torstensohn first furnished
+them with this bitter experience, glutted his Swedes on the fertile
+produce of Austria, and carried the torch of war to the very footsteps
+of the imperial throne.
+
+In Silesia, the enemy had gained considerable advantages over the
+Swedish general Stalhantsch, and driven him as far as Neumark.
+Torstensohn, who had joined the main body of the Swedes in Lunenburg,
+summoned him to unite with his force, and in the year 1642 hastily
+marched into Silesia through Brandenburg, which, under its great
+Elector, had begun to maintain an armed neutrality.  Glogau was carried,
+sword in hand, without a breach, or formal approaches; the Duke Francis
+Albert of Lauenburg defeated and killed at Schweidnitz; and Schweidnitz
+itself with almost all the towns on that side of the Oder, taken.  He
+now penetrated with irresistible violence into the interior of Moravia,
+where no enemy of Austria had hitherto appeared, took Olmutz, and threw
+Vienna itself into consternation.
+
+But, in the mean time, Piccolomini and the Archduke Leopold had
+collected a superior force, which speedily drove the Swedish conquerors
+from Moravia, and after a fruitless attempt upon Brieg, from Silesia.
+Reinforced by Wrangel, the Swedes again attempted to make head against
+the enemy, and relieved Grossglogau; but could neither bring the
+Imperialists to an engagement, nor carry into effect their own views
+upon Bohemia.  Overrunning Lusatia, they took Zittau, in presence of the
+enemy, and after a short stay in that country, directed their march
+towards the Elbe, which they passed at Torgau.  Torstensohn now
+threatened Leipzig with a siege, and hoped to raise a large supply of
+provisions and contributions from that prosperous town, which for ten
+years had been unvisited with the scourge of war.
+
+The Imperialists, under Leopold and Piccolomini, immediately hastened by
+Dresden to its relief, and Torstensohn, to avoid being inclosed between
+this army and the town, boldly advanced to meet them in order of battle.
+By a strange coincidence, the two armies met upon the very spot which,
+eleven years before, Gustavus Adolphus had rendered remarkable by a
+decisive victory; and the heroism of their predecessors, now kindled in
+the Swedes a noble emulation on this consecrated ground.  The Swedish
+generals, Stahlhantsch and Wellenberg, led their divisions with such
+impetuosity upon the left wing of the Imperialists, before it was
+completely formed, that the whole cavalry that covered it were dispersed
+and rendered unserviceable.  But the left of the Swedes was threatened
+with a similar fate, when the victorious right advanced to its
+assistance, took the enemy in flank and rear, and divided the Austrian
+line.  The infantry on both sides stood firm as a wall, and when their
+ammunition was exhausted, maintained the combat with the butt-ends of
+their muskets, till at last the Imperialists, completely surrounded,
+after a contest of three hours, were compelled to abandon the field.
+The generals on both sides had more than once to rally their flying
+troops; and the Archduke Leopold, with his regiment, was the first in
+the attack and last in flight.  But this bloody victory cost the Swedes
+more than 3000 men, and two of their best generals, Schlangen and
+Lilienhoeck.  More than 5000 of the Imperialists were left upon the
+field, and nearly as many taken prisoners.  Their whole artillery,
+consisting of 46 field-pieces, the silver plate and portfolio of the
+archduke, with the whole baggage of the army, fell into the hands of the
+victors.  Torstensohn, too greatly disabled by his victory to pursue the
+enemy, moved upon Leipzig.  The defeated army retired into Bohemia,
+where its shattered regiments reassembled.  The Archduke Leopold could
+not recover from the vexation caused by this defeat; and the regiment of
+cavalry which, by its premature flight, had occasioned the disaster,
+experienced the effects of his indignation.  At Raconitz in Bohemia, in
+presence of the whole army, he publicly declared it infamous, deprived
+it of its horses, arms, and ensigns, ordered its standards to be torn,
+condemned to death several of the officers, and decimated the privates.
+
+The surrender of Leipzig, three weeks after the battle, was its
+brilliant result.  The city was obliged to clothe the Swedish troops
+anew, and to purchase an exemption from plunder, by a contribution of
+300,000 rix-dollars, to which all the foreign merchants, who had
+warehouses in the city, were to furnish their quota.  In the middle of
+winter, Torstensohn advanced against Freyberg, and for several weeks
+defied the inclemency of the season, hoping by his perseverance to weary
+out the obstinacy of the besieged.  But he found that he was merely
+sacrificing the lives of his soldiers; and at last, the approach of the
+imperial general, Piccolomini, compelled him, with his weakened army, to
+retire.  He considered it, however, as equivalent to a victory, to have
+disturbed the repose of the enemy in their winter quarters, who, by the
+severity of the weather, sustained a loss of 3000 horses.  He now made a
+movement towards the Oder, as if with the view of reinforcing himself
+with the garrisons of Pomerania and Silesia; but, with the rapidity of
+lightning, he again appeared upon the Bohemian frontier, penetrated
+through that kingdom, and relieved Olmutz in Moravia, which was hard
+pressed by the Imperialists.  His camp at Dobitschau, two miles from
+Olmutz, commanded the whole of Moravia, on which he levied heavy
+contributions, and carried his ravages almost to the gates of Vienna.
+In vain did the Emperor attempt to arm the Hungarian nobility in defence
+of this province; they appealed to their privileges, and refused to
+serve beyond the limits of their own country.  Thus, the time that
+should have been spent in active resistance, was lost in fruitless
+negociation, and the entire province was abandoned to the ravages of the
+Swedes.
