PARALLEL LIVES. 15206 PARALLEL LIVES ANCIENT AND MODERN HEROES OF EPAMINONDAS 1 (GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS, >AND^ PHILIP OF MACEDONJ (.FREDERIC THE GREAT. BT CHARLES DUKE 1 YONGE, AUTHOR or A "HISTORY or KNOLA.VD." rro LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY. 1858. LOITDOX: RADBCRT AMD KVANS, PRUfTKBS, WIHTEFRUJU. NOTICE THE chief authorities for the following sketches, besides the classical authors, are Thirlwall's and Grote's Histories of Greece, Harte's Life of Gus- tavus Adolphus, Coxe's House of Austria, Schiller's Thirty Years' War, Lord Dover's Life of Frederic the Great, Campbell's Life of Frederic the Great, Frederic's own Memoirs, the Memoirs of the Margravine of Bayreuth, and the Memoirs of the Prince de Ligne. CONTENTS. LIFE OF EPAMINOXDAS. PAGE The Value of Comparative History . 8 The Family of Epaminondas 5 He became a Pupil of Lysis . 6 And a Friend of Pelopidas . 6 Political importance and power of Thebes . . 7 Epaminondas serves in the Theban army against Man- tinea .... 7 Saves the life of Pelopidas . 8 Abstains from aiding him in the recovery of the Cadmea 8 Influences Thebes to join Athens against Sparta . 9 Persuades the other Boeotian cities to join Thebes * 9 Is sent to Sparta to negotiate for peace . . .10 Distinguishes himself by his eloquence . . .11 Defeats the Lacedaemonians at Leuctra . . .IS Fortitude of the Lacedemo- nians .... 19 He invades Peloponnesus and restores the Messenians to their country . . 20 PAGE Threatens Lacedaemon . 21 Is impeached for an illegal retention of office . . 22 Invades Peloponnesus to gain over Sicyon to the Theban Alliance . . .23 Delivers Pelopidas from Alex- ander of Pheree . . 24 Goes as Ambassador to Ar- cadia . * . .25 Persuades Thebes to build a Fleet, and visits the Ionian Coast .... 27 Refuses the presents of Ar- taxerxes . . .28 The Thebans destroy Orcho- menos . . . .29 Epaminondas defends the arrest of the Arcadians . 31 Invades Peloponnesus . . 83 Attempts to surprise Lace- dffimon . . . .34 The valour of Isidas . . 35 Attempts to surprise Man- tinea . -. . .87 Battle of Mantinea, and death of Epaminondas . . 88 Tiii CONTENTS. LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. MM Pedigree and birth of Gus- Uvns . . . .43 He succeeds to the throne of Sweden .... 44 Is attacked by Christian IV. of Denmark . . .45 Makes Oxenstiern his Minis- ter . . . .46 Encourages the University of Dpsal .... 46 Defeats the Russians . . 47 Compels Sigisinund of Poland to sue for peace . . 47 Improves the Swedish navy 48 Remodels the Swedish army 48 Makes a firm alliance with Christian ... 49 Marries Maria Eleanors of Brandenburg . . .49 Invades Poland, takes Riga, and again compels Sigis- mund to sue for peace . 50 Excites the admiration of Spinola . . .50 Improves the internal condi- tion of Sweden . .51 Annexes Livonia to Sweden . 51 Subdues Polish Prussia . 52 Protects the persecuted Pro- testants .... 54 Suppresses Duelling . . .55 I wounded at Dantzic . 56 Sends a reinforcement to Strahrand ... 07 Miseries caused by the Thirty Years' War .-.,.. . 69 Arnheim attacks Gustarus . 60 PAGE Qustavus makes peace with Poland .... 61 Singular political and reli- gious complications of the War . . .62 Gustavus invades Germany . 63 Appoints a Regency during his absence from Sweden . 64 Declares Christina his suc- cessor . . . .65 The good discipline of the Swedish army . . 67 The German Generals despise Gustavus ... 68 He oners peace . . .70 Tilly succeeds Wallestein as the German Commander- in-Chief . .72 Gustavus gains the alliance of France, England, and Holland .... 73 Tilly takes New Brandenburgh 74 Gustavus takes Frankfort- on-the-Oder . .74 And Landsperg . . .75 Tilly takes Magdeburg, and destroys it with terrible barbarity . , .76 Gustavus pursues Tilly . 79 Tilly takes Leipsic . . 80 Gustavus defeats him at Breitenfeldt . . .81 Marches towards the Rhine . 85 Crosses it and takes May- ence .... 87 Richelieu becomes suspicious of him . , 87 CONTENTS. Gustavus marches towards the Danube . . 88 Defeats Tilly and takes Augs- burg . . . .89 Takes Munich . . 90 Wallestein resumes the com- mand of the German armies 91 Vladislaus succeeds Sigismund as King of Poland . . 92 Gustavus retires to Nurein- burg .... 98 Wallestein entrenches himself at Kurt . .94 Great distress in Gustavus's camp . . 96 PAO Civilities between Gustavus and Wallestein . .97 Gustavus retires into Bavaria 98 Wallestein pursues him . 100 Gustavus parts from his Queen .... 100 His popularity in Saxony . 101 He encamps at Naumburg . 101 Attempts to surprise Walles- tein at Lutzcn . .103 Battle of Lutzen . .104 Death of Gustavus . .107 A Monument is raised to his memory by Charles John XIV. . 107 PARALLEL BETWEEN ErAMINONDAS AND GTJSTA.VT7S. PAGE Both military Reformers . 10S Both men of great humanity 109 Both Orators and Statesmen 110 Both disinterested Patriots .112 PAOI Schiller not justified in im- puting excessive personal ambition to Gustavus . 113 LIFE OF PHILIP, KING OF MACEDON. PAOE Early Kings of Macedon . 117 Youth and Education of Philip 118 He seizes the throne, first as Regent, then as King . 120 The niyrians prepare to in- vade Macedonia . .120 Philip's great abilities . 121 He tries to conciliate the Athenians . . .122 He subdues the Illyrians . 123 PAOK Reforms his army . . 1 25 Takes Amphipolis and Pydna 126 Aids the Olynthians to re- cover Potidtea . .127 Marries Olympias, a princess of Epirus . . .128 Alexander the Great is born . 128 Philip cultivates his navy . 129 The Sacred War . . . 131 Philip takes Methone . . 132 CONTENTS. PAOX He defeats Phayllus and Lyoophron . . .133 Onomarchaa defeats Philip . 133 Philip defeats Onomarchus . 133 Hia fleet scours the JEgean . 134 He invades Thrace . . 135 The rise of Demosthenes .135 Philip attacks Olynthus . 136 He takes and destroys it .138 Encourages the Euboeans in revolt .... 139 Celebrates magnificent games at Dium . . .140 Improves the internal con- dition of Macedon . . 1 40 Entrusts Alexander to Aris- totle as his tutor . . 141 Philip's general moderation and equity . . . 143 He makes peace with Athens 147 lie subdues Cersobleptes . 148 He subdues Phocis . .150 Obtains the Phoolan vote in the Amphictyonic Council. 151 Isocrates urges him to invade Asia .... 153 Demosthenes' Second Philip- pic .... 155 Philip divides Thessaly into tetrarchies . . . 150 He overruns Thrace . .159 The Athenians send a force into Eubcea . 160 PAGE Demosthenes goes on an em* bassy to Byzantium . .160 Philip takes Selymbria and ravages the Chersonese .161 He lays siege to Perm thus . 162 Sends a letter to the Athe- nians .... 162 Fails at Perinthus and at Byzantium . . .164 Attacks the Scythians . .164 Is wounded in a battle with theTriballi . . .165 The Second Sacred War . 165 He threatens to invade At- tica . . . . 166 Demosthenes rouses the Athe- nians, and makes an alli- ance with Thebes . . 167 Philip defeats the Athenians and Thebans at Choerouea 168 Alexander's eminent bravery 169 Philip's generosity to the Athenians . . .170 In a congress at Corinth the Greeks name him Com- mander -in -Chief against Persia . . . .171 He invades and ravages La- eonia .... 171 His quarrels with Olympiaa and Alexander . .172 He is murdered at >o . . 175 CONTENTS. LIFE OF FREDERIC THE GREAT. PAGE Previous kings of Prussia . 177 Unnatural cruelty of Frederic William . . .179 Early tastes of Frederic . 181 The King tries him by court martial, and imprisons him at Custrin . . .182 Frederic marries the Princess of Severn . . . 183 He succeeds to the throne on the death of his father . 186 His sudden devotion to busi- ness . . . 186 He occupies himself with the internal improvement of his dominions . . .187 The Emperor Charles VI. dies 188 Frederic claims Silesia, and attacks Maria Teresa . 189 He invades Silesia, and takes Brealau . . . .191 The battle of Molwitz . . 192 Maria Teresa cedes Lower Silesia to Frederic . . 193 She convokes the states of Hungary '. . . 193 Frederic breaks the truce, and invades Moravia . .194 Defeats Prince Charles, and gains the rest of the Silesia 195 Makes a treaty with George II. of England . . .195 Battle of Dettingen . . . 195 Voltaire is sent to Frederic as a French envoy . .195 Frederic renews the war with the Empress . . . 196 PAOE Takes Prague, but succeeds in no other point . .196 He applies to England for aid without success . .197 Maria Teresa concludes a treaty with England and Saxony . .^ . . 198 The battle of Hohenfriedberg 199 Francis of Lorraine is elected Emperor . . . 200 The battle of Sorr . . . 200 Peace is made at Dresden . 201 Frederic receives the name of 1 ' The Great, " on his return to Berlin . . .201 His labours for the improve- ment of his kingdom . 202 He establishes religions tole- ration and the freedom of the press . . . 205 Mitigates the severity of the law . . . .207 Patronises the fine arts . . 209 Establishes an Academy of Science . . . 209 Invites Voltaire to Prussia . 209 Devotes himself greatly to literary compositions . 212 Quarrels with Voltaire . .214 Encourages trade and com- merce .... 217 The Empress forms an alliance with Russia and France . 213 The abilities of Prince Kau- nitz . . . . 220 Frederic again declares war against the Empress . 223 xii CONTENTS. PAGE He takes Dresden . . 223 The battle of Lowositi . . 224 He makes a treaty with England . . . 225 Defeats the Austrians at Prague . . . .226 The battle of Eolin . . 227 Frederic retreats into Saxony 229 Berlin is compelled to ransom itself . . . .230 The battle of Rosbaoh . . 231 The battle of Leuthen . . 233 Fredtrio makes a new treaty with England . . . 284 Battle of Zorndof . . . 235 Frederic is surprised and defeated at Hochkirch . 236 Battle of Kunendof . . 238 Frederic thinks of suicide . 240 Daun gains great advantages over his lieutenants . . 241 PAGE Great distress in Prussia . 242 The battle of Leignitz . . 244 The battle of Torgau . . 244 On the death of George II. England makes peace with France .... 245 The war terminated February, 1 763, by a peace signed at Hubertsburg . . .246 Great distress in Prussia . 247 The Grand Seignor sends an embassy to Berlin . . 249 Frederic's conferences with the Emperor . . . 251 He proposes to Joseph the partition of Poland . . 252 He again declares war against Austria on the subject of the Bavarian succession . 257 Peace is restored . . 258 Frederic dies, 1786 . . 260 PARALLEL BETWEEN PHILIP AND FREDERIC. PAGE Their fondness for war . 261 Philip's attacks on Thrace re- semble Frederic's on Silesia 262 Both men of great military kill . . . .262 And of fortitude and perse- verance . . 264 Both men of politic humanity 264 Both able diplomatists and statesmen . . 265 PAGE Both wise rulers . . . 266 Both accomplished and learned men . . . .267 Each greatly increased the power of his country . 268 Philip a religions man, Fre- deric an infidel . . . 269 Frederic the greater sovereign, Philip the better man . 2C9 EPAMINONDAS, THE THEBAN, GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. THE LIFE OF EPAMINONDAS, THE THEBAN. THE ample learning and large views with which both the history of ancient times and that of our own country have of late been written, afford the modern reader facilities for applying himself to such studies in a right spirit and a profitable manner, which were hardly attainable by a former generation. However, the field of what may be called compara- tive history, bringing ancient and modern times and nations into juxtaposition, is still almost un- touched ; though it would appear to be not the least beneficial, and certainly not the least enter- taining, portion of the subject ; while the easiest and most attractive method of cultivating it may probably be that of examining and comparing the lives of some of those illustrious men of both eras, whose great 'deeds, or, it may be, whose eminent position has kept them before the eyes of all succeeding ages. I purpose therefore to set before B 2 THE LIFE OF EPAMINONDAS. the reader, with as much brevity as possible, short biographical sketches of some of the greatest of the heroes of Greece and Rome, and an equal number of those of modern times, drawing a parallel between each pair in imitation of the plan so successfully executed by Plutarch. It will not be expected that the resemblances will generally, or indeed often, be very minute; there may even be cases when the comparison instituted will seem one of contrast rather than of similarity. The total difference of feelings and customs which has arisen among all nations since the Christian Era; the infinitely more extended field of action which is spread before the modern statesman, than that which was conceived by the wisest and most far-sighted of the ancients; the magnitude of modern kingdoms, and the complicated interests involved and dealt with in modern politics, as compared with the diminutive size and narrow views of the ancient republics of Greece, and of Rome in its earlier history ; and, in later times, the absence of any rival to the Imperial City, form a combination of circumstances which could not fail to mark the career of men of naturally the most similar cha- racters with great points of difference. But still, as the human heart is the same in all ages, and in all climes, it is ever swayed by similar passions, and obedient to the impulse of similar motives, however the changes of religion and manners may THE LIFE OF EPAMINONDA8. 5 have contributed to vary the professions under which it is attempted to disguise them ; and as these unaltered passions and motives will at all times and under all circumstances produce nearly similar effects, there is no age and no country which has been softened by any kind of civilisation, which may not in its degree furnish lessons of great value to the young and inexperienced, and sometimes perhaps not wholly beneath the notice of the philosopher or the statesman. It cannot but be profitable as well as pleasing to dwell on the contemplation of virtuous principles and noble actions ; and, though not equally delightful, it may be even more instructive occasionally to mark and draw warnings from the errors, or follies, or vices which may have marred the perfection of that example, which might otherwise have justly been held up as a model for undeviating imitation. The early life of Epaminondas is involved in great obscurity ; that, though poor, he was de- scended from one of the most ancient and illus- trious families * in Thebes we know, but of the time of his birth we are ignorant ; and, though we are told that his father's name was Polymnis, * He was one of the Sparti, so called from pursue the flying, or to slaughter their unresisting enemies ; the cavalry fell back ; the allies opposed to the Athenians, who were fighting with a resolution undismayed by the rout of their allies at the other extremity of the line, ceased to attack them, and the combat was over except where some of the Thessalian light - infantry, who had been mingled with their cavalry, straggled in the security of conquest to the Athenian ranks, and by their slaughter afforded them a pretext for erecting a trophy and claiming a victory. THE LIFE OF EPAMINONDAS. 