minute and curious questions of fact or credulous tradition: the mode of the King's death, "de dubia cæde Gustavi Adolphi Regis," furnished materials for many-and I have the titles of two at least under my eyes, about the king's magic sword: "de gladio magico, quocum Gustavus Adolphus in prælio apud Lützen pugnaverit." Lastly, the Wallenstein mania, for which Schiller has to answer, produced in our own times such a number of biographies of that personage, and of controversial essays on the questionable points of his history, garnished with original correspondence and extracts from archives, that these alone furnish a mass formidable to contemplate.

The writer of these pages must not pretend to anything like an extensive acquaintance with the vast corpus historicum of which he has just sketched (and skimmed) the circumference; but he has read enough to find himself bewildered by the utterly irreconcilable accounts of every main feature of the day. It was a stand-up fight, with little of previous manoeuvring, fought between midday and sunset, by two armies drawn out in a perfectly open field. "Daylight and champian," one would have thought, could "discover no farther." And yet this swarm of ingenious penmen have succeeded in obscuring the story with a multitude of contradictions. Almost everything is disputed: the number of the combatants (to the extent of 100 per cent.); the number and arrangement of regiments, and names of their commanders; the hour, place, and circumstances of the King's death; the hour of Pappenheim's arrival on the field (the critical point of the contest); nay, even the important questions, whether Wallenstein was in a litter or on horseback, with his stirrup wrapped up in silk to alleviate the pressure on his gouty limb-a device of Charles the Fifth, according to his autobiography; and whether Gustavus's charger was white, "brown-black," or "apple-grey." Having referred to these contradictions, the writer intends to waive further discussion of them, and

to compile the best account he can by comparison of authorities. And he can only recommend to any one who may be as curious as himself, two measures: the first to procure, if he can, F. E. F. Philippi's "Death of Gustavus Adolphus," printed at Leipzig in 1832-it consists only of a hundred pages, and the author was "Steuer-rath" at Lützen, and had a pair of eyes; the next, to carry Philippi in his pocket, and visit the battle-field, which is easily reached and may be soon explored.

The little town of Lützen lies between several intersecting lines of railroad, and at some distance from each. The ordinary tourists' approach to it is consequently by carriage or omnibus from Leipzig, ten or twelve English miles away. But, for my own part, I walked to it from the station at Corbetha, on the line between Halle and Weimara pleasant two hours' stroll, along footpaths and cross-roads, through a land of teeming fertility, alive with the whole population of the neighbourhood busy at their potato harvest. The pedestrian crosses the Saale by a rope-ferryhere a sullen deep stream, cutting its way through strata of diluvial gravel, about the size of the Severn at Worcester; traverses the pretty bowery village of Vesta, with its aged lindens; and thence across the open plain which extends to the neighbourhood of Leipzig, and in the middle of which Lützen is

placed. A rich and joyous-looking expanse of land, studded with villages and tall ungainly church steeples; here and there, bedded in the soil, one of those problematical boulders of dark-red granite which the glaciers transported hither, according to modern belief, from distant Scandinavia, and which now chiefly serve as landmarks: far in the south, the first blue outlines of the Erzgebirge faintly show themselves. Such is the aspect of the vast battle-field of Northern Germany, the scene of the greatest military events of modern history; of which it may be said, with even greater truth than of the plains round Fleurus and Waterloo, that "not an ear of corn is pure from the blood

of men." For from that elevated station at Corbetha, or, still better, from the old castle tower at Merseburg, the eye embraces at once the site of that ancient victory obtained by Henry the Fowler over the Huns in A.D. 934; of the two battles of Leipzig (or Breitenfeld), in the Thirty Years' War; of Lützen, of Rossbach, of Gross-Gorschen, vulgarly called the second battle of Lützen, in 1813; and may identify the church towers of some of those villages which blazed, one by one, that same year, in the three October days of the "Battle of the Nations," when, for the first and last time in authentic history, half a million of men were ranged against each other in a pitched field.

Approaching Lützen on this (western) side, the traveller is able to estimate the optical error which, as we shall presently see, misled the Swedes, and partly disconcerted their plans. The lofty old towers of the church and castle, and the high-pitched roofs, rising in an open field, and on the farther side of a slight depression in the ground, seem much nearer than they really are.