+
+While Torstensohn, by his marches and his victories, astonished friend
+and foe, the armies of the allies had not been inactive in other parts
+of the empire.  The troops of Hesse, under Count Eberstein, and those of
+Weimar, under Mareschal de Guebriant, had fallen into the Electorate of
+Cologne, in order to take up their winter quarters there.  To get rid of
+these troublesome guests, the Elector called to his assistance the
+imperial general Hatzfeldt, and assembled his own troops under General
+Lamboy.  The latter was attacked by the allies in January, 1642, and in
+a decisive action near Kempen, defeated, with the loss of about 2000 men
+killed, and about twice as many prisoners.  This important victory
+opened to them the whole Electorate and neighbouring territories, so
+that the allies were not only enabled to maintain their winter quarters
+there, but drew from the country large supplies of men and horses.
+
+Guebriant left the Hessians to defend their conquests on the Lower Rhine
+against Hatzfeldt, and advanced towards Thuringia, as if to second the
+operations of Torstensohn in Saxony.  But instead of joining the Swedes,
+he soon hurried back to the Rhine and the Maine, from which he seemed to
+think he had removed farther than was expedient.  But being anticipated
+in the Margraviate of Baden, by the Bavarians under Mercy and John de
+Werth, he was obliged to wander about for several weeks, exposed,
+without shelter, to the inclemency of the winter, and generally
+encamping upon the snow, till he found a miserable refuge in Breisgau.
+He at last took the field; and, in the next summer, by keeping the
+Bavarian army employed in Suabia, prevented it from relieving
+Thionville, which was besieged by Conde.  But the superiority of the
+enemy soon drove him back to Alsace, where he awaited a reinforcement.
+
+The death of Cardinal Richelieu took place in November, 1642, and the
+subsequent change in the throne and in the ministry, occasioned by the
+death of Louis XIII., had for some time withdrawn the attention of
+France from the German war, and was the cause of the inaction of its
+troops in the field.  But Mazarin, the inheritor, not only of
+Richelieu's power, but also of his principles and his projects, followed
+out with renewed zeal the plans of his predecessor, though the French
+subject was destined to pay dearly enough for the political greatness of
+his country.  The main strength of its armies, which Richelieu had
+employed against the Spaniards, was by Mazarin directed against the
+Emperor; and the anxiety with which he carried on the war in Germany,
+proved the sincerity of his opinion, that the German army was the right
+arm of his king, and a wall of safety around France.  Immediately upon
+the surrender of Thionville, he sent a considerable reinforcement to
+Field-Marshal Guebriant in Alsace; and to encourage the troops to bear
+the fatigues of the German war, the celebrated victor of Rocroi, the
+Duke of Enghien, afterwards Prince of Conde, was placed at their head.
+Guebriant now felt himself strong enough to appear again in Germany with
+repute.  He hastened across the Rhine with the view of procuring better
+winter quarters in Suabia, and actually made himself master of Rothweil,
+where a Bavarian magazine fell into his hands.  But the place was too
+dearly purchased for its worth, and was again lost even more speedily
+than it had been taken.  Guebriant received a wound in the arm, which
+the surgeon's unskilfulness rendered mortal, and the extent of his loss
+was felt on the very day of his death.
+
+The French army, sensibly weakened by an expedition undertaken at so
+severe a season of the year, had, after the taking of Rothweil,
+withdrawn into the neighbourhood of Duttlingen, where it lay in complete
+security, without expectation of a hostile attack.  In the mean time,
+the enemy collected a considerable force, with a view to prevent the
+French from establishing themselves beyond the Rhine and so near to
+Bavaria, and to protect that quarter from their ravages.  The
+Imperialists, under Hatzfeldt, had formed a junction with the Bavarians
+under Mercy; and the Duke of Lorraine, who, during the whole course of
+the war, was generally found everywhere except in his own duchy, joined
+their united forces.  It was resolved to force the quarters of the
+French in Duttlingen, and the neighbouring villages, by surprise; a
+favourite mode of proceeding in this war, and which, being commonly
+accompanied by confusion, occasioned more bloodshed than a regular
+battle.  On the present occasion, there was the more to justify it, as
+the French soldiers, unaccustomed to such enterprises, conceived
+themselves protected by the severity of the winter against any surprise.
+John de Werth, a master in this species of warfare, which he had often
+put in practice against Gustavus Horn, conducted the enterprise, and
+succeeded, contrary to all expectation.
+
+The attack was made on a side where it was least looked for, on account
+of the woods and narrow passes, and a heavy snow storm which fell upon
+the same day, (the 24th November, 1643,) concealed the approach of the
+vanguard till it halted before Duttlingen.  The whole of the artillery
+without the place, as well as the neighbouring Castle of Honberg, were
+taken without resistance, Duttlingen itself was gradually surrounded by
+the enemy, and all connexion with the other quarters in the adjacent
+villages silently and suddenly cut off.  The French were vanquished
+without firing a cannon.  The cavalry owed their escape to the swiftness
+of their horses, and the few minutes in advance, which they had gained
+upon their pursuers.  The infantry were cut to pieces, or voluntarily
+laid down their arms.  About 2,000 men were killed, and 7,000, with 25
+staff-officers and 90 captains, taken prisoners.  This was, perhaps, the
+only battle, in the whole course of the war, which produced nearly the
+same effect upon the party which gained, and that which lost;--both
+these parties were Germans; the French disgraced themselves.  The memory
+of this unfortunate day, which was renewed 100 years after at Rosbach,
+was indeed erased by the subsequent heroism of a Turenne and Conde; but
+the Germans may be pardoned, if they indemnified themselves for the
+miseries which the policy of France had heaped upon them, by these
+severe reflections upon her intrepidity.
