they swore (so, at least, said their enemies) that "if they did not win the "battle, they would drive God out of "heaven with their cudgels." It might be asked why Gustavus, with his skill as a tactician and his welltrained army, did not outmanœuvre and take in flank Wallenstein's helpless masses, instead of attacking them in front? But the answer is plain. Time was wanting for the purpose. It was necessary for him to gain his victory before Pappenheim came up. Pappenheim was to him what Blucher was to Napoleon at Waterloo; and he had not even a Grouchy to oppose to him. To have turned Wallenstein's right, with Pappenheim coming up on Wallenstein's left, would have been to march head foremost into a snare. There remained only the front attack, and for this, bloody as it must prove, he prepared himself at once. The King passed the night of the 5th-6th, in his carriage in the open field, west of Lützen. At daybreak he crossed the country behind, or south of, Lützen, and drew up his army in a double line, facing that of Wallenstein, and south of the high-road so often mentioned. In order to effect this, part of his force had to cross the deep "Flossgraben," which forms a curve from a point south-east of Lützen to the bridge where it is (and was) crossed by the high-road so often named. Here it would seem as if Wallenstein might have checked his adversary by a bold advance; but his defensive tactics rendered this impracticable. The Swedes passed the mill-stream, and the army was drawn up, in "battalia," while the morning fog yet concealed the enemy. The Swedish army was the very opposite of the Austrian. Everything was done to promote rapidity of movement and promptness of execution. The infantry (in the centre) was not, however, formed in line, according to modern ideas that invention was reserved for the "old Dessauer," as the Germans call him, a century later. The system of Gustavus consisted rather in macadamizing the great blocks of the ancient army into small and compact, but still solid masses, drawn up in general six deep. The front rank was formed by the famous Swedish black, yellow, green, and blue brigades, concerning which the accounts are contradictory, whether they were so denominated from the colour of their casques, or of their jackets. Colonel Mitchell says, "The blue brigade were composed of British ;" but, it is to be feared, without authority. The British, especially the Scots, formed a very important portion of the so-called Swedish army, but they are not particularly mentioned in the accounts of Lützen. The second line, or reserve, was chiefly composed of German infantry. The cavalry were placed on the flanks: Swedes on the right, towards the Flossgraben; Germans on the left, nearest to Lützen. The Swedes seem to have had only two classes of cavalry: cuirassiers, armed with the light cuirass, carbine, and broadsword; dragoons, with musket and sabre. The German horse are described as carrying, in addition to other weapons, a hammer hooked at one end, to drag the enemy off his horse. Platoons of musketry, 100 to 150 strong, were posted between the squadrons; and this is the only rational sense in which we can understand the plan of "mingling cavalry with infantry," attributed by some military writers to Gustavus-a plan which, if carried out in any literal sense, could only have had the effect of crippling the movements of the cavalry altogether. The artillery was stationed along the front, and consisted of only twenty heavy pieces, and about eighty of the common Swedish "flying artillery," 4-pounders only, we are told.1 In like manner, the pikes of the Swedes were five feet shorter than those of their antagonists, and the carbines and muskets lighter. The whole army is variously estimated at from 11,000 to 16,000 infantry, 9,000 to 12,000 cavalry. 1 The king's famous "leathern cannon," which have puzzled modern tacticians almost as much as they astonished his enemies, do not seem to have been used at Lützen. Probably the invention never got beyond the character of an experiment. Bernard of Saxe Weimar, and Marshal Knyphausen, commanded the Germans. The Swedes were led on by the King in person. A more gallant army never entered into action; and yet its experienced generals remarked with regret, that these were not the same invincible Swedes who had crossed the Baltic and conquered at Leipzig. Battles and marches, detachments and garrisons, and, above all, the camp-fevers of Nuremberg, had thinned the ranks of those veterans, and they were replaced by recruits who had learnt little as yet from their comrades, except their martial ardour. : The heavy fog lasted until eleven in the morning it may easily be conceived with what impatience the King watched for its disappearance, expecting Pappenheim on his right flank every hour. Meanwhile, morning prayer was held, and the King rode along the line to encourage his men. With the Thucydidean