41 Victory, however, did not belong to their side. The Thebans were masters of the field of battle, and the Lacedaemonians, who sent a herald to request permission to bury their dead, by that request confessed their own defeat. Of the extent of the loss sustained by the contending armies we are ignorant; but some of the most eminent of the Thebans had fallen besides the chief; and there was no one left fit to take the command, or possessed of influence enough over the allies, and sufficient military skill to turn the dear-bought victory to account. The dying hero was borne off the field with the fatal spear still sticking in the wound. His last thoughts were for his honour and his country. The questions which he addressed to his friends with anxious solicitude, concerned the safety of his shield, and the certainty of victory for Thebes. When assured on these points, he declared himself willing to die, (he had been used to say, that the happiest death for a warrior was on the field of battle,) and commanding the spear which was still sticking in the wound to be drawn out, he expired. So important was his death, that every nation which fought against him, claimed the honour of having slain him for one of her citizens, the Mantineans for a man named Machserion ; the Athenians for Gryllus, the son of Xenophon, though that could hardly be, for the wing of the 42 THE LIFE OF EPAMINONDAS. army of which the Athenians formed a part, was not that with which Epaminondas had been engaged ; and five hundred years afterwards the Spartans called the descendants of Anticipates, to whom tlu-y attributed the exploit, by a name indicative of the martial prowess of their ancestor, and still allowed them the same exemption from taxes, which in the first moment of exultation they had conferred upon their ancestor. On " the field of his fame " his countrymen buried their fallen chief; a column was raised over his grave, adorned with emblems, denoting his warlike prowess, and his illustrious descent ; and on his statue the Thebans carved the following inscription recording, in a few words, the achieve- ments and objects of his life. While I in life Boeotia's councils swayed, Frond Sparta learnt to bow the humbled knee ; Restored Messene raised her sacred head ; Thebes was triumphant, and all Greece was free. TUB LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS, KING OF SWEDEN. GUSTAVUS THE SECOND, or Gustavus Adolphus, to give him the double name by which he is usually distinguished, was the grandson of Gustavus Vasa, the deliverer of Sweden ; of whom his father Charles was the youngest son. His eldest uncle, Eric, had died without issue, after a reign of eight years, and was succeeded by his brother John. John died in 1592, leaving one son named Sigis- inund, who a few years before had been elected king of Poland, and another by a second wife, John, Duke of Ostrogothia. Sigismund succeeded to the throne, but his Swedish subjects, being enraged at his abandonment of the Protestant religion, which was established by law in the country, and which he had himself sworn to main- tain ; and also at his open design and endeavour to reduce their nation to the condition of a mere province or dependency of Poland, deposed him 44 THE LIFE OF GUSTAVTJS ADOLPHUS. in favour of his infant son, Vladislaus ; and the next year they deposed Vladislaus also, and raised Charles, then duke of Sudermania, to the vacant throne. Under his wise and energetic rule Sweden, though scarcely ever at peace, made great advances in internal prosperity, as well as in military power and reputation. After a reign of ten years, he died, leaving his kingdom to his eldest son, Gustavus Adolphus, whose education he had super- intended with peculiar care ; and for whom, two years before his death, he had endeavoured to negotiate a marriage with the Princess Elizabeth of England, who afterwards became the wife of that unfortunate Elector Palatine Frederic V., whose ill-judging ambition was the principal cause of the thirty years' war. Gustavus, whose mother Christina, the second wife of Charles IX., was the daughter of Adolphus, duke of Holstein, was born December 9, A.D. 1594 ; so that on his father's death, in 1611, he was not yet seventeen years of age, wanting more than a year of his majority, which is fixed in Sweden at eighteen. So high, however, was the opinion that the estates of the kingdom had already formed of his abilities, that two months after his accession, his cousin, the duke of Ostrogothia, who was his principal guardian, with their unanimous consent resigned his charge, and committed the uncon- THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. 45 trolled power to his youthful hands; and on the last day of the year, he was solemnly crowned king of Sweden. He came to the throne at a very critical time for his country, when the surrounding states were either openly at war with it, or cherishing designs of secret hostility against it. His first and most formidable enemy was Christian IV., king of Denmark, then in the prime of life, an ambitious, warlike, and able monarch ; who had gained some considerable advantages over Charles IX., and who continued the war with increased vigour when encouraged by the accession of so youthful a Prince. During the year 1612, the advantage was, on the whole, on the side of Denmark ; and Gustavus, who was naturally a lover of peace, and who desired rather to direct his attention to the amelioration of the internal condition of his sub- jects, accepted the mediation of James I. of England, and concluded a peace with Denmark, not without some sacrifices, in the ensuing January. He now applied himself diligently to measures of domestic reform and improvement. Trade and commerce could hardly be said as yet to have any existence in the country, which was almost equally destitute of any warlike or mercantile marine. Gustavus employed the first moments of peace in effecting a treaty with Holland, at that time the first commercial nation in Europe ; which, among 46 THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. other advantages, enabled him to attract into his service skilful sailors from that country. Then, having committed the principal administration of all civil affairs to Oxenstiern, who was at that time a young man of eight or nine-and-twenty years of age, hut who had already given indications of that admirable political and administrative genius which has raised him to an equal reputation with the most famous ministers of the most powerful nations of Europe. He proceeded to regulate the royal revenues, to codify the laws, and to take measures for the encouragement of education in the native University of Upsal ; for previously the wealthiest and noblest Swedes had been educated chiefly at "Warsaw or Cracow, where they had not unnaturally imbibed sentiments favourable to Sigismund, who had not yet given up the idea of recovering the Swedish crown. Muscovy and Poland had long borne ill-will towards Sweden, that of Muscovy being sharpened by a disinclination to repay a heavy loan which had been advanced to her. Gustavus, who had assured Christian of his peaceable inclinations by the mouth of Oxenstiern, whom he had sent to Denmark as his ambassador, and who had renewed these assurances in a conference which he himself had with that sovereign, sent envoys with proposals of peace to the Czar, who at first would listen to no terms of accommodation ; but when Gustavus THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. 47 hml invaded Russia, had defeated his array, and had taken one or two of his most strongly fortified towns and fortresses, he likewise begged the inter- position of England, and obtained peace by the sacrifice of some considerable provinces. The hostility of Sigismund, king of Poland, was more important, and more durable ; he looked upon the throne of Sweden as his own by the right of inheritance, and refused all proposals to treat, thinking that the youth of Gustavus offered him a fair prospect of recovering it. While he was pre- paring for war, Gustavus resolved to anticipate him ; and, taking advantage of the necessity which Sigismund was under of dividing his forces, (since Bethlehem Gabor, enraged at his having assisted thr emperor of Germany in the late Hungarian war, was ravaging some of his southern provinces,) invaded Livonia, conquered the whole of that pro- vince and Polish Prussia, and compelled the king to sue for peace, which he granted, though he saw clearly that it was but a temporary measure, and that Sigismund would renew the war the first moment that he was released from fear of his other enemies. In the short interval of peace which ensued, almost the only one that he was permitted to enjoy, he continued his labours for the internal improve- ment of his kingdom ; and then, turning his atten- tion to warlike affairs, he soon placed his navy on 48 THE LITE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. such a footing, that it was equal to that of any other European power in the north of Europe, with the exception of England. He then proceeded to remodel the army and the whole military system of the kingdom ; abolishing the massive arid un- wieldy battalions of infantry and squadrons of cavalry in which the Continental armies had hitherto been arrayed, and which often proved fully as embarrassing to their generals as danger- ous to their enemies ; he substituted for them light and manageable regiments of moderate numbers ; and, by an equally important innovation, he began to teach the infantry to act in concert with, and to combine their movements with those of the cavalry. He reduced the weight of their arms, and of the artillery, thus rendering them more moveable and available on sudden emergencies ; so that to any- one who observed his conduct, it was plain that a new era in war was about to commence, in which celerity of movement and promptitude were to be matched against mere brute force and superiority of numbers. Sigismund had broken all the conditions of the peace which had been granted to him; and had provoked Gustavus to repeat his invasion of Poland. But before engaging in this war, which he foresaw, from the turn which affairs were taking in Bohemia, was likely to be of long duration, and one which would not be left to the sole decision of the Swedish THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. 49 and Polish arms, he solicited another conference with the king of Denmark, which lasted a fortnight, and of which he made such good use, that the friendship between them, which was cemented on that occasion though somewhat interrupted by mutual jealousies nevertheless, lasted unbroken through all the troubles and dangers in which Gustavus was involved, for the remainder of his life. It was at this time that he married Maria Elea- nora, Princess of Brandenburg ; and having cele- brated his nuptials and his queen's coronation at Stockholm with great pomp in November, he prepared to attack Sigismund, who had refused all his overtures for a permanent peace, with the whole of his power. He began the campaign by besieging Riga with 24,000 men. Riga was at this time probably the most important city in the north of Europe. It had an admirable harbour, which has preserved its importance to the present day ; a thriving and numerous population; fortifications strengthened with all the resources that the art of the engineer could then supply, and an adequate garrison, enthusiastically attached to the king. Gustavus invested it so completely, as to baffle all attempts to throw reinforcements into it ; stopped the entrance of any supplies by throwing a boom across the river Dwina, till at last, after the siege had lasted six weeks, and had been carried on with great loss on both sides, the city surrendered. 50 THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPIIUS. Gustavus entered the gates in triumph ; and, after receiving the keys, the first use that he made of his victory was to direct his steps to the great church of St. Peter, where he fell on his knees and returned thanks to God for the success which he had granted to his arms. He then received the principal inhabitants, praised them for their loyalty to Sigismund, and expressing a hope and confidence that .they would henceforth be as faithful to himself, incorporated the city on the most favourable terms with his native dominions. It is said that the skill and novelty of his arrangements in this siege so forcibly struck Spi- nola, who was reputed at that time the first general in Europe, that he warned the Emperor that a Protestant prince had risen up of a very different stamp from the other chiefs of that persuasion, and that, if he did not find employment for Gustavus in the north, Gustavus would be likely to find it for him in his own empire. His success reduced Sigis- mund again to sue for a truce, which the King of Sweden granted him as a temporary measure, to subsist till June, 1625, much to the dissatisfaction of the Spaniards, who, acting on the warnings of Spinola, sent an embassy to Sigismund, to press him to continue the war. But Gustavus had now got so powerful a fleet, that he swept the Baltic with above sixty ships, and Sigismund, however inclined for war, was forced to adhere to peace, as THE LIFE OP GDSTAVU8 ADOLPHUS. 51 the Spaniards were in no condition to aid him with ships, which was the only effectual assistance that a power so distant could afford him. For two years, therefore, Gustavus remained in Sweden, continuing his labours for the internal prosperity of the country, reforming abuses, intro- ducing economy into the administration, the most minute details of which he himself examined, found- ing a second university at Abo, and erecting schools in every part of his kingdom. The desire for extending the advantages of education to every class of his subjects, inspired him continually, amid all the distractions of foreign politics and wars; so that, even in the very last year of his life, when commencing his last campaign against Wallestein, he founded a university in Livonia, which he had permanently annexed to Sweden, that the Livonians might not be forced to cross the Baltic to Upsal. At the same time he continued to augment and discipline his army, and, on the expiration of the truce, sailed a second time to Livonia, reduced all the towns and fortresses in that province, and fought his first pitched battle at Walhoff, on the plains of Semigallia, where he routed Sapieha the Polish general, taking his artillery and many prisoners. The cavalry of the Polish army was strong in numbers and excellent in quality, and the general opinion of military men had hitherto been that it 52 THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. was only on uneven, marshy, enclosed, or woody ground that infantry could meet cavalry on equal terms, while on wide plains where there was room for the rapid evolutions and fiery charges of horse, foot- soldiers must be swept away before them. Gustavus, one of whose reforms had been to separate the musqueteers from the pikemen, so as to enable the two forces to support one another, instead of allowing the one, as formerly to be disabled by being surrounded by the other, showed that a firm line of pikes in resolute hands formed a fence which cavalry could not penetrate ; and at this time laid the foundation of that system of tactics, which, modified and improved by subsequent experience, have led to such great results in the present century. The next year he overran Polish Prussia with the same celerity that he had subdued Livonia, treating the citizens of all the towns which surrendered to him with a moderation and humanity which forms a striking contrast to the general conduct of the commanders of that age. He made himself master of Pillau, Elbingen, and Marienburg, and of Mew and Dirschau on the Vistula, the two last of which were towns of so much importance that Sigismund made great efforts and even ventured on a pitched battle to recover them, but without success. In the winter Gustavus returned to Stockholm, where he laid before the Senate so full an account of all THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. 