Lützen itself is a thoroughly oldfashioned forgotten-looking little Saxon town, with walls and fosse partially preserved, and the open country on all sides extending close up to them. It has now about 500 houses, and is traditionally believed to have been more considerable in old times; as indeed must have been the case, or else the municipality indulged in a fine spirit of local exaggeration when, in a report dated in 1651, they mention that Wallenstein's troops, before the great battle, set fire to the "suburbs of their city;" represented now by two or three beerhouses only, and one or two farmgranges. Passing the town, and following the road to Leipzig, for about three-quarters of an English mile, the traveller sees on his left something like an obelisk, which his imagination will fix on at once as a monument of the battle, but which is, in truth, only

1 Those of Jena and Auerstadt, though not actually in sight, may be added from their proximity.

the chimney of an abandoned shaft for digging peat, here found in large deposits beneath the gravel. But, presently afterwards, he discovers, close on the right hand of the road, the central object of his search-the "Swedes' Stone." It stands, as we shall see, not exactly on the spot where the King is supposed to have fallen, but within a few yards of it. The stone is a rough porphyritic boulder, of the kind already described; and bears on its northern face, fronting the road, the inscription, "G. A. 1632." It is surrounded, after the kindly German fashion, with a little shrubbery and gravel walk, and surmounted by a Gothic arch of cast-iron, placed there some twenty years ago by subscription; executed in very fair taste, but injuring the simplicity of the stern old monument. It was a bold æsthetic thought of his Majesty's equerry and fellow-soldier, Jacob Erichson-though carried out with something of the roughness of execution belonging to the agewhen he harnessed thirteen boors of the neighbouring village of Meuchen to this stone, which lay at some distance, and made them drag it "with sweat and tears" to its present site, from whence it looks eternally over the northern plain of Germany towards the hero's own distant Scandinavia. "Yet this is not the exact spot where the king fell," adds the narrative (Vulpius, Megalurgia Martisburgica, i.e. the Marvels of Merseburg), "but their strength was exhausted."

Arrived at the Schwedenstein, the visitor may make himself master of the details of the action, with but little difficulty, thanks to the level character of the ground and absence of hedges. No doubt there are ciceroni to be had ; but, for my own part, I found that a two groschen-piece and a shake of the hand, administered to a beautiful nymph of seven, who was out potato-gathering with her family, sufficed to bring about me enough of her friends and admirers to impart all the information I wanted, and more than I could understandalthough the pure Saxon dialect is a civilized one, and comprehensible, with some attention, by one who possesses

with the country beyond, and himself fell back from Weissenfels to Lützen. Pappenheim was detached on the 4th, and on the same day the King was made aware of it through an intercepted letter.

On the evening of the 4th of November, therefore, matters stood thus :Wallenstein was at Lützen, covering the approach from the west to Leipzig, with a force variously estimated, but probably not less than 25,000 men;1 Gustavus at Naumburg, sixteen English miles south-west of Lützen as the crow flies, with perhaps an equal number; Pappenheim at Halle, sixteen miles northwest of Lützen, with 15,000 or 20,000; the Saxons at Torgau, forty miles northeast of Lützen, with a force variously estimated at from 8,000 to 16,000. Under these circumstances, there were not wanting timorous councillors to advise the King to outmanœuvre the slow Wallenstein, turn him by the south, and join the Saxons. The King at once rejected the counsel. Had he attempted it, Pappenheim and Wallenstein reuniting might have caught him in a trap; had he escaped this danger, the fidelity of the Elector was doubtful. It was obviously his business to fight Wallenstein at once, before Pappenheim could be recalled from Halle. With Gustavus, to decide and to act were almost simultaneous. He might yet surprise Wallenstein before his force was concentrated after its march from Weissenfels. At midnight of the 4th the King began to move. At ten in the morning the towers of Lützen were in sight. But this plan was defeated, in the first place, by the unexpected resistance of Solani's Croats and some artillery on the brook at Rippach; next, as Harte avers, by the optical mistake I have already mentioned, which made the Swedes believe themselves nearer

Protestant writers say 40,000; Catholics,

20,000. The latter number seems very improbably low. The detachment of Pappenheim to Halle was a gross blunder at best; but we may safely assume that Wallenstein would not have ventured on it in the face of the redoubtable Swede, if his army had been thereby reduced below the number of the latter.

Lützen than they really were.

Conse

quently, he could not arrive at his chosen ground, east of Lützen, until too late for action. Had it been otherwise, the 5th of November, old style, would have added one more to its Protestant commemorations, and Wallenstein might have descended to British posterity as a supplementary Guy.