speeches which sundry historians put in the mouths of both generals, it is unnecessary to trouble the reader. It is more to the purpose to note that the Swedes sang Luther's Hymn, and that other, well known in Lutheran Germany, which begins "Verzage nicht, du Haüflein klein," of which the words are traditionally said to be Gustavus's own. At eleven in the morning the heavy fog dissipated, and each army beheld the faces of the other. The artillery began to play, but seemingly with no great effect. Wallenstein's cannon, we are told, were pointed too high, and harmed the Swedes but little. The Swedish were doubtless better served, but it is singular that so little is said of the havoc which they might be expected to have made in Wallenstein's helpless quadrangles. At length the Swedish infantry charged, in the centre. They forced their way across the ditches and the road, broke by the suddenness of their attack two of Wallenstein's squares, and endangered a third, when the cuirassiers of Wallenstein's right wing charged in support of their infantry; the Swedes wavered, were driven back across the road, and a battery of seven cannon, immediately east of the Schwedenstein, taken by the Imperialists. Gustavus now placed himself at the head of Stenbock's Smaland regiment of cuirassiers-its commander had just fallenwhich was stationed in the right wing, nearest to the infantry. He called out to his favourite, Colonel Stahlhantsch, a soldier of fortune, who had risen from the condition of a serving-man, "Charge those black fellows (Piccolomini's cuirassiers), else they will do us a mischief;" crossed the road, galloped on before his men, and threw himself on the flank of another cuirassier regiment. The spirit of the religious champion, the Gideon of Protestantism, had, in this his last hour, sole possession of his fiery nature he exclaimed, 'Now, in God's name, let us at them! Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, let us fight for the honour of Thy holy name!" and dashed at the enemy. At this moment, four comrades are noticed as having been at his side, besides one or two grooms: these were, Hof-Marschal Kreilsheim, Chamberlain Truchsess, a young Nuremberger named Löbelfing, of whom we shall hear more presently, and Duke Francis Albert, of Saxe Lauenburg. This last, of sinister name, was a cadet of one of the oldest and poorest sovereign houses of North Germany, connected rather nearly with the royal blood of Sweden. He had taken arms, a mere adventurer, under Tilly; but, on the arrival of his royal kinsman in Germany, changed sides, went over to the Swedes, and obtained a pension from Gustavus, with whom he lived on terms of intimacy. They were at once enveloped in the hostile ranks. The Swedish cuirassiers, staggered for a moment by the fire from the ditches, followed in hot haste; but too late a pistol-shot broke the King's arm. He continued, for a moment, to encourage his comrades; but, his strength failing him, he turned his horse's head, and muttered to the Duke, "Mon cousin, tirez moi d'ici, car je suis fort blessé." As he turned, an Austrian trooper marked the action, cried out, "Art thou here? I have long sought for thee!" and discharged his carbine into the King's shoulder. The King fell from his horse, with the last words, "My God!" The doer of the deed was instantly "beaten down with a storm of arquebusades" by the Swedes; but it was reported that he was a Lieutenant von Falkenberg, who had become acquainted with the King's person while a prisoner. A desperate struggle now took place around the body. Those next to the King were killed or mortally wounded, except Lauenburg alone, who contrived to ride unhurt out of the mêlée. The actual spot of the death is fixed by Philippi, conjecturally, just within the angle formed by the divergence of the new and old roads to Leipzig. The body, stripped and mangled, was found at last by his victorious countrymen. It was brought in the night into the village church of Meuehen; the troopers who escorted it did not dismount, but rode by torchlight round the altar, before which it was deposited. Thence it was finally carried to rest with the remains of his ancestors in his own land. Such, or nearly such, seem to be the circumstances of the royal soldier's death. But the belief that he perished by treachery became in after years so general, that it is impossible to avoid referring to them, even in the most cursory narrative. More is unnecessary; since Schiller, in his well-known history, has said nearly all that need be said respecting this once favourite historical puzzle. There is no affirmative evidence whatever in favour of the supposition that the deed was perpetrated by Francis Albert of Saxe Lauenburg, or any other traitor. The negative evidence against it consists mainly in the fact that no eyewitness of the battle, and no immediately contemporary writer, refers to it. The suspicion arises