53 his past successes, of the ineffectual attempts he had made to procure peace, and of the means necessary to enable him to prosecute the war successfully, that they were completely won over to his views by his frankness and condescension, for he was probably the only sovereign in Europe at that time who took so just an idea of the constitu- tional rights of his subjects as to consult them on, and, as it were, ask their consent to the measures which he had in contemplation ; accordingly they granted him ample supplies of money and troops, so that before the next spring he had an army of reserve of 40,000 men ; a force sufficient to ensure the safety of his own dominions and to enable him to carry on the war on the opposite continent on a greater scale than had previously been in his power. His feeling of security at home encouraged him to form more extended views for the aggrandise- ment of his country abroad. He now laid before his Senate a plan for establishing commercial con- nections with the West Indies, that his subjects might share in the advantages which the other nations of Europe were beginning to derive from these new fountains of wealth, while the commercial marine so established would prove a nursery for his navy : another consideration which he pressed on - his Senate with peculiar earnestness, was un- doubtedly one which influenced himself as much as 54 THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. either of the others, being the expectation that the friendly relations thus established with those coun- tries would afford Christians great opportunities of introducing the knowledge of the true religion among their savage inhabitants. In the same spirit he published an edict in favour of the persecuted Protestants in all countries, offering them an asylum in Sweden; a measure to which it is not impossible that he may have been in some degree stimulated by the benefits which England was already seen to derive from the settlement of the Flemish refugees, whom Elizabeth had encouraged to establish themselves in that country. In con- sequence of this edict many Germans fled from the persecution with which they were menaced, and from the districts in which war was adding its manifold miseries to civil oppression, and settled in Sweden, adding to its wealth by their industry, and to its strength by their numbers. The Senate cheerfully co-operated with their monarch in carry- ing out his enlightened views, granting the refugees immunity from taxes and public burdens during the first years of their settlement in the country, and promising them free licence to return to their native land at a more favourable season ; of which liberty very few ever availed themselves. Among the regulations which Gustavus intro- duced at this time was one for the suppression of duelling, a practice which had risen to such a THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. 55 height as to threaten the total subversion of all military discipline. Earlier in life he had himself given some countenance to the custom by his own conduct ; for, having been provoked by a gallant Scotch officer of the name of Seaton, he forgot himself so far as to give him a blow at a public review in the sight of the whole army ; and after- wards, repenting of his hasty conduct, he voluntarily offered him the satisfaction which Seaton would have demanded if the person who had insulted him had been any other than the king. The Scot replied that such an offer from a king was sufficient satisfaction and honour for a subject, and falling at his feet, promised to live and die in his service. Now, however, Gustavus published an edict de- claring the fighting a duel a capital offence ; and, when, a short time afterwards, two officers who had quarrelled solicited a suspension of the law in their favour, he granted their request, promising to attend himself to be a witness of their valour. At the appointed time and place he accordingly appeared \\ith the Provost Marshal of the army, and com- manding the duellists to fight till one was slain, declared his intention of ordering the other for instant execution. There was but little inclination to prosecute the quarrel further with the certainty of so fatal a result to both combatants ; the King's firmness entirely put an end to the practice in his armies, and the courage of his officers was 56 THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS A'DOLPHUS. reserved to be displayed in its proper field against the enemy. The siege of Dantzic had now lasted a consider- able time ; in the preceding year the citizens had made a gallant sally with their fleet, and had inflicted considerable loss on the Swedish squadron which the King had stationed to prevent all entrance to their harbour ; and Gustavus, finding himself unable to maintain the blockade by sea, was pressing his advances on the land side with great vigour, when he received so severe a wound from a musket-ball that for some time his life was almost despaired of ; and his generals, dispirited at his danger, were slackening in their efforts, when, after some unusuaf rains, the Vistula rose to such a height that the flood swept away the besiegers' works, and the temporary bridges which had been thrown across it, and compelled the Swedes to break up their camp and to raise the siege. The terrible Thirty Years War, as it was after- wards named from its unprecedented duration, had now been raging in Germany for ten years, when circumstances arose which drew Gustavus into its vortex, and determined the whole course of his subsequent life. Wallestein, who had lately been created Duke of Mecklenburg, had determined to occupy all the sea- ports of Pomerania as the only means of preventing the invasion of Germany which he anticipated. THE LIFE" OF GU8TAVUS ADOLPHU8. 57 Stralsund, an important city opposite to the island of Rugen, claimed its privilege as an Imperial and Hanseatic free town, and refused to admit his troops. Exasperated at this denial, he ordered Field Marshal Arnheim to besiege it, swearing that he would take it, if it were fastened by a chain of adamant to the heavens. Christian of Denmark sent some Scotch infantry to reinforce the garrison, and Gustavus, whose aid and protection the citizens had implored, sent a body of troops to their assis- tance, under the command of a Scotch officer, David Leslie, who afterwards carried the experience he had acquired in these wars to aid the rebels in his native land, where he broke the last hope of the Royalists on the fatal field of Philiphaugh. The defence made was so resolute that, though Wnllestein himself arrived to take the command, he was forced to raise the siege, and this event, the first occasion on which that great commander was baffled, raised in no small degree the reputa- tion of Gustavus on the continent of Europe ; while the alliance to which it led between Sweden and the city which she had saved, greatly facilitated the subsequent invasion of Germany. Wallestein consoled himself for his disappoint- ment by falling on the Danish army and almost de- stroying it ; and Christian, disheartened by the loss, and jealous of Gustavus, showed a desire for peace, for which Wallestein, who dreaded the power of the 58 THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. Danish navy, was equally eager. Plenipotentiaries from the two powers met at Lubec at the beginning of the year 1629; to which town Gustavus also sent ambassadors, who, however, were refused admission to the conferences, and all participation in the treaty. The troubles in Bohemia, which had been the original cause of the war, were terminated by the expulsion of the Elector Palatine, and his subsequent deprivation of all his territories ; and the Emperor Ferdinand had it now in lu's power to enlarge the peace which had been concluded at Lubec, so as to include all the belligerent powers in its provisions. There was neither state nor monarch who was not most anxious for such a measure. Wallestein him- self would have been glad to unite all Christendom in peace, that he might have had an opportunity of leading its confederated armies against the Turks ; but the Court of Rome refused to sanction any treaty which should grant toleration to the Pro- testants, and, instead of peace, stimulated the bigoted Ferdinand to more violent measures of hostility and opression. Since the Diet of Augs- burg, much ecclesiastical property, previously held by the Roman Catholic hierarchy, had been secu- larised ; much had been made over to the Pro- testant Church. By a new decree, called the Edict of Restitution, it was suddenly ordered that all the property, which had thus been alienated from the Roman Catholic Church, should be instantly THE LIFE OF GU8TAVUS ADOLPHU8. 59 restored to it. This decree, though its operation was subsequently extended over the whole German Empire, was at first confined to Upper Germany and Wurtemburg; and commissioners and troops were poured into those districts to compel obedience to the Edict. They displayed no hesitation, no compunction, no mercy. The moment that the commissioners appeared in any place, the Protestant service was suspended, the churches were stripped of their bells, the altars and pulpits were thrown down, the Protestant Bibles seized and burnt, and gibbets were erected to terrify, or, if need be, to punish all who should venture to disobey or to resist. In Bohemia, the Emperor proceeded to still more furious measures, for there an additional edict was published, that all women of the Protes- tant or Evangelical persuasion, as it was called, who had married Roman Catholics, should be banished, though this decree was subsequently so far modified that they were allowed to remain in the country during the lifetime of their husbands. It was evident, that nothing less than the entire destruction of the Protestant religion was deter- mined on, and the German Protestants in conse- quence turned their eyes towards the king of Sweden. Wallestein, who was no less apprehensive of his entering Germany, than they were desirous of it, endeavoured to prevent it by rousing Sigis- mund of Poland to greater exertions ; and sent 60 Tin: LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPIIUS. him a reinforcement of 10,000 men under Arnheim, whom he charged to drive Gustavus out of Poland, adding, that if lie failed, he should himself under- take the task. Arnheim, having been joined by Sirot, a French officer of the highest reputation, and by the Polish general Conospoliski, conducted himself with great activity, and a severe battle took place near Marienverder on the Vistula, in which, though Gustavus behaved with the greatest personal intre- pidity, having his hat shot off by Sirot himself, and even having been for a moment prisoner to a body of Polish cavalry, who were ignorant of the value of their prize, he was at last forced to retreat with the loss of some of his artillery. He accord- ingly retired to the camp at Marienburg, where he entrenched himself with such skill that, when a few days afterwards Sigismund himself arrived wfth a considerable additional body of troops, it was found wholly impracticable to force his posi- tion ; and the one or two attempts which were made upon it were repulsed with heavy loss to the attacking Poles. The war with Poland was, however, not destined to last long. Richelieu, who had now attained to the supreme direction of affairs in France, was beginning to adopt anew the system of politics which had been almost forgotten since the death of Henry IV., and to turn all his views towards the THE LIFE OF GUSTAVU8 ADOLPHUS. 01 one object of checking and depressing the power of the House of Austria. With this design, he offered his mediation to the King of Poland, sent the celebrated Capuchin, Father Joseph, to urge Gustavus to moderation, and to tempt him by representations of the danger to which the minor Pinces of Germany were exposed from the ambition of the Emperor, to choose rather to go to the assist- ance of the Duke of Bavaria and his confederates, than to continue to press a discomfited enemy, like the King of Poland, to his utter ruin. Accordingly, peace for six years was concluded, between Sweden and Poland ; leaving Gustavus in possession of the greater part of his conquests, and at leisure to turn his attention to those more important events iu which the general welfare of the whole of Eastern Europe was concerned. Father Joseph at the same time inflicted a second wound of almost equal importance upon the Emperor, by so working on liis mind, by representations of the extortions and rapacity of Wallestein's troops, and of the secret and ambitious designs of the Duke himself, that he prevailed upon him to deprive that Prince of his command ; and so to discard his ablest general at the very moment when he had the most pressing occasion for his services. There is nothing more remarkable in the history of this long contest than the manner in which ii :uul politics mingled with and counteracted 62 THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. each other. The war was undertaken by the Emperor avowedly with the object of checking the encroachments which the Reformation was making upon the Roman Catholic religion ; yet we find the Pope, in his character of a temporal sovereign, so much alarmed at the extent of the power in the north of Italy possessed and claimed by the Emperor, that his hatred of heretics was inferior to his dread of so dangerous a neighbour. He feared, as he had some reason to fear, that his triumph might be more dangerous to Rome than his defeat ; and, influenced by the same views, Richelieu, a cardinal of the Romish Church, did not scruple to ally himself with a prince whose sole object was the downfall of that Church, against one whose avowed purpose was its restoration to its former power and dignity. Gustavus had now resolved to invade Germany, and by decisive measures to bring the war to a termination. According to his usual practice he consulted the Swedish Senate, opened his views to them, and requested their concurrence. The support which he received was not at first unhesitating or unanimous. Oxenstiern himself, who on more than one occasion, to use his own language, sought to moderate the fire of his master's temperament with the ice of his own, thought an offensive war a too audacious measure, and distrusted the resources of Sweden, when they should come to be weighed THE LIFE OF GUSTAVTJ8 ADOLPHU8. 