+
+Meantime, this defeat of the French was calculated to prove highly
+disastrous to Sweden, as the whole power of the Emperor might now act
+against them, while the number of their enemies was increased by a
+formidable accession.  Torstensohn had, in September, 1643, suddenly
+left Moravia, and moved into Silesia.  The cause of this step was a
+secret, and the frequent changes which took place in the direction of
+his march, contributed to increase this perplexity.  From Silesia, after
+numberless circuits, he advanced towards the Elbe, while the
+Imperialists followed him into Lusatia.  Throwing a bridge across the
+Elbe at Torgau, he gave out that he intended to penetrate through
+Meissen into the Upper Palatinate in Bavaria; at Barby he also made a
+movement, as if to pass that river, but continued to move down the Elbe
+as far as Havelburg, where he astonished his troops by informing them
+that he was leading them against the Danes in Holstein.
+
+The partiality which Christian IV.  had displayed against the Swedes in
+his office of mediator, the jealousy which led him to do all in his
+power to hinder the progress of their arms, the restraints which he laid
+upon their navigation of the Sound, and the burdens which he imposed
+upon their commerce, had long roused the indignation of Sweden; and, at
+last, when these grievances increased daily, had determined the Regency
+to measures of retaliation.  Dangerous as it seemed, to involve the
+nation in a new war, when, even amidst its conquests, it was almost
+exhausted by the old, the desire of revenge, and the deep-rooted hatred
+which subsisted between Danes and Swedes, prevailed over all other
+considerations; and even the embarrassment in which hostilities with
+Germany had plunged it, only served as an additional motive to try its
+fortune against Denmark.
+
+Matters were, in fact, arrived at last to that extremity, that the war
+was prosecuted merely for the purpose of furnishing food and employment
+to the troops; that good winter quarters formed the chief subject of
+contention; and that success, in this point, was more valued than a
+decisive victory.  But now the provinces of Germany were almost all
+exhausted and laid waste.  They were wholly destitute of provisions,
+horses, and men, which in Holstein were to be found in profusion.  If by
+this movement, Torstensohn should succeed merely in recruiting his army,
+providing subsistence for his horses and soldiers, and remounting his
+cavalry, all the danger and difficulty would be well repaid.  Besides,
+it was highly important, on the eve of negotiations for peace, to
+diminish the injurious influence which Denmark might exercise upon these
+deliberations, to delay the treaty itself, which threatened to be
+prejudicial to the Swedish interests, by sowing confusion among the
+parties interested, and with a view to the amount of indemnification, to
+increase the number of her conquests, in order to be the more sure of
+securing those which alone she was anxious to retain.  Moreover, the
+present state of Denmark justified even greater hopes, if only the
+attempt were executed with rapidity and silence.  The secret was in fact
+so well kept in Stockholm, that the Danish minister had not the
+slightest suspicion of it; and neither France nor Holland were let into
+the scheme.  Actual hostilities commenced with the declaration of war;
+and Torstensohn was in Holstein, before even an attack was expected.
+The Swedish troops, meeting with no resistance, quickly overran this
+duchy, and made themselves masters of all its strong places, except
+Rensburg and Gluckstadt.  Another army penetrated into Schonen, which
+made as little opposition; and nothing but the severity of the season
+prevented the enemy from passing the Lesser Baltic, and carrying the war
+into Funen and Zealand.  The Danish fleet was unsuccessful at Femern;
+and Christian himself, who was on board, lost his right eye by a
+splinter.  Cut off from all communication with the distant force of the
+Emperor, his ally, this king was on the point of seeing his whole
+kingdom overrun by the Swedes; and all things threatened the speedy
+fulfilment of the old prophecy of the famous Tycho Brahe, that in the
+year 1644, Christian IV.  should wander in the greatest misery from his
+dominions.
+
+But the Emperor could not look on with indifference, while Denmark was
+sacrificed to Sweden, and the latter strengthened by so great an
+acquisition.  Notwithstanding great difficulties lay in the way of so
+long a march through desolated provinces, he did not hesitate to
+despatch an army into Holstein under Count Gallas, who, after
+Piccolomini's retirement, had resumed the supreme command of the troops.
+Gallas accordingly appeared in the duchy, took Keil, and hoped, by
+forming a junction with the Danes, to be able to shut up the Swedish
+army in Jutland.  Meantime, the Hessians, and the Swedish General
+Koenigsmark, were kept in check by Hatzfeldt, and the Archbishop of
+Bremen, the son of Christian IV.; and afterwards the Swedes drawn into
+Saxony by an attack upon Meissen.  But Torstensohn, with his augmented
+army, penetrated through the unoccupied pass betwixt Schleswig and
+Stapelholm, met Gallas, and drove him along the whole course of the
+Elbe, as far as Bernburg, where the Imperialists took up an entrenched
+position.  Torstensohn passed the Saal, and by posting himself in the
+rear of the enemy, cut off their communication with Saxony and Bohemia.
+Scarcity and famine began now to destroy them in great numbers, and
+forced them to retreat to Magdeburg, where, however, they were not much
+better off.  The cavalry, which endeavoured to escape into Silesia, was
+overtaken and routed by Torstensohn, near Juterbock; the rest of the
+army, after a vain attempt to fight its way through the Swedish lines,
+was almost wholly destroyed near Magdeburg.  From this expedition,
+Gallas brought back only a few thousand men of all his formidable force,
+and the reputation of being a consummate master in the art of ruining an
+army.  The King of Denmark, after this unsuccessful effort to relieve
+him, sued for peace, which he obtained at Bremsebor in the year 1645,
+under very unfavourable conditions.