Wallenstein would rather have avoided fighting; but this day's delay gave him time to prepare for the contest, by sending a messenger or messengers to hurry Pappenheim's return, and by intrenching his position as well as he might. His army was drawn up on a line of about a mile and a half; its right, to the south-west, resting on the town of Lützen, which was an impediment to his being turned on that flank; his left, north-east, on the western bank of the "Flossgraben," a deep drainage ditch and mill-stream (not a canal to float timber, as Mitchell supposes); his front covered by the high-road from Lützen to Leipzig, of which he had deepened both the side ditches, and filled them with musketeers. But it is important to observe (what neither Harte nor Mitchell was aware of, but Philippi distinctly shows) that this high-road did not coincide exactly with the present. It diverged from the straight line of the present highway, close to the Schwedenstein, curved to the south, and swept back again into the present road near the point where this crosses the Flossgraben. The country-people still point out the old road, rising in a slight ridge on the corn-fields. The consequence would appear to be, that the two armies, being separated by this winding road, were not drawn up in straight lines, but the Imperialist front slightly concave, the Swedish convex; giving the latter something of that advantage which Marlborough turned

to such decisive account at Ramillies. The most salient part of the Swedish line would, on this supposition, have been close to the Schwedenstein.

Wallenstein's position was, however, not a bad one, for an army of equal force

acting on the defensive; but his order of battle was inconceivably perverse, even according to contemporary critics. He seems to have been actuated by a resolution to proceed in direct opposition to the lessons which the Swedish victories had taught his profession. He took a step back, towards the tactics of the old Netherland wars. He is said to have conceived that Tilly lost the battle of Leipzig through adopting too loose an order: though Tilly's solid squares of infantry, or "tercias," were 2,000 strong. His own foot were drawn up in five such solid squares, of huge dimensions: four in the centre, one on his right, near the windmills. The reader may be spared the involved mathematical calculations on which these were constructed; suffice it to say that, if complete, every such square would consist of 5,000 men, pikemen and musketeers in equal numbers, and would have at the angles small projecting bastion-like formations of musketeers, so as to be shaped exactly like an ordinary quadrangular redoubt. "The manner in “which the armies went to work," says Colonel Mitchell, "in the hour of 66 battle, with their mixed masses of spearmen and musketeers, is a diffi"culty which historians have left un"decided, and which, at this distance "of time, we are not well able to ex"plain. What were the spearmen

doing, exposed, without any power "of reaction, to the shots where the "musketeers were engaged; and what "became of the musketeers when the "battle came to push of pike?"

Perhaps the difficulty does not so strongly present itself to the imagination of the civilian as of the military writer; at all events, this intermixture was regularly practised in drawing up the infantry of European armies, from the invention of the musket down to that of the bayonet. Marshal Saxe, as we know, preferred the pike, thus supported, to the bayonet itself; concerning which "ricketty zizzag," our own eccentric Colonel exclaims, "What will be deemed of the military "intelligence of an age which could "tolerate the tactical puerilities founded

"on the presumed use of a toy that "has been brandished with bombastic "fierceness for upwards of a century, "and has never yet, in fair and manly fight, inflicted a mortal wound on a single man?"

In thus uniting spearmen with musketeers, Wallenstein only followed the fashion; but his enormous squares, constructed, no doubt, with a view to resist the dreaded impetuosity of the Swedes, seem to have been condemned in his own age as pedantic and unwieldy. They formed, in fact, the last appearance, on any modern stage, of the classical and medieval phalanx; capable, no doubt, of resisting cavalry attacks, but unable to move themselves in attack or pursuit, and exposed to utter destruction when artillery could be brought to bear on them. His own artillery consisted of about eighty heavy pieces, 24- to 48-pounders, as some inform us it was disposed in front of his troops along the whole line of the road. His cavalry were on the flanks, consisting (as then usual in the Austrian service) of four classes: cuirassiers, as they were termed, but who wore, in addition to the cuirass, the vizored helmet, gorget, brassarts, and cuisses; carbineers, with cuirass and carbine; dragoons, few in number; and light horse, then termed Croats, as in later times Hussars, on the extremities of the linetroops whose special genius lay in the line of plundering, which they executed with a vigour perhaps unequalled in military history. His right wing was strongest, as he expected on the left the almost immediate reinforcement of the Pappenheimers. His front was covered by musketeers in the deepened ditches, on both sides of the way.

Notwithstanding all the successes of the Swedes, the spirit of his army ran high. Wallenstein was still to them the unconquerable one, who had baffled, if not defeated, the Swede himself. Gorged with plunder, and made frantic by the promise of more, inflamed with that pe culiar pride of mercenaries, who feel themselves for the hour elevated into the masters of princes and governments,