63 in the balance against those of the Emperor of all Germany. Others, whom the Minister's hesitation encouraged to urge their scruples freely, thought that the German Princes who were menaced by Ferdinand, if they could defend themselves with the aid of Gustavus, could defend themselves with- out it, while if they could not, they would only involve him in their ruin ; that, as the Baltic pro- tected them from invasion, so it made any aggres- sion on their part unjustifiable ; and that, if they remained quiet, they themselves were in no danger. It was argued, on the other hand, that the assistance which the Emperor had sent to Sigis- mund was a sufficient insult to, and proof of a hostile disposition towards Sweden to justify the strongest measures. That if the German Princes were left to themselves, they were manifestly un- equal to maintain a successful contest with the Emperor ; who, after he had subdued them, would turn his arms against Sweden, when it could no longer have an ally left, but would only, by its almost insular position, obtain the respite of being devoured last. That the boldest policy was the safest ; if they waited the Emperor's attack in Sweden itself, defeat would be destruction ; if they should be beaten in Germany their retreat was secure, and the Baltic would afford an impregnable line of defence. By such arguments, the King brought the Senate 64 THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPIIUS. over to his opinion, and, when they had determined on the invasion, there was no lukewarmness in providing him with everything requisite to ensure success. Yet, if we compare the magnitude of the enterprise which was now to be undertaken with the means employed, the one appears strangely disproportionate to the other; for Gustavus was about to assail the combined power of Spain and Austria, and of the whole of Roman Catholic Germany, while his entire army, including 8000 recruits under Oxenstiern, whom he stationed partly as a guard and partly as a reserve in East Prussia, did not exceed 27,000 men ; and even of this small force, a very large portion were foreigners, chiefly English and Scotch. The wars in which he had already been engaged, slight as the loss with which they were attended had been, must have been a heavy drain on the resources of Sweden, such as they were in that age, before that country would have been contented with furnishing so small a number of its own citizens for the service of their great monarch. Before leaving his kingdom on an expedition which would necessitate a long absence from it, and which could not fail to be attended with such danger as must make his return uncertain, Gustavus directed his attention most carefully to providing for the regular administration of its affairs. The Council of State he erected into a kind of regency ; HI!. LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. 65 the management of the revenues and finances of the nation he entrusted to the Palatine of the Rhine, John Casimir, his brother-in-law; and when :ill was ready for his departure, he appeared in the Diet at Stockholm to make his last address to his assembled Senate ; his only daughter, then a child of four years old, the same Christina who afterwards abdicated the Swedish throne, and whose subse- quent eccentricities afforded such diversion to, and whose licentiousness gave grounds for, such scandal throughout . Europe, had already been formally acknowledged as his successor. Her father, now on this last visit to the States, as the Swedish Senate was called, bore her in his arms, and ob- tained from them a renewal of their oath of allegi- ance to her in case of his own death. If he should fall, he hoped to leave them cause to bless his memory, by bequeathing to them the blessings of civil and religious freedom, which it was the object of his intended enterprise to secure. It was at the end of May that he thus addressed them. On the 24th of June the very day on which, exactly a century before, the confession of Augsburg Inul been presented to Charles the Fifth he landed near Penemiinde, and his first act on German ground was to throw himself on his knees and thank God aloud for the protection which he had thu^ far vouchsafed to himself and his expedition; admonishing some of his officers whose remarks he 66 THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. overheard, that " a good Christian could not be a bad soldier," and that " the man who had prayed to his God had already completed the most important half of his day's work." In such a spirit as this it was that he was pre- paring to lead into Germany an army such as had never before been seen in that country ; Wallestein and the other great imperial generals were super- stitious, but not religious : the Providence in whom they trusted, according to their ideas and sayings, favoured not the humble Christian, but the strong battalions. Led by such chiefs, the officers of their armies were extortionate, licentious, and profuse ; the common soldiers were pitiless plunderers, ravishers, and murderers ; led by Gustavus, his army, even in the intoxicating hour of victory, was orderly, temperate, arid merciful : daily did each regiment form round its chaplain in the morning to implore the protection of the God of Battles ; in the evening, to thank him for its safety. The imperial soldier, provided his military duties were discharged with courage and precision, was subjected to no further restraint, his nights were spent in revelry and gaming, while the means for the gratification of these passions were sought at the expense of the inhabitants of the wretched district in which he might happen to be encamped. Hardly could any complaint from a peaceful citizen against a trooper reach the ear of the general ; more hardly and more THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. 67 rarely still did it meet with any but a contemptuous it < t 'ption. In the Swedish camp, on the other hand, the strictness of the requirements of military discipline was not counterbalanced by any relax- ation of the laws of peace : justice was not for a moment blinded to crime or even to disorder ; gaming and quarrelling among the soldiers them- selves was repressed or punished, as well as all acts of rapine or violence towards the people of the country ; and the natives of the districts which had invited them could hail their victories without finding the successes of their friends almost as disastrous to themselves as the triumphs of their enemies. The virtues which Gustavus exacted from others he practised himself. The imperial generals maintained their dignity by all the appliances of luxury and the most profuse exhibitions of wealth and splendour; Wallestein himself, though person- ally indifferent to such things, was served in gold, and waited upon by officers of the noblest birth in Germany. From the camp of Gustavus the temp- tations to intemperance were banished equally with the vice itself. The equipage of the king's own tent, the vessels of his own table, were of the plainest description; and their monarch's severity was rendered palatable to the soldiers by the evi- dence of their own senses, that he was not more idulgent to himself than to the meanest trooper in his service. T 2 t-^ THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. When the news of the Swedes having effected their landing reached Vienna, it made no great impression on the advisers of the Emperor. The common language held among the courtiers was " that Gustavus was but a king of snow, who would melt to pieces as he advanced southward;" and Torquato Conti, the imperial general in Pomerania (a man of such penetration that he is said to have been the first to discern the talents of Mazarin, and to have been the founder of his fortune by recom- mending him, when a very young man, to the Pope), boasted that he would find his troops very different enemies from those whom he had hitherto encoun- tered, and that, " He would soon learn that he had left his laurels in the groves of Prussia." Wallestein's language, before he was deprived of his command, had been equally contemptuous ; Tilly alone appre- ciated the character of the man and the importance of the coming struggle, and warned the Diet at Ratisbon, that they would for the future have to deal with an enemy of great courage and great skill ; that his army, though drawn from so many different nations, was united in attachment to and confidence in him ; that, to use his own comparison, " He was a gamester, in playing with whom not to lose would be to win a great deal." Before advancing into the interior of the country, Gustavus took care to secure the base of his ope- rations by making himself master of the most THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPUUS. 69 important towns on the coast. Bogislaus, duke of Pomerania, a feeble and superannuated prince, was desirous to remain neutral; but Gustavus, declaring, in the words of Scripture, that "he who was not with him was against him," compelled him to take a decided part, and to admit him into his towns. Accordingly the gates of Stettin, the capital of the duchy at the mouth of the Oder, were opened to him; Storgard, Wolgast, and other strong towns, received him, one after another; and Conti, unable to check his progress, could only wreak his ven- geance on the unfortunate Pomeranians by ravaging their country ; a piece of inhumanity which strengthened Gustavus by driving many Pomera- nians, through hopes of safety or revenge, to enlist in his army, and by exciting the Senate to furnish him with a large pecuniary contribution towards the expenses of the campaign ; and, shortly after, to acquiesce in a treaty of perpetual alliance, defensive and offensive, between Sweden and Pomerania, and in the latter country being mortgaged to the former for the expenses of its protection during this war. It was plain to the most confident of the Impe- rialists that they had formed a very erroneous esti- mate of their new enemy. A few months before, Wallestein had not condescended to reply to a letter sent to him by Gustavus; but now the Emperor himself thought proper to endeavour to open a correspondence with him, and. sent an envoy to his 70 THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. camp with a letter remonstrating with him in not uncourteous language (except that it did not give him the title of King) for invading the empire, the internal quarrels and divisions of which did not affect either him or his dominions ; inviting him to peace ; and threatening, if he declined it and per- sisted in interfering in matters which concerned the Germanic body alone, to postpone the chastisement of all other enemies, and to direct the whole force of the empire against the Swedish army. Gustavus excused himself from sending any written reply at present to this epistle, alleging to the envoy that he had received a wound from an eagle (the armorial bearing of the Emperor), which must prevent him from holding a pen ; at the same time the Roman Catholic electors of the empire addressed another letter to him, giving him now the title of King, though they had previously affected to treat him as an usurper, and urging him to evacuate the empire, and, if he had any grounds of complaint, to rely on the humanity and justice of the Emperor. Gustavus received the letter and pursued his conquests ; after some weeks of uninterrupted success he sent a written reply to the electors, justifying his invasion, but professing his willingness to make peace on such conditions as should be safe and honourable to himself and his allies ; and, later in the year, nearly three months after the date of the Emperor's letter, he replied to that also, attributing the com- THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUB. 7 1 raencement of hostilities to the Emperor himself, who had, without provocation and without warning, attacked him in Poland and in Prussia; but repeating the same expressions of willingness to agree to a general peace that were contained in his letter to the electors. While these events were taking place, Conti was making vigorous and skilful efforts to check the advance of the Swedes, and to render the advan tages that they had gained barren and unprofitable ; but all his efforts were frustrated by the vigilance of Gustavus. He made an attempt upon Stettin, in which he lost a great number of men. With no better success he endeavoured to throw a re- inforcement into Colbergen, which Gustavus was besieging, and which was of great importance, as being the magazine in which the Imperialists had stored the plunder which they had collected in the last two years' campaigns. It was now November ; the imperial troops, accustomed to a less rigorous climate than that of the coasts of the Baltic, could hardly keep the field ; (indeed the winter months had usually been a period of total inactivity, and of a formal or tacit suspension of arms). Conti was therefore desirous to retire into winter quarters, and would gladly have entered into a temporary truce with that view; but Gustavus rejected all overtures which had such an object. He had provided his army beforehand with warm dresses 72 THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. of sheepskin, and replied to the imperial com- missioners that "the Swedes were soldiers in winter as well as in summer." He had been en- gaged for some time in strengthening the fortifica- tions of Stettin, the defences of which bore no proportion to its importance ; and now he employed the greater part of his army as masons and pioneers, replying to one of his captains, who complained of the obstacles offered to such works by the severity of the season, that the earth was always frozen to the indolent and idle. Conti resigned his command, and was succeeded by the Count de Schomberg, who, a month later, resigned the chief command to Tilly. Tilly, on the dismissal of Wallestein, had been appointed generalissimo of the imperial armies. He was now seventy-two years of age, and, though his whole life had been passed in war, though he had com- manded in no less than thirty- six battles, he had never suffered a defeat. He had but lately ex- changed the Bavarian Service for that of the Emperor, and he brought to the aid of his new master a military reputation second to none, a degree of experience and skill that could hardly be surpassed, and of cruelty that Was as yet un- suspected perhaps even by himself. He was faithful to his sovereign, and devoted to his church; but his loyalty was unreasoning slavery ; his religion persecuting bigotry. His political genius was of THE LIFE OF GUSTAVU8 ADOLPHUS. 73 a high order ; but, unfortunately for his master, the advice that he gave was seldom followed. In person and dress he was said to be like the duke of Alva, and the terror which such a resemblance was calculated to excite, was but too well justified by his conduct. Gustavus commenced the year 1631, by entering into a treaty on perfectly equal terms with France. It had long been impeded by arrogant claims of superiority on the part of that nation to which Gustavus refused to submit ; these were now abandoned, Sweden promised to maintain an army of 80,000 men in Germany, and France agreed to pay Sweden a large yearly subsidy ; while, if Gustavus were victorious, he was bound not to disturb either the Constitution of the Empire, or the Roman Catholic religion, in the places which he should conquer. England and Holland acceded to this treaty ; and even many of the Roman Ca- tholic princes, though they declined the invitation which was sent to them to become formal parties to it, yet viewed the progress of the Swedish arms with less apprehension now that the security of tluir religion was guaranteed by so powerful a sovereign of their persuasion as the King of France. Colbergen fell in the early part of the year ; but the limits of this sketch will not allow me, nor if they did, would it be worth while, to enumerate even the names of the different towns and fortresses 74 THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. which were 'taken one after another, to the number, it is said, of eighty in the first eight months after Gustavus landed in Germany. Tilly, who had been protecting his troops from the weather in Frankfort-on-the-Oder, brought his army from thence to relieve Damin; but, finding that town had capitulated before his arrival, he turned upon New Brandenburgh where Knip- hausen was with 2000 men ; and, having intercepted despatches from Gustavus, in which that general was ordered to withdraw his men, took the place, put the garrison to the sword, with the exception of the commander himself and a few others, and gave up the inhabitants to the mercy of his soldiers. Any loss of reputation which the Swedes incurred by this disaster was speedily effaced by the capture of the important city of Frankfort. It was by far the most important place in that part of Germany, and Schomberg himself had been placed in it by Tilly with a picked garrison of 8000 men. The fortifications however were far from perfect; and Gustavus, without sparing time for the more regular preliminary operations of a siege, imme- diately on his arrival under the walls, decided on assaulting it at once, burst open the gates with petards, and forced his way, sword in hand, into the middle of the city, while other storming parties scaled the walls in a different quarter. For the first time Gustavus found himself unable to restrain Tin. LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. 