+
+Torstensohn rapidly followed up his victory; and while Axel Lilienstern,
+one of the generals who commanded under him, overawed Saxony, and
+Koenigsmark subdued the whole of Bremen, he himself penetrated into
+Bohemia with 16,000 men and 80 pieces of artillery, and endeavoured a
+second time to remove the seat of war into the hereditary dominions of
+Austria.  Ferdinand, upon this intelligence, hastened in person to
+Prague, in order to animate the courage of the people by his presence;
+and as a skilful general was much required, and so little unanimity
+prevailed among the numerous leaders, he hoped in the immediate
+neighbourhood of the war to be able to give more energy and activity.
+In obedience to his orders, Hatzfeldt assembled the whole Austrian and
+Bavarian force, and contrary to his own inclination and advice, formed
+the Emperor's last army, and the last bulwark of his states, in order of
+battle, to meet the enemy, who were approaching, at Jankowitz, on the
+24th of February, 1645.  Ferdinand depended upon his cavalry, which
+outnumbered that of the enemy by 3000, and upon the promise of the
+Virgin Mary, who had appeared to him in a dream, and given him the
+strongest assurances of a complete victory.
+
+The superiority of the Imperialists did not intimidate Torstensohn, who
+was not accustomed to number his antagonists.  On the very first onset,
+the left wing, which Goetz, the general of the League, had entangled in
+a disadvantageous position among marshes and thickets, was totally
+routed; the general, with the greater part of his men, killed, and
+almost the whole ammunition of the army taken.  This unfortunate
+commencement decided the fate of the day.  The Swedes, constantly
+advancing, successively carried all the most commanding heights.  After
+a bloody engagement of eight hours, a desperate attack on the part of
+the Imperial cavalry, and a vigorous resistance by the Swedish infantry,
+the latter remained in possession of the field.  2,000 Austrians were
+killed upon the spot, and Hatzfeldt himself, with 3,000 men, taken
+prisoners.  Thus, on the same day, did the Emperor lose his best general
+and his last army.
+
+This decisive victory at Jancowitz, at once exposed all the Austrian
+territory to the enemy.  Ferdinand hastily fled to Vienna, to provide
+for its defence, and to save his family and his treasures.  In a very
+short time, the victorious Swedes poured, like an inundation, upon
+Moravia and Austria.  After they had subdued nearly the whole of
+Moravia, invested Brunn, and taken all the strongholds as far as the
+Danube, and carried the intrenchments at the Wolf's Bridge, near Vienna,
+they at last appeared in sight of that capital, while the care which
+they had taken to fortify their conquests, showed that their visit was
+not likely to be a short one.  After a long and destructive circuit
+through every province of Germany, the stream of war had at last rolled
+backwards to its source, and the roar of the Swedish artillery now
+reminded the terrified inhabitants of those balls which, twenty-seven
+years before, the Bohemian rebels had fired into Vienna.  The same
+theatre of war brought again similar actors on the scene.  Torstensohn
+invited Ragotsky, the successor of Bethlen Gabor, to his assistance, as
+the Bohemian rebels had solicited that of his predecessor; Upper Hungary
+was already inundated by his troops, and his union with the Swedes was
+daily apprehended.  The Elector of Saxony, driven to despair by the
+Swedes taking up their quarters within his territories, and abandoned by
+the Emperor, who, after the defeat at Jankowitz, was unable to defend
+himself, at length adopted the last and only expedient which remained,
+and concluded a truce with Sweden, which was renewed from year to year,
+till the general peace.  The Emperor thus lost a friend, while a new
+enemy was appearing at his very gates, his armies dispersed, and his
+allies in other quarters of Germany defeated.  The French army had
+effaced the disgrace of their defeat at Deutlingen by a brilliant
+campaign, and had kept the whole force of Bavaria employed upon the
+Rhine and in Suabia.  Reinforced with fresh troops from France, which
+the great Turenne, already distinguished by his victories in Italy,
+brought to the assistance of the Duke of Enghien, they appeared on the
+3rd of August, 1644, before Friburg, which Mercy had lately taken, and
+now covered, with his whole army strongly intrenched.  But against the
+steady firmness of the Bavarians, all the impetuous valour of the French
+was exerted in vain, and after a fruitless sacrifice of 6,000 men, the
+Duke of Enghien was compelled to retreat.  Mazarin shed tears over this
+great loss, which Conde, who had no feeling for anything but glory,
+disregarded.  "A single night in Paris," said he, "gives birth to more
+men than this action has destroyed."  The Bavarians, however, were so
+disabled by this murderous battle, that, far from being in a condition
+to relieve Austria from the menaced dangers, they were too weak even to
+defend the banks of the Rhine.  Spires, Worms, and Manheim capitulated;
+the strong fortress of Philipsburg was forced to surrender by famine;
+and, by a timely submission, Mentz hastened to disarm the conquerors.
+
+Austria and Moravia, however, were now freed from Torstensohn, by a
+similar means of deliverance, as in the beginning of the war had saved
+them from the Bohemians.  Ragotzky, at the head of 25,000 men, had
+advanced into the neighbourhood of the Swedish quarters upon the Danube.
+But these wild undisciplined hordes, instead of seconding the operations
+of Torstensohn by any vigorous enterprise, only ravaged the country, and
+increased the distress which, even before their arrival, had begun to be
+felt in the Swedish camp.  To extort tribute from the Emperor, and money
+and plunder from his subjects, was the sole object that had allured
+Ragotzky, or his predecessor, Bethlen Gabor, into the field; and both
+departed as soon as they had gained their end.  To get rid of him,
+Ferdinand granted the barbarian whatever he asked, and, by a small
+sacrifice, freed his states of this formidable enemy.
