Lectures and Essays. Smith Goldwin

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СКАЧАТЬ He is in Munich, the capital of Maximilian and the Catholic League. His allies the Saxons are in Prague. A few marches more and he will dictate peace at Vienna with all Germany at his back. A few marches more the Germans will be a Protestant nation under a Protestant chief and many a dark page will be torn from the book of fate.

      Ferdinand and Maximilian had sought counsel of the dying Tilly. Tilly had given them counsel bitter but inevitable. Dissembling their hate and fear they called like trembling necromancers when they invoke the fiend upon the name of power. The name of Wallenstein gave new life to the Imperial cause under the very ribs of death. At once he stood between the Empire and destruction with an army of 50,000 men, conjured, as it were, out of the earth by the spell of his influence alone. All whose trade was war came at the call of the grand master of their trade. The secret of Wallenstein's ambition is buried in his grave, but the man himself was the prince of adventurers, the ideal chief of mercenary bands, the arch contractor for the hireling's blood. His character was formed in a vast political gambling house, a world given up to pillage and the strong hand, an Eldorado of confiscations. Of the lofty dreamer portrayed in the noble dramatic poem of Schiller, there is little trace in the intensely practical character of the man. A scion of a good Bohemian house, poor himself, but married to a rich wife, whose wealth was the first step in the ladder of his marvellous fortunes, Wallenstein had amassed immense domains by the purchase of confiscated estates, a traffic redeemed from meanness only by the vastness of the scale on which he practised it, and the loftiness of the aim which he had in view. Then he took to raising and commanding mercenary troops, improving on his predecessors in that trade by doubling the size of his army, on the theory, coolly avowed by him, that a large army would subsist by its command of the country, where a small army would starve. But all was subservient to his towering ambition, and to a pride which has been called theatrical, and which often wore an eccentric garb, but which his death scene proves to have been the native grand infirmity of the man. He walked in dark ways and was unscrupulous and ruthless when on the path of his ambition; but none can doubt the self sustaining force of his lonely intellect, his power of command, the spell which his character cast over the fierce and restless spirits of his age. Prince- Duke of Friedland, Mecklenburgh, and Sagan, Generalissimo of the armies of the House of Austria—to this height had the landless and obscure adventurer risen, in envy's despite, as his motto proudly said, not by the arts of a courtier or a demagogue, but by strength of brain and heart, in a contest with rivals whose brains and hearts were strong. Highest he stood among the uncrowned heads of Europe, and dreaded by the crowned. We wonder how the boisterous soldiers can have loved a chief who was so far from being a comrade, a being so disdainful and reserved, who at the sumptuous table kept by his officers never appeared, never joined in the revelry, even in the camp lived alone, punished intrusion on his haughty privacy as a crime. But his name was victory and plunder; he was lavishly munificent, as one who knew that those who play a deep game must lay down heavy stakes, his eye was quick to discern, his hand prompt to reward the merit of the buccaneer; and those who followed his soaring fortunes knew that they would share them. If he was prompt to reward, he was also stern in punishment, and a certain arbitrariness both in reward and punishment made the soldier feel that the commander's will was law. If Wallenstein was not the boon companion of the mercenaries, he was their divinity, and he was himself essentially one of them—even his superstition was theirs, and filled the same void of faith in his as in their hearts; though, while the common soldier raised the fiend to charm bullets, or bought spells and amulets of a quack at Nuremburg or Augsburg, Seni, the first astrologer of the age, explored the sympathizing stars for the august destiny of the Duke of Friedland. Like Uriel and Satan in Paradise Lost, Gustavus and Wallenstein stood opposed to each other. On one side was the enthusiast, on the other the mighty gamester, playing the great game of his life without emotion, by intensity of thought alone. On one side was the crusader, on the other the indifferentist, without faith except in his star. On the one side was as much good, perhaps, as has ever appeared in the form of a conqueror, on the other side the majesty of evil. Gustavus was young, his frame was vigorous and active, though inclined to corpulence, his complexion fair, his hair golden, his eye blue and merry, his countenance frank as day, and the image of a heart which had felt the kindest influences of love and friendship. Wallenstein was past his prime, his frame was tall, spare, somewhat bowed by pain, his complexion dark, his eye black and piercing, his look that of a man who trod slippery paths with deadly rivals at his side, and of whose many letters not one is to a friend. But, opposites in all else, the two champions were well matched in power. Perhaps there is hardly such another duel in history. Such another there would have been if Strafford had lived to encounter Cromwell.