75 his men : burning to avenge the cruelties which the Imperialists had committed at New Bran- denburgh, they in some respects imitated them. The unarmed citizens indeed were safe from their violence, but the garrison found no mercy. Great numbers had fallen in the assault, but those who had escaped were slaughtered in cold blood. To their petitions for quarter, the stern answer was given, that " New Brandenburgh quarter " was all that they should find : they were cut down, they were driven into the Oder, none were left alive in the town, and very few escaped from it. The loss of the Swedes did not exceed three hundred men. Laudsperg was not as rich or considerable a city as Frankfort, but as a fortress it was almost equally important, lying as it did on the borders of Prussia and Poland, and threatening the communications of Gustavus while it remained in the hands of his enemies. It was strongly garrisoned with nearly 5000 men, who in the last campaign had twice repulsed his attacks. He now conceived the idea of surprising it ; taking with him a small body of men actually inferior in numbers to the garrison within the town, by a rapid march of forty miles in two days; transporting his artillery by roads which were supposed to be impassable for heavy guns, he arrived under the walls before any intelli- gence arrived of his having quitted Frankfort, and reduced it so speedily, that it surrendered on the 76 THE LIFE OF GDSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. 16th of April, only twelve days after the fall of Frankfort. Tilly had been on his march to relieve Frankfort, when the news reached him of its capture ; on which he retraced his steps, and sought to console himself for his loss by pressing the siege of Mag- deburg with increased vigour. Magdeburg was an independent city, lying on the Elbe, between the Electorates of Saxony and Brandenburg. The name means the Maiden Town, and it bore for its arms a crowned virgin; representing Venus who had been its tutelar deity, till Charlemagne converted the Saxons to Christianity, and the goddess of Cyprus into the Virgin Mary. It was rich, populous, and free ; but the extent of its walls was too great for it to have ever been thoroughly fortified, and the garrison, scarcely exceeding 2000 men, was quite inadequate to the defence of the place. Pappenhieni and Tilly had invested it early in March, and they were favoured by a small party in the town, from whom they learnt the scantiness of its means of resistance. The governor, however, General Falk- enberg, held out with great resolution, looking confidently for succour, which Gustavus was well aware c/ the importance of bringing to him ; but, before marching to his relief, it was necessary for him to negotiate with the Electors of Brandenburg and Saxony for permission to pass through' portions of their territory. It was some time before he THE LIFE OF GUSTAVTJS ADOLPHUS. 77 could overcome the fear of the Emperor entertained by the Prussian Prince, and he was still urging his arguments on the Saxon when Magdeburg fell. Tilly had been thundering on the city for many days with heavy batteries, and had compelled the citizens to abandon many of their out-works, when, fearing lest the approach of Gustavus, (who, while negotiating with the Elector of Saxony, had advanced as far as Potsdam, and was now within three days' march) should compel him to raise the siege, he resolved on storming the defences that remained, and on the 10th of May, at daybreak, Pappenheim led the attack against the fated city. All that gallantry could do, was done by Falken- berg ; but his ammunition was almost exhausted, the garrison was inadequate to the defence of so many assailable points as the wide extent of the walls presented ; and it is even said that traitorous citizens had impeded their march in some direc- tions by drawing chains across the streets. The attack succeeded at all points. Who shall describe the horrors that ensued ? Quit cladcm illius noctit, quit funtra fando Explicit 1 Truly has Schiller spoken of the scene as one for which history has no language, poetry no pencil. All the atrocities that lust, all that revenge, all that superstition more pitiless than either could devise, 78 THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. were poured at once upon the miserable inhabi- tants. The courage of the soldier, the unarmed submission of the citizen, the dignity of the matron, the innocence of the maiden, the helplessness of the nurseling infant, were alike unable to shield them from death, and from outrage more terrible than any death. The husband could not defend the wife, nor the mother protect her daughter ; the very temples of God were equally powerless, and streamed with the blood of dishonoured and murdered women. With devilish joy the conquerors gloated over their varieties and refinements of cruelty; some hacked their victims limb from limb, some threw children alive into the flames of the burning houses, some amused themselves by pinning living babies to their mothers' breast with their lances. The streets were choked with the dead and the dying ; the rapid course of the Elbe was impeded with the corpses which rose above its waters ; 400 only, the richest of the citizens, were saved by the avarice of some officers, who preferred their ransom to their slaughter ; two churches and a few houses alone remained unconsumed by the fire which had destroyed the rest of the town. Since the wrath of God had descended upon Jerusalem, no such utter destruction had destroyed both citizens and city. Of those unheard-of barbarities, the shame and the guilt does not rest upon the common soldiers alone : Tilly took no measures to check them, THE LIFE OF GUSTAVU8 ADOLPHUS. 70 Pappenheim expressed an exulting approval of them. They were deeply avenged ; the two impe- rialist generals had hitherto enjoyed a career of unbroken success and glory. That career was ended ; Tilly's arms were no longer invincible, and a year had not elapsed when, after many reverses, he was borne mortally wounded from the field of his defeat on the Lech. Pappenheim had no better fortune ; and their master, the Emperor; who re- ceived the sad tidings with inhuman exultation, found that triumph so used had produced him nothing but more numerous and more desperate enemies. Gustavus resolved to leave nothing undone to take a sufficient revenge for the horrors which he had been unable to prevent. And, having now compelled the Elector of Brandenburg to leave Spandau in his hands, and to give him free entrance into Custrin, he found himself able to adopt a bolder line of operations. He reinstated John Albert in the Duchy of Mechlenburgh, of which he had been stripped when the Emperor conferred it on Wallestein ; and, having received large supplies of money from France, he proceeded to pursue Tilly with great energy. He took Havelburg and Werben, with the garrisons which had been left to defend them ; and at this latter place he surrounded himself with iutrenchments, the remains of which exist to this day, to attest the skill with which they 80 THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHTJS. were planned. The position thus taken up was too important for Tilly to behold with indifference ; and too strong for him to force. He attacked it, and was repulsed with some discredit, and with great loss ; for which he sought to console himself by ravaging Saxony. This again was a measure inju- rious to the Emperor's interest, although executed in obedience to his orders ; since it only compelled the Elector to seek the alliance of Gustavus, as his sole protection from complete destruction. While these events were taking place, Gustavus received two most welcome reinforcements. His Queen crossed the Baltic with 8000 men, and her voyage bore with itself the omens of success, disem- barking, as she did, while a public festival was being solemnised at Wolgast, to celebrate the anni- versary of her husband's landing with his army in the preceding year. The Marquis of Hamilton too arrived from England with 6000 men. A second attempt of Tilly to force the King's lines, was not more successful than the former ; and he now found Gustavus's assertion to be true, that he could not be compelled to fight, except at such times and on such ground as he himself should choose. Tilly retired towards Leipsic, on which Gustavus broke up his camp to observe his motions ; but, though he pursued him with vigour, he could not save Leipsic, the fortifications of which city were in such a state as made resistance hopeless. It THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. 81 was known that large reinforcements were on their way to join Tilly, and, after much deliberation, Gustavus resolved to attack him before they could arrive. Leipsic had surrendered on the 5th of September, and on the 7th, Gustavus with the Swedish and Saxon armies crossed the Mulda to compel the conqueror to fight a battle for the pre- servation of his conquest. It had been no part of Tilly's plan to bring on a battle before the arrival of the additional forces which he was expecting, but he allowed his sounder judgment to be overruled by the impatience of Pappenheim. He burned too to show that he was not, as some of Wallestein's admirers had hinted, afraid to encounter the King of Sweden. The battle of Leipsic, or Breitenfeldt, was fought on the 7th of September, and seldom have armies met to decide a more important contest, for the stake was no less than the fate of Germany, and of the Protestant religion on the continent of Europe. If Gustavus had been beaten, his allies would have fallen from him, he must have retired to his own kingdom, and there would have been no power left, able to resist for a moment the will of the Emperor, and of the priests whose creature he was. His victory gave courage to the Protestants in every part of Europe, and raised a spirit that for sixteen years after his death, maintained an equal struggle with the League, and finally secured liberty 82 THE LIFE OF OUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. and freedom of conscience to all who had taken a part in the contest. The numbers of the rival armies were nearly equal, amounting to about 35,000 men on each side; and the field of battle was an extensive undulating plain, offering but few advantages to either party. Tilly's infantry was drawn up in two lines, with a third line in reserve, on a slightly rising ground, with his artillery in front, except a small battery of heavy guns on the right. Early in the morning the King advanced in two columns to the attack ; the right column consisting of Swedes and British, the left of Saxons. In their front was a small streamlet called the Lober, and the moment that the Scotch regiments who formed the van of the Swedish column had crossed it, they were furiously attacked by Pappenheim with his cuirassiers. The Scotch however were themselves supported by cavalry ; they repulsed their assailants, and con- tinued their advance towards the small hamlet of Podelaity. Pappenheim set fire to the hamlet, as Menschikoff did to Bouliouk, at the battle of the Alma, and again attacked the advancing column, which deployed into line, and presented a front on which the imperial cavalry made repeated but fruit- less charges, till at last it was repulsed with severe loss, leaving a large body of infantry, which had been sent to its assistance, isolated in the middle of the plain. Tilly's regiments were arrayed in the THE LIFE OF OUSTAVUS ADOLPHD8. 88 old style ; with a dense mass of spearmen in the centre, and lines of musqueteers on the outside, so that the spearmen could not protect the shooters, while their spears were rendered useless by the line of their comrades in their front. Without a moment's delay the regiment was charged by the Swedish cavalry, and the musqueteers were cut down ; the spearmen, denuded of their supporters, were attacked by musqueteers, completely routed, and their colonel, the Duke of Holstein, who, strange to say, was a Protestant, was slain. The Swedish army was now in two lines, as well as that of the imperialists ; but the distance between the Swedish lines was greater, and in front of the second line was a reserve of artillery. The cavalry in both armies was drawn up on the flanks ; and the Swedes had also some cavalry in their reserve. Gustavus commanded the right wing, Arnheim led the Saxons on the left; the second line and the reserve were under British officers, Colonel Hep- burn a Scotchman, and Colonel Hall. After a short cannonade, Tilly charged the whole line of his enemies at once ; the Swedes with their heavy fire and steady front beat back his attack ; but the Saxons were broken in a moment, the Elector himself fled from the field, thinking that all was lost ; and messengers were despatched to Munich and Vienna with news that the victor}' was gained. Tilly checked his troops in their pursuit of tin I 84 THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. flying Saxons, in order to fall on the flank of the Swedes ; but Horn, who was on their left, had already brought up three regiments from the second line, and bore back the impetuous onset of the Austrians with firmness and complete success. Gustavus availed himself of the confusion into which the imperialists were thrown, and, advancing his first line, took the artillery in front of the enemy's line and turned it against themselves ; Tilly, undaunted amid his misfortunes, made one last stand with his reserve, and at last retired with the relics of four regiments in good order to a wood in the rear of his position, where night protected him from any further pursuit. But he had lost 7000 men in killed and wounded, while 3000 prisoners, 30 guns, 100 standards, and all the baggage of the defeated army were trophies of victory in the hands of the conquerors. The Saxons lost 2000 men, the Swedes 700. Tilly, who had been wounded in the battle, retreated towards Halle; but so rapidly had his army dispersed on its defeat, that he could hardly count two thousand men round his standards. The reputation of his invincibility was gone, and with it the hopes of plunder and all the motives which could attract men to the service of a leader whose barbarities had rendered him universally odious. In the evening the Elector of Saxony returned to the Swedish camp; where, far from reproaching THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. 