+
+In the mean time, the main body of the Swedes had been greatly weakened
+by a tedious encampment before Brunn.  Torstensohn, who commanded in
+person, for four entire months employed in vain all his knowledge of
+military tactics; the obstinacy of the resistance was equal to that of
+the assault; while despair roused the courage of Souches, the
+commandant, a Swedish deserter, who had no hope of pardon.  The ravages
+caused by pestilence, arising from famine, want of cleanliness, and the
+use of unripe fruit, during their tedious and unhealthy encampment, with
+the sudden retreat of the Prince of Transylvania, at last compelled the
+Swedish leader to raise the siege.  As all the passes upon the Danube
+were occupied, and his army greatly weakened by famine and sickness, he
+at last relinquished his intended plan of operations against Austria and
+Moravia, and contented himself with securing a key to these provinces,
+by leaving behind him Swedish garrisons in the conquered fortresses.  He
+then directed his march into Bohemia, whither he was followed by the
+Imperialists, under the Archduke Leopold.  Such of the lost places as
+had not been retaken by the latter, were recovered, after his departure,
+by the Austrian General Bucheim; so that, in the course of the following
+year, the Austrian frontier was again cleared of the enemy, and Vienna
+escaped with mere alarm.  In Bohemia and Silesia too, the Swedes
+maintained themselves only with a very variable fortune; they traversed
+both countries, without being able to hold their ground in either.  But
+if the designs of Torstensohn were not crowned with all the success
+which they were promised at the commencement, they were, nevertheless,
+productive of the most important consequences to the Swedish party.
+Denmark had been compelled to a peace, Saxony to a truce.  The Emperor,
+in the deliberations for a peace, offered greater concessions; France
+became more manageable; and Sweden itself bolder and more confident in
+its bearing towards these two crowns.  Having thus nobly performed his
+duty, the author of these advantages retired, adorned with laurels, into
+the tranquillity of private life, and endeavoured to restore his
+shattered health.
+
+By the retreat of Torstensohn, the Emperor was relieved from all fears
+of an irruption on the side of Bohemia.  But a new danger soon
+threatened the Austrian frontier from Suabia and Bavaria.  Turenne, who
+had separated from Conde, and taken the direction of Suabia, had, in the
+year 1645, been totally defeated by Mercy, near Mergentheim; and the
+victorious Bavarians, under their brave leader, poured into Hesse.  But
+the Duke of Enghien hastened with considerable succours from Alsace,
+Koenigsmark from Moravia, and the Hessians from the Rhine, to recruit
+the defeated army, and the Bavarians were in turn compelled to retire to
+the extreme limits of Suabia.  Here they posted themselves at the
+village of Allersheim, near Nordlingen, in order to cover the Bavarian
+frontier.  But no obstacle could check the impetuosity of the Duke of
+Enghien.  In person, he led on his troops against the enemy's
+entrenchments, and a battle took place, which the heroic resistance of
+the Bavarians rendered most obstinate and bloody; till at last the death
+of the great Mercy, the skill of Turenne, and the iron firmness of the
+Hessians, decided the day in favour of the allies.  But even this second
+barbarous sacrifice of life had little effect either on the course of
+the war, or on the negociations for peace.  The French army, exhausted
+by this bloody engagement, was still farther weakened by the departure
+of the Hessians, and the Bavarians being reinforced by the Archduke
+Leopold, Turenne was again obliged hastily to recross the Rhine.
+
+The retreat of the French, enabled the enemy to turn his whole force
+upon the Swedes in Bohemia.  Gustavus Wrangel, no unworthy successor of
+Banner and Torstensohn, had, in 1646, been appointed Commander-in-chief
+of the Swedish army, which, besides Koenigsmark's flying corps and the
+numerous garrisons disposed throughout the empire, amounted to about
+8,000 horse, and 15,000 foot.  The Archduke, after reinforcing his army,
+which already amounted to 24,000 men, with twelve Bavarian regiments of
+cavalry, and eighteen regiments of infantry, moved against Wrangel, in
+the hope of being able to overwhelm him by his superior force before
+Koenigsmark could join him, or the French effect a diversion in his
+favour.  Wrangel, however, did not await him, but hastened through Upper
+Saxony to the Weser, where he took Hoester and Paderborn.  From thence
+he marched into Hesse, in order to join Turenne, and at his camp at
+Wetzlar, was joined by the flying corps of Koenigsmark.  But Turenne,
+fettered by the instructions of Mazarin, who had seen with jealousy the
+warlike prowess and increasing power of the Swedes, excused himself on
+the plea of a pressing necessity to defend the frontier of France on the
+side of the Netherlands, in consequence of the Flemings having failed to
+make the promised diversion.  But as Wrangel continued to press his just
+demand, and a longer opposition might have excited distrust on the part
+of the Swedes, or induce them to conclude a private treaty with Austria,
+Turenne at last obtained the wished for permission to join the Swedish
+army.
+
+The junction took place at Giessen, and they now felt themselves strong
+enough to meet the enemy.  The latter had followed the Swedes into
+Hesse, in order to intercept their commissariat, and to prevent their
+union with Turenne.  In both designs they had been unsuccessful; and the
+Imperialists now saw themselves cut off from the Maine, and exposed to
+great scarcity and want from the loss of their magazines.  Wrangel took
+advantage of their weakness, to execute a plan by which he hoped to give
+a new turn to the war.  He, too, had adopted the maxim of his
+predecessor, to carry the war into the Austrian States.  But discouraged
+by the ill success of Torstensohn's enterprise, he hoped to gain his end
+with more certainty by another way.  He determined to follow the course
+of the Danube, and to break into the Austrian territories through the
+midst of Bavaria.  A similar design had been formerly conceived by
+Gustavus Adolphus, which he had been prevented carrying into effect by
+the approach of Wallenstein's army, and the danger of Saxony.  Duke
+Bernard moving in his footsteps, and more fortunate than Gustavus, had
+spread his victorious banners between the Iser and the Inn; but the near
+approach of the enemy, vastly superior in force, obliged him to halt in
+his victorious career, and lead back his troops.  Wrangel now hoped to
+accomplish the object in which his predecessors had failed, the more so,
+as the Imperial and Bavarian army was far in his rear upon the Lahn, and
+could only reach Bavaria by a long march through Franconia and the Upper
+Palatinate.  He moved hastily upon the Danube, defeated a Bavarian corps
+near Donauwerth, and passed that river, as well as the Lech, unopposed.