      The market for the great adventurer's services having risen so high, the price which he asked was large—a principality in hand, a province to be conquered, supreme command of the army which he had raised. The court suggested that if the emperor's son, the King of Hungary, were put over Wallenstein's head, his name would be a tower of strength, but Wallenstein answered with a blasphemous frankness which must have made the ears of courtiers tingle. He would be emperor of the army; he would be emperor in the matter of confiscations. The last article shows how he won the soldier's heart. Perhaps in framing his terms, he gave something to his wounded pride. If he did, the luxury cost him dear, for here he trod upon the serpent that stung his life.

      The career of Gustavus was at once arrested, and he took shelter against the storm in an entrenched camp protected by three hundred cannon under the walls of Nuremberg—Nuremberg the eldest daughter of the German Reformation, the Florence of Germany in art, wealth and freedom, then the beautiful home of early commerce, now its romantic tomb. The desolation of her grass-grown streets dates from that terrible day. The Swedish lines were scarcely completed when Wallenstein appeared with all his power, and sweeping past, entrenched himself four miles from his enemy in a position the key of which were the wooded hill and old castle of the Altenberg. Those who chance to visit that spot may fancy there Wallenstein's camp as it is in Schiller, ringing with the boisterous revelry of its wild and motley bands. And they may fancy the sudden silence, the awe of men who knew no other awe, as in his well-known dress, the laced buff coat with crimson scarf, and the grey hat with crimson plume, Wallenstein rode by. Week after week and month after month these two heavy clouds of war hung close together, and Europe looked for the bursting of the storm. But famine was to do Wallenstein's work; and by famine and the pestilence, bred by the horrible state of the camp, at last his work was done. The utmost limit of deadly inaction for the Swedes arrived. Discipline and honour gave way, and could scarcely be restored by the passionate eloquence of Gustavus. Oxenstiern brought large reinforcements; and on the 24th August Wallenstein saw—with grim pleasure he must have seen—Gustavus advancing to attack him in his lines. By five hundred at a time—there was room for no more in the narrow path of death—the Swedes scaled the flashing and thundering Altenberg. They scaled it again and again through a long summer's day. Once it was all but won. But at evening the Nurembergers saw their hero and protector retiring, for the first time defeated, from the field. Yet Gustavus had not lost the confidence of his soldiers. He had shared their danger and had spared their blood. In ten hours' hard fighting he had lost only 2,000 men. But Wallenstein might well shower upon his wounded soldiers the only balm for the wounds of men fighting without a country or a cause. He might well write to the emperor: "The King of Sweden has blunted his horns a good deal. Henceforth the title of Invincible belongs not to him, but to your Majesty." No doubt Ferdinand thought it did.

      Gustavus now broke up and marched on Bavaria, abandoning the great Protestant city, with the memory of Magdeburg in his heart. But Nuremberg was not to share the fate of Magdeburg. The Imperial army was not in a condition to form the siege. It had suffered as much as that of Gustavus. That such troops should have been held together in such extremity proves their general's power of command. Wallenstein soon gladdened the eyes of the Nurembergers by firing his camp, and declining to follow the lure into Bavaria, marched on Saxony, joined another Imperial army under Pappenheim and took Leipsic.

      To save Saxony Gustavus left Bavaria half conquered. As he hurried to the rescue, the people on his line of march knelt to kiss the hem of his garment, the sheath of his delivering sword, and could scarcely be prevented from adoring him as a god. His religious spirit was filled with a presentiment that the idol in which they trusted would be soon laid low. On the СКАЧАТЬ