85 him with the misconduct of his troops, Gustavus thanked him for having advised the battle. The Elector, in his exultation, promised to secure for him the Roman crown, which Ferdinand was seeking to have conferred upon his own son ; and the two Princes proceeded to concert measures to enable them to reap the complete fruits of the victory. It was decided that the Saxons should invade Bohemia, and that the Swedes should march through Franconia towards the Rhine. Gustavus could prosecute his advance with safety, as his victory had not only encouraged several of the smaller independent Princes to declare themselves on his side, but had struck terror into those who were secretly jealous of or openly hostile to him ; so that Christian made public rejoicings at Copen- hagen, and Sigismund of Poland sent ambassadors to congratulate him. His march was one unvaried and unchecked triumph ; some towns opened their gates to him of their own accord, others refused and were carried by storm, but none offered any successful resistance ; and, before the end of the year, he had made himself master of Erfurt, Wer- theim, Wurzburg, Marienburg, and Frankfort on the Maine. Tilly, who had retired into Brunswick after the battle of Breitenfeldt, having drawn the garrisons from the towns in Lower Saxony, and having been reinforced by 12,000 men from Lor- raine, in vain endeavoured to save Wurzburg ; but, 8tf THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. though eager to efface the recollection of the defeat which he had sustained, he was strictly forbidden to risk a hattle, and could scarcely even delay the progress of the conqueror. The Duke of Lorraine himself, being subject to the orders of no superior officer, made a feeble endeavour to withstand him ; but his army was routed, and the example which he set to his troops was that of precipitate flight. He wrote a submissive letter to Gustavus, who had more important objects in view than the chastisement of a Prince who had neither power nor courage ; and with such contempt was he regarded by all classes, that as he was retreating through a small village, a peasant struck his horse. " Ride faster, Sir," said the clown, " you must make more haste than that if you mean to escape from the great King of Sweden." At Frankfort Gustavus was j.oined by the Land- grave of Hesse Cassel, who had reduced the greater part of Westphalia and Lower Saxony, with 10,000 men ; and, in the mean time, his general, Tott, had succeeded in restoring the whole of Mecklenburg to John Albert. What remained of Magdeburg was recovered by Banier, who, with 8000 men, was still on the Elbe. The King now prepared to cross the Rhine, the passage of which he forced at Oppenheim, where his precipitation and dis- regard to his personal safety, very nearly threw him into the hands of a body of Spanish horse, TIIK LITE OF GUSTAVCS ADOLPHE8. 87 who attacked him the moment that he landed on the western side of the river. It was with great difficulty that he was saved from their superior numbers ; but at last he made good his position, and proceeded to invest Mayence. Seventy years afterwards, when an English general had in nearly the same country rivalled his triumphs and his renown, a column surmounted by an armed lion was raised to mark the spot where the champion of Europe had first landed on the left bank of the mighty river. Mayence resisted but a few days. Manheim was taken by the skill of Duke Bernard of Weimar. Spires and Landau opened their gates, wlun Gustavus closed his glorious campaign by retiring to Mayence, and taking up his winter quarters in that city. During the winter, attempts were made by more powers than one, to check his progress by negotiations. His advance towards the Rhine, after the capture of Wurzburg, instead of into Bavaria and Austria, had raised suspicions of his ultimate designs in more than one quarter. Richelieu himself regarded with suspicion his advance towards the French frontier, which seemed inconsistent with the objects which he was un- derstood to have in view ; and was inclined to allow the Duke of Bavaria, and the inferior Princes of the League, to adopt a complete neutrality. But this did not suit the superior penetration of 88 THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. Gustavus ; and, while the negotiations were pro- ceeding, he intercepted a letter from the Duke of Bavaria to Pappenheim, which proved that the Duke's only object in appearing to embrace such an idea, had been to gain time for more extensive military preparations. Early in January he was joined again by the Queen, who brought him a strong body of cavalry. In her society he spent some weeks, till in February he bade her farewell, broke up from his winter quarters, and marched towards the Upper Palatinate, where Tilly had defeated Horn, and taken Bamberg. Nuremburg received him with open arms, as he proceeded towards the Danube. Donauwerth was taken in a day ; and he ascended the small river Lech, till he arrived at a spot near the small town of Raine, where Tilly was occupying a strongly fortified camp in the hopes of barring his further progress. That general had destroyed all the bridges, and flattered himself that the river, always deep and rapid, and now swollen by the melting of the Alpine snows, presented an impassable obstacle ; nor had he trusted only to this natural bulwark, but had planted batteries along the bank, and garrisons at differ- ent points up the river as far as Augsburg. His generals strongly advised Gustavus to pause before attempting to force such a position. Should he succeed in crossing the river, victory might not be decisive ; while defeat would be destruction to I Hi: LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHU8. 89 an army the retreat of which was cut off by such an obstacle in its rear. But the King, having by a personal reconnaissance discovered that his bank of the river was higher than the other, availed himself of this fact, to plant a heavy battery, with which he drove back Tilly's Bavarians, while he threw across the stream a bridge which he had secretly prepared. Higher up, a narrow ford passable for cavalry had been discovered ; and, the moment that the bridge was firm, the Swedes crossed the river at both points with great rapidity. At the very beginning of the battle, Tilly was mortally wounded ; Altringer, the second in com- mand, was disabled ; and the Duke of Bavaria, the only general who remained, retreated with precipitation but in good order to Ingoldstadt, to which town Tilly had been removed, and where he died the next day. Augsburg was one of the earliest prizes of this victory. It surrendered on the 10th *of April, only five days after the battle ; and then Gustavus turned northwards to the Danube to lay siege to Ingoldstadt; in his pursuit of the Duke of Bavaria ; but the garrison made a gallant resistance, during which he was exposed to great personal danger, having his horse killed under him by one cannon- ball, and the young Margrave of Baden slain at his side by another ; till finding that the Bavarians, in compliance with the dying advice of Tilly, had 90 THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. occupied Ratisbon also, he raised the siege, and returned towards Bavaria, to summon Munich, which surrendered at his approach, and in which he found a large treasure belonging to the Duke, and ample supplies of artillery and ammunition. He was now to cope with a new enemy. Ferdi- nand had been taught by the battle of Breiteufeldt to repent of having sacrificed Wallestein to his enemies; and his minister Questenberg opened a correspondence with the disgraced marshal. The negotiations proceeded slowly till the Emperor wrote with his own hand to entreat his discarded servant to forget what was past, and not to forsake him in the hour of adversity. It was not Walles- tein's purpose to refuse such solicitations ; he was well pleased to be recalled from the inactivity in which he had been so long lying ; at the same time, he showed himself fully conscious of the strength which he derived from the confessed weakness of the Emperor and the imperial armies. The con- ditions which he demanded amounted to an entire transference of all control over those armies from the Emperor to himself. His command over all the German forces was to be single and unlimited. The Emperor was not to approach them ; was to have no power to grant commissions or honours. Even the conquests that should be made were to be at the sole disposal of Wallestein. All that the Emperor was to have to do with the troops was THE LIFE OF GU8TAVUS ADOLPHU8. 91 to pay them ; while for the General's own pay, an imperial hereditary estate was to be assigned. The Duchy of Mecklenburg was to be restored to him ; and his command was not to be abrogated without formal and timely notice. Ferdinand was in no condition to dispute these terms, which placed him at the mercy of his proud and injured subject. As soon as they were con- ceded, \Vallestein raised his standard, and it soon became apparent, that, in one respect at least, he had not overrated his power. From every quarter soldiers flocked to join him. More than three hundred officers from every part of Austria, who had been deaf to the necessities of their country, while its resources were wielded by chiefs of less genius or inferior popularity, applied for com- missions, and desired to raise troops for the new generalissimo. Within three months he was at the head of 40,000 men ; and on the 4th of May, he opened the campaign, by driving Arnheim out of Prague, which that officer and the Elector of Saxony had taken in the preceding winter; the neighbouring cities submitted at the first summons, and Bohemia was recovered as speedily as it had been lost. "While he was thus triumphing in Bohemia, Maximilian remained at Ratisbon. Gustavus, whose army was numerically inferior to that of either of them, hastened to the Upper Palatinate, in the hopes of preventing their junction ; but, before he 92 THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. could arrive on their lines, the Duke of Bavaria had reached Egra, and united himself with Wallesteifl. On the 29th of April Sigismond, King of Poland, the cousin and old enemy of Gustavus, died ; the question whom the Diet would elect as his suc- cessor was long in suspense ; and, though before the end of the year Vladislaus, the eldest son of the deceased sovereign, was elected, there are not wanting authors who assert that Gustavus might have obtained the vacant crown, and even that it was actually offered to him. The junction of Maximilian and Wallestein placed the latter at the head of 60,000 men ; a force with which Gustavus was in no condition to cope. He resolved, therefore, to follow the plan which he had before adopted with success, and to await in an entrenched camp the reinforcements which he knew were preparing for him. With the self-reliance of genius he even weakened his own army by detach- ing Hepburn with one body of men to Munich, to preserve that capital for him ; and by sending Horn and Banier, and Duke Bernard away on separate commands, to prevent his being stripped of his conquests. Hearing that a body of Spaniards was preparing to cross into Germany from the Mila- nese territory, he negotiated successfully with the Swiss to induce them to refuse such a force per- mission to pass through their country, and at the THE LIFE OF OUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. 93 same time to permit him to enlist soldiers for his own army from among their nation; and then, taking and disarming one or two inferior towns on his way, he retired to Nuremburg, the neighbour- hood of which city he had selected, as affording the most desirable situation in Germany for the posi- tion which he had resolved to take up. It was well chosen. Being almost in the centre of Germany it covered alike his conquests on the Rhine, on the Danube, and on the Maine; while it kept his com- munications with his allies, and with the coasts of the Baltic, open under all circumstances. He had barely 20,000 men with him ; not one- third of the hosts which were assembled under the banners of the Duke of Friedland the title by which Wallestein was now generally known but skill was destined to make up for the inferiority of numbers. The works which he had planned, sur- rounded the whole city and suburbs of Nuremburg ; a wide fosse was fortified with bastions and redoubts, and all the other means of resistance known to the engineers of that age ; and with such energy and rapidity was the work executed, while each indivi- dual soldier laboured under the eye of the king as if its completion depended on his own exertions, that, though Wtillestein overtook him in little more than a fortnight from the commencement of ope- rations, he found the defences impregnable and bristling with upwards of 300 guns. 94 THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. \\ allestein was too great a man to think it neces- sary to bis reputation to attack troops so posted. " Battles enough," he said, " had been fought, and it was time to try another method." He resolved to show the King of Sweden that he also could raise entrenchments ; and accordingly he took up a position at Furt, about five miles to the south-west of Nuremberg, so as to narrow the channels through which Gustavus received his supplies, and reduce him by famine to quit the lines which he had con- trived with so much labour and skill. The rival plans led to a constant succession of skirmishes, in which Wallestein's superiority of numbers did not always insure him success. His principal magazine was at Freyenstadt, a small town about twenty-five miles to the south-east of Nuremburg, in which a large convoy of provisions from Austria and Bavaria arrived while he was completing his entrenchments. Gustavus. sent Colonel Han wait to surprise the place by night, while he himself covered the move- ment with another body of troops. The enterprise succeeded in every part. Hanwalt burst open the gates with petards, carried the town by assault, bore off the provisions in triumph to Nuremburg, and retired, leaving the place in flames, and having destroyed everything which he could not carry off. Four thousand men whom Wallestein had sent under Colonel Spar, to insure the safety of the convoy, met with no better fate : they fell in with the troops with THE LIFE OF GTJ8TAVU8 ADOLPHUS. 