+But by wasting his time in the unsuccessful siege of Augsburg, he gave
+opportunity to the Imperialists, not only to relieve that city, but also
+to repulse him as far as Lauingen.  No sooner, however, had they turned
+towards Suabia, with a view to remove the war from Bavaria, than,
+seizing the opportunity, he repassed the Lech, and guarded the passage
+of it against the Imperialists themselves.  Bavaria now lay open and
+defenceless before him; the French and Swedes quickly overran it; and
+the soldiery indemnified themselves for all dangers by frightful
+outrages, robberies, and extortions.  The arrival of the Imperial
+troops, who at last succeeded in passing the Lech at Thierhaupten, only
+increased the misery of this country, which friend and foe
+indiscriminately plundered.
+
+And now, for the first time during the whole course of this war, the
+courage of Maximilian, which for eight-and-twenty years had stood
+unshaken amidst fearful dangers, began to waver.  Ferdinand II., his
+school-companion at Ingoldstadt, and the friend of his youth, was no
+more; and with the death of his friend and benefactor, the strong tie
+was dissolved which had linked the Elector to the House of Austria.  To
+the father, habit, inclination, and gratitude had attached him; the son
+was a stranger to his heart, and political interests alone could
+preserve his fidelity to the latter prince.
+
+Accordingly, the motives which the artifices of France now put in
+operation, in order to detach him from the Austrian alliance, and to
+induce him to lay down his arms, were drawn entirely from political
+considerations.  It was not without a selfish object that Mazarin had so
+far overcome his jealousy of the growing power of the Swedes, as to
+allow the French to accompany them into Bavaria.  His intention was to
+expose Bavaria to all the horrors of war, in the hope that the
+persevering fortitude of Maximilian might be subdued by necessity and
+despair, and the Emperor deprived of his first and last ally.
+Brandenburg had, under its great sovereign, embraced the neutrality;
+Saxony had been forced to accede to it; the war with France prevented
+the Spaniards from taking any part in that of Germany; the peace with
+Sweden had removed Denmark from the theatre of war; and Poland had been
+disarmed by a long truce.  If they could succeed in detaching the
+Elector of Bavaria also from the Austrian alliance, the Emperor would be
+without a friend in Germany and left to the mercy of the allied powers.
+
+Ferdinand III.  saw his danger, and left no means untried to avert it.
+But the Elector of Bavaria was unfortunately led to believe that the
+Spaniards alone were disinclined to peace, and that nothing, but Spanish
+influence, had induced the Emperor so long to resist a cessation of
+hostilities.  Maximilian detested the Spaniards, and could never forgive
+their having opposed his application for the Palatine Electorate.  Could
+it then be supposed that, in order to gratify this hated power, he would
+see his people sacrificed, his country laid waste, and himself ruined,
+when, by a cessation of hostilities, he could at once emancipate himself
+from all these distresses, procure for his people the repose of which
+they stood so much in need, and perhaps accelerate the arrival of a
+general peace? All doubts disappeared; and, convinced of the necessity
+of this step, he thought he should sufficiently discharge his
+obligations to the Emperor, if he invited him also to share in the
+benefit of the truce.
+
+The deputies of the three crowns, and of Bavaria, met at Ulm, to adjust
+the conditions.  But it was soon evident, from the instructions of the
+Austrian ambassadors that it was not the intention of the Emperor to
+second the conclusion of a truce, but if possible to prevent it.  It was
+obviously necessary to make the terms acceptable to the Swedes, who had
+the advantage, and had more to hope than to fear from the continuance of
+the war.  They were the conquerors; and yet the Emperor presumed to
+dictate to them.  In the first transports of their indignation, the
+Swedish ambassadors were on the point of leaving the congress, and the
+French were obliged to have recourse to threats in order to detain them.
+
+The good intentions of the Elector of Bavaria, to include the Emperor in
+the benefit of the truce, having been thus rendered unavailing, he felt
+himself justified in providing for his own safety.  However hard were
+the conditions on which the truce was to be purchased, he did not
+hesitate to accept it on any terms.  He agreed to the Swedes extending
+their quarters in Suabia and Franconia, and to his own being restricted
+to Bavaria and the Palatinate.  The conquests which he had made in
+Suabia were ceded to the allies, who, on their part, restored to him
+what they had taken from Bavaria.  Cologne and Hesse Cassel were also
+included in the truce.  After the conclusion of this treaty, upon the
+14th March, 1647, the French and Swedes left Bavaria, and in order not
+to interfere with each other, took up different quarters; the former in
+Wuertemberg, the latter in Upper Suabia, in the neighbourhood of the
+Lake of Constance.  On the extreme north of this lake, and on the most
+southern frontier of Suabia, the Austrian town of Bregentz, by its steep
+and narrow passes, seemed to defy attack; and in this persuasion, the
+whole peasantry of the surrounding villages had with their property
+taken refuge in this natural fortress.  The rich booty, which the store
+of provisions it contained, gave reason to expect, and the advantage of
+possessing a pass into the Tyrol, Switzerland and Italy, induced the
+Swedish general to venture an attack upon this supposed impregnable post
+and town, in which he succeeded.  Meantime, Turenne, according to
+agreement, marched into Wuertemberg, where he forced the Landgrave of
+Darmstadt and the Elector of Mentz to imitate the example of Bavaria,
+and to embrace the neutrality.