95 which Gustavus was covering Hanwalt's expedition, and, though they made a gallant resistance, they were driven into a swamp and cut to pieces ; and Spar himself taken prisoner. The Swedes were elated at this success, when their spirits were damped hy suffering a loss almost equal to that which they had inflicted, in the sur- prise of a great store of provisions which was on its way from Wurzburg to the King's camp, and which was intercepted and carried off by Isolan, one of the most brilliant of Wallestein's officers. It was evident, however, that it was not by petty efforts and inconsiderable skirmishes such as these that the campaign was to be decided ; and, the moment that Wallestein appeared before Nureinburg, Gustavus had sent pressing requisitions to his diffe- rent lieutenants for reinforcements. The garrisons in Lower Saxony were diminished, all the detached parties were called in, so that at last Oxenstiern, Duke Bernard, and Banier had collected upwards of 40,000 men, with which they hastened to relieve their master, and about the middle of August they arrived at Nuremburg. Gustavus was now superior in numbers ; but it was evident that, unless he could bring Wallestein to action, the reinforcements which he had received would be an injury rather than a benefit to him. Before their arrival scarcity had begun to cause terrible distress both in the camp and city ; and, what was still more afflicting to the THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. King, want began to show its usual effects in impairing the discipline of his troops, who were becoming lawless, rapacious, and cruel, while some even of the superior officers had not escaped the contagion. The system of " general orders " had not yet been introduced, but Gustavus summoned all the principal officers to his own tent, and with great natural eloquence adjured them to repress all such conduct as threatened to bring disgrace on their holy cause. It was a bitter thing to him to be forced to contrast the conduct of the imperial troops with his own, to their disadvantage, but no one complained of any excesses of Wallestein's soldiers. Gnstavns had not sought to enrich himself ; pointing to his heavy military boots, " I have not," said he, " since I left Sweden, gained as much as this single pair of boots which now I wear." He entreated them to remember that they were Chris- tian soldiers, and not to practise, nor to overlook in others, conduct which must draw down the anger of God upon their cause. He supported his address by some severe examples of punishment, and the common soldier was shamed at last into a patient enduring of privations which he saw that his King bore equally with himself. The increased numbers which Gustavus now had in his camp of course made it more difficult than ever to support them. He resolved therefore to try and bring the enemy to battle. Accordingly, THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS APOLPHUS. 97 as soon as the newly arrived troops had recovered from the fatigues of their march, he quitted his lines, and presented himself in order of battle before the camp of Wallestein, which he attacked at the same time with a cannonade. But Walles- tein's entrenchments were not more assailable than his own had been, and the Duke was equally deter- mined to show that he could not be compelled to fight when it did not accord with his own plan to do so. Two days afterwards, on the feast of St. Bar- tholomew, which it was thought that the atrocities of the French Court had made a day of evil omen for the adherents of the Pope, Gustavus made a more regular attempt to storm the enemy's position. Assault after assault was made with unavailing bravery, supported by a heavy cannonade from no less than eighty guns ; but all the efforts of the Swedes could make no impression, and, when night came, the King led his troops back to Nuremburg, lessened by severe losses, and leaving General Torstensohn a prisoner. He had lost 2000 men, and Wallestein about 400. But the success of the imperial general proved in reality injurious to his cause by preventing peace. Such men as Wallestein and Gustavus were too great not to feel mutual respect for each other, and, accordingly, many civilities had passed between them. The Duke of Friedland had ransomed one or two Swedish officers and restored them to the King*, with a 98 THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. message that nothing could give him greater pleasure than the being instrumental in bringing about a peace between him and the Emperor. The King on his part had released General Spar, and had sent with him formal proposals of peace, which Wallestein at once forwarded to Vienna. They were under consideration when the news of this repulse of the Swedish attack reached the Austrian Ministers; who were so elated by the success, trifling as it was, that they proposed conditions which it was impossible for any one with arms in his hands to accept. Gustavus had remained in Nuremburg nearly three months; of citizens and soldiers nearly 80,000 had perished from the casualties of war, from sick- ness, and from want, when, on the 8th of September, he broke up his camp, and, leaving Kniphausen with a garrison of 5000 men to defend the city, he passed slowly in front of the entrenchments of the imperial army, and, marching westward, proceeded to Neustadt on the Aisch ; where he made a short halt to refresh his troops ; and then, having detached Duke Bernard to Wurzburg to cover the line of the Maine, he returned with his main army into Bavaria. A great military critic * blames, apparently witli some reason, the long stay which had been made in * Colonel Mitchell ; Life of Wallestein, c. vii., a book to which I am under great obligations for this sketch. Till: LIFE OF OUSTAVUS ADOLPHU8. 99 the camp at Nuremburg. It certainly does not seem easy to be justified on either military or political grounds ; but, when he proceeds to argue that it was another error in Gustavus to have summoned Oxen- stiern's reinforcements to join him, the two ideas seem hardly consistent with each other; for, without Oxenstiern's troops, Gustavus had not 20,000 men ; and with so scanty a force how could he leave his camp almost under the eyes of such a general as Wallestein with three times his numbers ? While, if Oxenstiern, without uniting his forces with those of his master, had marched into Austria and Bavaria, it seems that Wallesteiu's whole army would have been interposed between these two divisions of the Swedes, and would have been able to attack either with almost irresistible advantage. The only error that the King appears fairly charge- able witli is, that of still remaining in his camp three weeks after Oxenstiern's arrival had enabled him to take the field with superior numbers. Having reached Bavaria, the King proceeded along the Danube, and laid siege to Ingoldstadt; but was forced by political considerations to aban- don the idea of prosecuting the war in that direc- tion. The Ministers of Spain and Austria had been sedulous in their endeavours to detach from liis alliance the Elector of Saxony : who was jealous of seeing a foreign sovereign take such a lead in the affairs of Germany ; and was only kept H 2 100 THE LIFE- OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. true to his engagements by the constant protection which Gustavus had afforded him. But Wallestein had quitted his camp at Furt, five days after Gustavus had left Nuremberg. At Bamberg he reviewed his troops, which, after the Duke of Bavaria had quitted him, to protect his own dominions, were reduced to little more than 20,000 men (so terribly had the same privations which he inflicted on the Swedes thinned his own num- bers also) ; and then, summoning Pappenheim and Altringer to rejoin him, he marched northwards, taking Bayreuth and Coburg on his way towards Upper Saxony, which he designed to make the scene of his winter quarters. Leipsic surrendered at his approach ; and it was plain that, if his pro- gress was not checked, he would overrun the whole province. It was equally plain that if he did, he would effectually sever the bonds which bound the Elector to Gustavus ; who, influenced by this weighty consideration, yielded to the entreaties of the Elector, raised the siege of Ingoldstadt, and pursued Wallestein with the utmost rapidity. At Nuremburg he was joined by a strong body of Swiss soldiers ; and at Schleusingen, on the borders of the Thuringian forest, he was further reinforced by Duke Bernard, with the troops with which he had been detached to act against Pappenheim. At Erfurt he had a brief interview with his Queen, of whom he took a last farewell, on the 29th of . THE LIFE OF GDSTAVUS ADOLPHU8. 101 October; and proceeded into Saxony oy forced marches, in the hope of recovering Naumburg, which had been lately taken by the Imperialists, who however had left but a small garrison there. He gained his object on the 1st of November, anticipating the reinforcements which Wallestein sent the moment that he heard of his approach. Nothing could exceed the joy with which the Saxons welcomed their deliverer as he passed through their country. They knelt before him on his march, crowding amid his soldiers, if haply they might touch the hem of his garment, or the sheath of his sword. It was in vain that he reproved them and warned them that they might bring the wrath of God upon him, by making him the object of such almost profane idolatry. The feeling was universal ; men and women, old and young ; those who had tasted of the horrors of war, from which he was come to deliver them ; those whose hopes were fixed on its glories, to which none could so well lead them ; all were alike incapable of being restrained from offering their affectionate homage to their darling hero. Wallestein turned back from Leipsic to check his progress, with the view of bringing him to action before he could form a junction with the Saxons; but, on reconnoitering the Swedish posi tion at Naumburg, he found, though only two days had elapsed since the arrival of Gustavus, that in 102 THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. that short time the King had fortified it with works almost as strong as, though smaller in extent than, those at Nuremburg. For once the Duke of Fried- land consulted his subordinate generals ; and they gave him fatal advice. It was their unanimous opinion that the King had entrenched himself as they saw, with the intention of passing the winter in his camp ; that therefore Pappenheim might safely be detached to Cologne, which was threat- ened by the Dutch ; and that the rest of the army might retire into winter^quarters. "Wallestein had with him nearly 40,000 men when he dispersed his troops in cantonments, in accordance with this plan; but Pappenheim, besides the force destined for the Rhine, was furnished with twelve regiments to reduce a Swedish garrison in Halle ; and Wallestein with about 12,000 men marched to Lutzen to cover his expedition. On the 5th of November, Gustavus with his whole army, consisting of about 20,000 men, quitted Naumburg with the view of joining the Saxons at Dresden. He had scarcely quitted the camp when he intercepted a letter from Count Colloredo, from which he learnt the absence of Pappenheim, and the small number of the army which was with Wallestein. In a moment he changed his course, and turned towards Lutzen to surprise and crush his enemy before he could assemble his forces. Some outlying cavalry, driven in by the approach TIIH LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. 103 of the Swedes, brought the Duke the first tidings of his danger. Surprised but not dismayed, he took instant measures for his defence. Signal guns were fired to bring up the detachments from the cantonments into which they had been dispersed. An express was sent to Pappenheim, who was as yet hardly more than five miles off, commanding him to return to the assistance of his chief, with every man and every gun. The roads by which the Swedes were advancing were bad, and they had to cross a small river which Isolan defended with a handful of cuirassiers, so that it was evening before Gustavus arrived in front of the enemy. Walle- stein had obtained a precious respite, and he did not throw away a moment of the time thus gained. The plain of Lutzen was a perfect level, and the small town itself covered his right, and the left of the Swedish army. A road ran between the two armies, and this road was separated from the fields by deep ditches on either side. Wallestein employed the day in deepening the ditches, and with the soil thrown up he formed as it were parapets on the banks, to serve as a shelter for his musqueteers, who could fire over them upon the advancing enemy. He arranged his men in large square battalions of heavy infantry ; with smaller bodies of light U'OOfl between them. Fresh detachments kept pouring in all night, and before dawn, Pappenheim returned with his cavalry. As they arrived they were at 104 THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. once stationed in the places marked out for them, till at last the whole army amounted probably to 25,000 men. The Duke had not much artillery, but there was a small battery in front of his centre; and a larger one of seventeen guns in front of some windmills on the right of the subordinate generals. Hoik commanded the right ; Oft'a the centre ; and Goltz the left. The Swedes were arranged as at Leipsic. The King himself commanding the right wing ; Duke Bernard the left ; and Kniphausen the second line. In his entire numbers Gustavus was probably inferior to Wallestein ; but his cavalry and artillery were the more numerous. The day of battle was the 6th of November. It was long, very long, since a day had dawned in Europe of which the issue was to be so momentous. Since Caesar had won the Empire of the world on the field of Pharsalia, no two such generals had ever confronted one another as those who were now arming for the contest. Both were heroes of the truest mould : magnanimous, brave, skilful, hitherto invincible. It was now to be seen whose star was to set ; which was to be for the future the foremost man of the world. Gustavus headed his men in a plain buff coat, mounted on a white charger of conspicuous beauty. Wallestein, who was suffering severely from gout, was carried through the ranks in a sedan chair; and did not mount his horse till the battle began, THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPIIUS. 105 when the pain of the body yielded to the energy of the soul, and none who beheld his exertions could have guessed how severe were his sufferings. At daybreak the two armies were hidden from one another by an impenetrable fog; and it was almost noon when the sun began to dissipate the mist. As soon as he could clearly see the ranks of the enemy, Gustavus exclaimed with a loud voice, " Aid us, Lord Jesus ; for thy holy name are we about to fight ! " and in person led the vanguard against the enemy. The Imperialists set fire to Lutzen to prevent their right flank from being turned ; however, the Swedes were not thinking of manoeuvring, but pressed straight forward to the charge. The tale of hard-fought battles has been often told ; and presents but little variety. The fiery charge of the Swedes broke Wallestein's phalanxes. He flew to the spot, and his personal exertions re- stored the day in the part where his battalions first wavered. The Imperialists' left had been broken by the King at the head of his cuirassiers ; when Gustavus heard that on the other wing Duke Bernard was less successful. While Wallestein was encouraging his beaten troops in the centre, the King was hastening to perform a similar office for his imperilled left wing. He rallied it ; it re- turned to the charge and beat back the Imperial Gustavus uncovered his head to breathe a silent prayer of thanksgiving to the Power in whose hand IOC) THE LIFE OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. is the victory, when one of the enemy's troopers, who had remarked how his ranks made way for him, conjectured that he must be a man of consequence, and fired at him with fatal aim, wounding him in the arm ; a second shot pierced his back. He fell from his horse; his attendants fled before a fresh charge of the Imperialists, who, without re- cognising their victim, dispatched him with several wounds. His horse galloping along the line with empty saddle gave intimation to his own army of their loss. Bernard took the command, and led on the troops for their last charge. They had been terrible before; now that they were fighting to rescue their monarch's body, and to avenge his fall, they were irresistible. In vain did Pappenheirn col- lect the freshest of his men and penetrate into the middle of the Swedes, where he " foremost fighting fell," a glorious death, but not too glorious for such a fearless spirit. In vain did Wallestein with equal heroism throw himself wherever the fire was hottest or the onset fiercest. He seemed to bear a charmed life ; a cannon-shot tore his spur from his heel, ball after ball lodged in his thickly embroidered coat, he remained unwounded. Piccolomini and other officers, stimulated by the example of these leaders, displayed similar courage. Twice they drove back the Swedes ; but, when Bernard brought up the reserves and charged for the third time, the strength and courage of the Imperialists gave way THE LIFE OF GUSTAVTS ADOLPHUS. 107 together, and the rout was complete. Wallestein withdrew to Leipsic, leaving the field of battle, his baggage, and his artillery to the conquerors. When the next morning he tried to collect his forces with the hope of recovering his artillery, he could barely count two thousand men around his standards ; while the Swedish army, though with smaller loss, was almost equally disorganised. The last words of the dying monarch had been, " My poor queen ! Alas, my poor queen ! " To that beloved and faithful wife, who had more than once with manly daring traversed countries full of ene- mies to bring him the aid of reinforcements, and the comfort of her own presence, was his body borne, pierced with nine wounds. She had advanced to Weissenfels, where it was carefully embalmed ; and from thence she bore it to Stockholm, where all that was mortal of her hero lies in the mausoleum of the Swedish kings, in the Riddarholm church. His daughter and successor did but little honour, and paid but little respect to his memory ; but in the present generation the worthiest of his suc- cessors, though a prince of foreign birth, has raised in a shady walk, close to the cathedral at Upsal, an obelisk dedicated to his memory, with the following inscription : TO GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS, IN THE NAME OF THE SWEDISH PEOPLE, CHARLES JOHN XIV. 108 EPAMINONDAS AND PARALLEL. IN the character and circumstances of the two heroes of whose lives I have thus endeavoured to give a sketch, there are many points of striking resemblance. Both were by nature and inclination lovers of peace ; yet both were forced by the chain of events into continual war, and evinced military talent of the highest order. As soldiers, the career of each was an almost uninterrupted course of victory; and in each case it was mainly owing to the reforms which they themselves had intro- duced into military practice. Each in his day was the inventor of a new system, and so wide was their glance, so sound were their principles on which those systems were founded, that they pre- vail to a great extent even to the present day. The tactics of modern armies are practicable, only because Gustavus taught succeeding generals to break up the massive, immoveable phalanx of former wars, into smaller and consequently more active and more manageable battalions. And, though it is now more than 2000 years since Epa- minondas first directed the whole weight of his column upon one part of the Lacedaemonian line at GUSTAVUS ADOLPHU8. 109 Leuctra, it is still in high favour as a most effective mode of attack ; and we need not go further back than the last war to find examples of the terrible impetuosity of the French, rendering it against many of their enemies an almost assured means of victory. They were both military reformers in still more important matters. In the most merciful hands there are horrors enough in war; but in ancient Greece it was merciless. In those days the capture of a town commonly led to the slaughter of the men, the slavery of the women and children. These barbarities Epaminondas applied himself to miti- gate, and was almost the first of his countrymen to release or ransom those whom the fortune of war had placed at his disposal. In what a savage spirit hostilities were waged in the age subsequent to the Reformation, when religious hatred the most cruel of all feelings had added its stimulus to the natural ferocity of excited victory, it is needless to tell ; not only do Rome, and the Netherlands, and Magde- burg, bear terrible testimony to the unsparing vengeance wreaked by even brave generals upon conquered enemies ; but, even when unprovoked by resistance, the soldier appeared to conceive that his occupation exempted him from the ordinary restraints of law and of humanity. The country in which he was encamped as a friend, he treated like an enemy; and the miserable inhabitants could call 110 EPAMINONDAS AND nothing their own, but the scanty leavings of his rapine and licentiousness. It was by Gustavus that this lawless spirit was first checked. Wallestein, to his great honour, was prompt to imitate him ; but it was Gustavus who set the example of maintaining strict discipline in his army, and who taught rigorous lessons of mode- ration and humanity to those mercenary bands who had flattered themselves that the need which their commander had of their services, must make him approve, or at least connive at these excesses, the licence for which was their greatest temptation to service. , Again, both these leaders had the art of inspiring their troops with that personal attachment to them- selves which is the surest parent of great exploits ; and finally, they both died in the hour of victory which would have been decisive of the whole war, had they survived to reap its fruits, and which was, comparatively speaking, barren in its results and crippled in consequence of their fall. Nor were the talents of either of them confined to war. Both were eloquent speakers. In two congresses the Theban by himself upheld the inte- rests of his country successfully against the united eloquence and influence of the Spartan king, and the Athenian orator ; while the frank pleading of the Swede was found equally efficacious to persuade his Senate to adopt his views, to appease the GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. Ill hostility of Christian, and, harder task than either, to curb the licentious passions and avarice of mer- cenary soldiers. Both were statesmen of more than usual farsight- edness. The consolidation of the power of Arcadia, the restoration of Messene were triumphs of peace, and surer means than any victories to tame the pride and bridle the power of Sparta ; while the alliance cemented with France and proposed with England, and the attention which he bestowed on his navy, show an equally just appreciation by Gustavus of the most effectual barriers to be opposed to the overgrown ambition of the House of Austria. Lastly, the mainspring of action in them both were the purest views of patriotism, in the ancient hero ; of patriotism and religion combined, in the modern. A very eminent scholar of the present day has curiously enough found fault with Epami- nondas, because he " devoted his great qualities to the one petty object of the aggrandisement of Thebes." * It may not be an insufficient reply that He was a Theban. In all ages a pure disinterested love of one's country has been reckoned one of the greatest virtues ; and, before Christ had inspired his disciples with wider views, and taught them with an enlarged humanity to regard the welfare of The Rev. E. Elder, Head Master of the Charterhouse School, in the article " Epaminondaa " in Smith's Biographical Dictionary. 112 EPAMINONDAS AND all mankind, it is difficult to see what other virtue could be displayed by any statesman of any country who sought to acquire an honourable fame ; while few men of any age or nation have ever exhibited such an absence of all selfish views, such a post- ponement of all personal claims as Epaminondas, when, after his renown as the victor of Leuctra had filled the then known world", he cheerfully submitted to an unmerited supersession, and served as a common soldier in the ranks which he alone had led, and alone could lead, to victory. Nor was less devotion to his country shown on all occasions by Gustavus. True it is that, as he was its King, the increase of its power was more inseparably connected with his own aggrandisement than was the case with respect to Epaminondas ; but, as the ill-success of his earlier campaigns did not depress him, so neither did the triumphs of his later efforts excite him to pride, or to any self-com- placent arrogance of demeanour on the one hand, or to any attempts to trench on the liberties of his subjects on the other. Self-indulgence was the very last thing for which he was anxious. We have seen that in his very last campaign, he bade his plundering troops learn from his example, since he had gained not the very smallest accession of wealth or personal splendour from any of his victories. Schiller indeed, who delights to seek for flaws in GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. 113 the purest characters, charges him with a personal ambition which, had he survived Lutzen, would, he thinks, have developed itself so as to prove fatal to the liberties of Germany. But if he was, as he argues, "educated in the maxims of arbitrary power," the frankness with which he at all times consulted his Senate, and requested its sanction and assistance, shows that his own inclinations and judgment led him to a better and safer system of policy. His alliance with France was, and was felt by the Roman Catholic Princes generally to be, a sufficient guarantee that, though sincerely attached to his own religion, he did not seek to oppress theirs : while the depth of his attachment to the principles of the Reformation, on which no one has ventured to throw a doubt, ought to be looked upon as an utter disproof of the assertion that "his aim was the imperial crown," with which such principles were incompatible. It is neither a candid nor a just spirit which, when the actions of great men may be accounted for on the purest principles, seeks to draw them down to the level of common humanity, by suggesting the possibility of less worthy motives. Mankind may learn as much wisdom and better feelings from putting the best interpretation on their conduct, humbly reveren- cing and boldly endeavouring to imitate their glorious examples. In conclusion, the remark with which an early 114 EPAMINONDAS AND GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. historian summed up his account of Epaminondas may be equally applied to Gustavus. It is equally true of both, that till they arose in their respective countries, neither Thebes nor Sweden had been either illustrious or powerful. During the brief period of their sway, those states were the most important powers of Europe ; after their deaths they again sank to their previous insignificance. No words can supply so noble a panegyric as these facts. In closing this comparison, it seems unnecessary to assign a superiority to either. A merciful God has so amply endowed mankind with all the faculties calculated to make their race happy and their nations great, that among the mighty dead enshrined for ever in the admiring gratitude of all posterity, some one or two may perhaps be found whose profound wisdom, or whose marvellous achievements have surpassed those of the Theban Chief, or of the Swedish King ; but from the earliest records of history to the present time, none have gone down to the grave whose virtues have been marred by fewer imperfections of character, or whose glories have been sullied by fewer errors of conduct. PHILIP, KING OF MACEDON, A5D FREDERIC THE GREAT, KING OF PRUSSIA. I 2 THE LIFE OF PHILIP, KING OF MACEDON. MACEDONIA, though occasionally mentioned in earlier times, did not become considerable, or in- timately connected with Grecian politics till towards the close of the Peloponnesian war ; when Arche- laus, an usurper, though of royal blood, seized the throne, and by the wisdom and energy of his government, by his internal reforms, and by the establishment of a military force, laid the founda- tion of the future greatness of his kingdom. His career of usefulness was cut short by assassination, about the beginning of the fourth century B.C. ; and so pernicious had been the example which he had set of obtaining the throne by violent means, that three more kings appear in the records of the nation in the next six years, of whom two were murdered : the last, Pausanias, fell by the hands of Amyntas, who was also descended from the royal family, being the great grandson of Alexander, the 118 THE LIFE OF PHILIP, King of Macedon, in the time of Xerxes, and who thus raised himself to the supreme power in the year 394 B.C. Though previously to the time of Archelaus, the Macedonians were but a half-civilised nation, speak- ing a barbarous dialect, in which there was but a small mixture of Greek, and were not considered to belong to the Greek family, the kings of the nation were of the purest Hellenic blood, and traced their descent from Hercules. Amyntas, after a troubled reign of twenty-four years, died in 370, leaving three sons Alexander, who succeeded him, Perdiccas, and Philip. Alexander was mur- dered in the second year of his reign, and in the troubles which ensued, Philip, then about fourteen or fifteen years of age, was placed at Thebes either as a hostage or for security. Here his education was completed in a manner for which his native country would have afforded no opportunities. We have no particular account of his studies or of his instructors, but it must have been here that he acquired that familiarity with the purest Greek literature which, in later days, enabled him to write and to speak in such a manner as to extort the praise of the most accomplished Athenians. Here he made some acquaintance with Plato, who conceived so favourable an opinion of his abilities and character, that his brother Perdiccas, when he recovered the throne, bestowed a principality on KINO OF MACEDON. 119 him at the recommendation of the philosopher ; and here he made the still more valuable acquain- tance of Pelopidas and Epaminondas, and drew from their conversation and example lessons of the highest political and military wisdom. After a long and severe struggle, Perdiccas re- covered the throne of his father and his brother, about six years after his father's death ; but in the fifth year of his reign he died either by assassina tion, or of a wound received in a defeat he sustained from the Illyrians, leaving an infant son named Amyntas. His death was the signal for great civil dissensions. The principles which had regulated the succession to the Macedonian throne were so loosely established, that the tender age of the lawful successor gave encouragement to numerous pretenders. Philip at once seized the reins of sovereignty, as regent and guardian of his nephew ; but the throne was claimed at the same time by Argseus, who had previously seized and held it for a short space before the accession of Amyntas ; and also by Pausanias, one of the royal family, who had sought it before on the death of Alexander. Moreover^ besides these two pretenders, Amyntas had left three illegitimate sons, Archelaus, Aridseus, and Menelaus, who might possibly prove dangerous competitors. Of these his half-brothers Philip put the first to death, the others escaped, and subse- quently found a temporary safety at Olynthus; 120 THE LIFE OF PHILIP, Pausanias was too weak to prosecute his claims by force ; but Argaeus had enlisted the support of the Athenians, with whose assistance he raised an army and laid siege to .