+
+And now, at last, France seemed to have attained the great object of its
+policy, that of depriving the Emperor of the support of the League, and
+of his Protestant allies, and of dictating to him, sword in hand, the
+conditions of peace.  Of all his once formidable power, an army, not
+exceeding 12,000, was all that remained to him; and this force he was
+driven to the necessity of entrusting to the command of a Calvinist, the
+Hessian deserter Melander, as the casualties of war had stripped him of
+his best generals.  But as this war had been remarkable for the sudden
+changes of fortune it displayed; and as every calculation of state
+policy had been frequently baffled by some unforeseen event, in this
+case also the issue disappointed expectation; and after a brief crisis,
+the fallen power of Austria rose again to a formidable strength.  The
+jealousy which France entertained of Sweden, prevented it from
+permitting the total ruin of the Emperor, or allowing the Swedes to
+obtain such a preponderance in Germany, as might have been destructive
+to France herself.  Accordingly, the French minister declined to take
+advantage of the distresses of Austria; and the army of Turenne,
+separating from that of Wrangel, retired to the frontiers of the
+Netherlands.  Wrangel, indeed, after moving from Suabia into Franconia,
+taking Schweinfurt, and incorporating the imperial garrison of that
+place with his own army, attempted to make his way into Bohemia, and
+laid siege to Egra, the key of that kingdom.  To relieve this fortress,
+the Emperor put his last army in motion, and placed himself at its head.
+But obliged to take a long circuit, in order to spare the lands of Von
+Schlick, the president of the council of war, he protracted his march;
+and on his arrival, Egra was already taken.  Both armies were now in
+sight of each other; and a decisive battle was momentarily expected, as
+both were suffering from want, and the two camps were only separated
+from each other by the space of the entrenchments.  But the
+Imperialists, although superior in numbers, contented themselves with
+keeping close to the enemy, and harassing them by skirmishes, by
+fatiguing marches and famine, until the negociations which had been
+opened with Bavaria were brought to a bearing.
+
+The neutrality of Bavaria, was a wound under which the Imperial court
+writhed impatiently; and after in vain attempting to prevent it, Austria
+now determined, if possible, to turn it to advantage.  Several officers
+of the Bavarian army had been offended by this step of their master,
+which at once reduced them to inaction, and imposed a burdensome
+restraint on their restless disposition.  Even the brave John de Werth
+was at the head of the malcontents, and encouraged by the Emperor, he
+formed a plot to seduce the whole army from their allegiance to the
+Elector, and lead it over to the Emperor.  Ferdinand did not blush to
+patronize this act of treachery against his father's most trusty ally.
+He formally issued a proclamation to the Bavarian troops, in which he
+recalled them to himself, reminded them that they were the troops of the
+empire, which the Elector had merely commanded in name of the Emperor.
+Fortunately for Maximilian, he detected the conspiracy in time enough to
+anticipate and prevent it by the most rapid and effective measures.
+
+This disgraceful conduct of the Emperor might have justified a reprisal,
+but Maximilian was too old a statesman to listen to the voice of
+passion, where policy alone ought to be heard.  He had not derived from
+the truce the advantages he expected.  Far from tending to accelerate a
+general peace, it had a pernicious influence upon the negociations at
+Munster and Osnaburg, and had made the allies bolder in their demands.
+The French and Swedes had indeed removed from Bavaria; but, by the loss
+of his quarters in the Suabian circle, he found himself compelled either
+to exhaust his own territories by the subsistence of his troops, or at
+once to disband them, and to throw aside the shield and spear, at the
+very moment when the sword alone seemed to be the arbiter of right.
+Before embracing either of these certain evils, he determined to try a
+third step, the unfavourable issue of which was at least not so certain,
+viz., to renounce the truce and resume the war.
+
+This resolution, and the assistance which he immediately despatched to
+the Emperor in Bohemia, threatened materially to injure the Swedes, and
+Wrangel was compelled in haste to evacuate that kingdom.  He retired
+through Thuringia into Westphalia and Lunenburg, in the hope of forming
+a junction with the French army under Turenne, while the Imperial and
+Bavarian army followed him to the Weser, under Melander and Gronsfeld.
+His ruin was inevitable, if the enemy should overtake him before his
+junction with Turenne; but the same consideration which had just saved
+the Emperor, now proved the salvation of the Swedes.  Even amidst all
+the fury of the conquest, cold calculations of prudence guided the
+course of the war, and the vigilance of the different courts increased,
+as the prospect of peace approached.  The Elector of Bavaria could not
+allow the Emperor to obtain so decisive a preponderance as, by the
+sudden alteration of affairs, might delay the chances of a general
+peace.  Every change of fortune was important now, when a pacification
+was so ardently desired by all, and when the disturbance of the balance
+of power among the contracting parties might at once annihilate the work
+of years, destroy the fruit of long and tedious negociations, and
+indefinitely protract the repose of Europe.  If France sought to
+restrain the Swedish crown within due bounds, and measured out her
+assistance according to her successes and defeats, the Elector of
+Bavaria silently undertook the same task with the Emperor his ally, and
+determined, by prudently dealing out his aid, to hold the fate of
+Austria in his own hands.  And now that the power of the Emperor
+threatened once more to attain a dangerous superiority, Maximilian at
+once ceased to pursue the Swedes.  He was also afraid of reprisals from
+France, who had threatened to direct Turenne's whole force against him
+if he allowed his troops to cross the Weser.
+
+Melander, prevented by the Bavarians from further pursuing Wrangel,
+crossed by Jena and Erfurt into Hesse, and now appeared as a dangerous
+enemy in the country which he had formerly defended.  If it was the
+desire of revenge upon his former sovereign, which led him to choose
+Hesse for the scene of his ravage, he certainly had his full
+gratification.  Under this scourge, the miseries of that unfortunate
+state reached their height.  But he had soon reason to regret that, in
+the choice of his quarters, he had listened to the dictates of revenge
+rather than of prudence.  In this exhausted country, his army was
+oppressed by want, while Wrangel was recruiting his strength, and
+remounting his cavalry in Lunenburg.  Too weak to maintain his wretched
+quarters against the Swedish general, when he opened the campaign in the
+winter of 1648, and marched against Hesse, he was obliged to retire with
+disgrace, and take refuge on the banks of the Danube.
+
+France had once more disappointed the expectations of Sweden; and the
+army of Turenne, disregarding the remonstrances of Wrangel, had remained
+upon the Rhine.  The Swedish leader revenged himself, by drawing into
+his service the cavalry of Weimar, which had abandoned the standard of
+France, though, by this step, he farther increased the jealousy of that
+power.  Turenne received permission to join the Swedes; and the last
+campaign of this eventful war was now opened by the united armies.
+Driving Melander before them along the Danube, they threw supplies into
+Egra, which was besieged by the Imperialists, and defeated the Imperial
+and Bavarian armies on the Danube, which ventured to oppose them at
+Susmarshausen, where Melander was mortally wounded.  After this
+overthrow, the Bavarian general, Gronsfeld, placed himself on the
+farther side of the Lech, in order to guard Bavaria from the enemy.
+
+But Gronsfeld was not more fortunate than Tilly, who, in this same
+position, had sacrificed his life for Bavaria.  Wrangel and Turenne
+chose the same spot for passing the river, which was so gloriously
+marked by the victory of Gustavus Adolphus, and accomplished it by the
+same means, too, which had favoured their predecessor.  Bavaria was now
+a second time overrun, and the breach of the truce punished by the
+severest treatment of its inhabitants.  Maximilian sought shelter in
+Salzburgh, while the Swedes crossed the Iser, and forced their way as
+far as the Inn.  A violent and continued rain, which in a few days
+swelled this inconsiderable stream into a broad river, saved Austria
+once more from the threatened danger.  The enemy ten times attempted to
+form a bridge of boats over the Inn, and as often it was destroyed by
+the current.  Never, during the whole course of the war, had the
+Imperialists been in so great consternation as at present, when the
+enemy were in the centre of Bavaria, and when they had no longer a
+general left who could be matched against a Turenne, a Wrangel, and a
+Koenigsmark.  At last the brave Piccolomini arrived from the
+Netherlands, to assume the command of the feeble wreck of the
+Imperialists.  By their own ravages in Bohemia, the allies had rendered
+their subsistence in that country impracticable, and were at last driven
+by scarcity to retreat into the Upper Palatinate, where the news of the
+peace put a period to their activity.
+
+Koenigsmark, with his flying corps, advanced towards Bohemia, where
+Ernest Odowalsky, a disbanded captain, who, after being disabled in the
+imperial service, had been dismissed without a pension, laid before him
+a plan for surprising the lesser side of the city of Prague.
+Koenigsmark successfully accomplished the bold enterprise, and acquired
+the reputation of closing the thirty years' war by the last brilliant
+achievement.  This decisive stroke, which vanquished the Emperor's
+irresolution, cost the Swedes only the loss of a single man.  But the
+old town, the larger half of Prague, which is divided into two parts by
+the Moldau, by its vigorous resistance wearied out the efforts of the
+Palatine, Charles Gustavus, the successor of Christina on the throne,
+who had arrived from Sweden with fresh troops, and had assembled the
+whole Swedish force in Bohemia and Silesia before its walls.  The
+approach of winter at last drove the besiegers into their quarters, and
+in the mean time, the intelligence arrived that a peace had been signed
+at Munster, on the 24th October.
+
+The colossal labour of concluding this solemn, and ever memorable and
+sacred treaty, which is known by the name of the peace of Westphalia;
+the endless obstacles which were to be surmounted; the contending
+interests which it was necessary to reconcile; the concatenation of
+circumstances which must have co-operated to bring to a favourable
+termination this tedious, but precious and permanent work of policy; the
+difficulties which beset the very opening of the negociations, and
+maintaining them, when opened, during the ever-fluctuating vicissitudes
+of the war; finally, arranging the conditions of peace, and still more,
+the carrying them into effect; what were the conditions of this peace;
+what each contending power gained or lost, by the toils and sufferings
+of a thirty years' war; what modification it wrought upon the general
+system of European policy;--these are matters which must be relinquished
+to another pen.  The history of the peace of Westphalia constitutes a
+whole, as important as the history of the war itself.  A mere abridgment
+of it, would reduce to a mere skeleton one of the most interesting and
+characteristic monuments of human policy and passions, and deprive it of
+every feature calculated to fix the attention of the public, for which I
+write, and of which I now respectfully take my leave.
+
+
+
+
+[Note From the first PG etext of this work:
+Separate sources indicate that at the beginning of this war there were
+about 15 million people in Germany, and at the end of the war there were
+about 4 million.  If this is not surprising enough, war broke out again
+only 10 years after the conclusion of this war.]
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30 YEARS WAR, BY SCHILLER, BOOK V. ***
+
+*********** This file should be named 6774.txt or 6774.zip ************
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