afterwards, and makes way to the light from various and distant quarters -first as a vague report, afterwards as a definite charge-until at last it becomes universally received, if not absolutely believed, among the Swedes, and has great currency even among the Germans. "He who ate my bread," so ran the mystic verse in the mouth of the people, "hath lift up his heel against me: "thus did it befall Gustavus from the "fourth man, who entered the enemy's "lines along with him."1 No doubt the ill fame of Francis Albert himself, and his repeated desertions of both causes, make him a not unnatural object of such suspicion; but one circumstance, which Gftörer has acutely pointed out, must be taken into account on the other side he was arrested by the Imperial Government as an accomplice in Wallenstein's treason, long imprisoned, and ultimately discharged-a course of conduct which they would have hardly adopted towards a hired assassin of their own, such as the story makes him. The verdict, in short, on such evidence as we have before us, must be, not simply not proven, but not guilty; and all that remains is that impalpable cloud of doubt of which, when once raised, it is so difficult to disembarrass the mind. It was not until 1790, after Schiller's history had appeared, that a document was published by Murr, in his "Contributions to the History of the Thirty Years' War," which has at least a negative bearing of some importance on this problem. It is a narrative of the King's death, obtained by Colonel von Löbelfing, father of the youth who has been mentioned as one of Gustavus's comrades in his last charge, from the lips of his son; but at second hand only. This gallant lad was not a page of the King's, as he is commonly represented, but a volunteer, who followed his person in a hearty boyish passion of admiration for the hero. The father tells his story touchingly enough, in the language of a soldier-saint of those times. The youth, he says, saw the King surrounded by enemies; saw him fall from his horse; dismounted, and offered his own. "Then "the King raised both his hands towards "him; but my son was not able alone "to lift him on horseback, and his Ma 1" Wer mein Brod isst, der mit Füssen mich tritt; So geschah es Gustavo von dem Vierten, jesty could not help himself. There 1 upon came up some of the enemy's "cuirassiers, and wanted to know who "it was; but neither the King nor my son would say one of them, on this, "fired a pistol through the King's head, "who then said, 'I am myself the King "of Sweden,' and so fell asleep. "They gave my son two shots and three "stabs, stripped him to his shirt, and "left him for dead." The poor fellow was brought to Naumburg, where he died some days after. "And thus," adds the father, "did this young cavalier, "whose whole age was only eighteen "years, seven months, and twenty-three "days, truly wait upon his late Majesty "in that bloody fight, although he was "not in his royal service; stayed by him "until his blessed end, and was the last "of all at his side. . . . In his sickness "he never complained of pain, was very 66 patient, and often said it was for his "King's sake he had received those "wounds, and would willingly suffer all 66 over again on his account; and, if he "might live for a hundred years longer, "he would not wish to do so." And he prayed his attendants "to write to his "heart's loved father and his relations, "and beg us not to sorrow for him, for "that he had lost his life in his calling 66 on a Christian and honourable occa"sion, and had fought gallantly by the "side of his Majesty of Sweden for "God's word and glory." This account, whatever its value as to minute particulars, is at all events important on the question of the murder. It purports to have been given by the young man to his attendants at Naumburg, who conveyed it to his father, who wrote it down a few weeks after the battle. Had the story of murder been then current, it must have figured somehow in the recital. Such a suspicion was hardly needed to embitter the universal feeling of inconsolable grief. "The sorrow," says Philippi, "which the death of the King "occasioned throughout Protestant Ger The devil's advocate might have a word to put in here. If the cuirassiers only came up "thereupon," it was not a cuirassier who fired the fatal shot. "many and in Sweden is depicted by " contemporaries in the liveliest colours. "Country and town, citizen, peasant, "and soldier, all united to mourn the "irreparable loss. They wandered about "like a flock without a shepherd, "loudly bewailing the death of their prince, their liberator; for such was "Gustavus Adolphus to them all. "Never was a sovereign more revered, more loved, or more wept for. Every one would have his portrait, and there was not a cottage in Germany where "it was not to be found." And that popular impression was as deep and enduring as it was general. As late as 1796, when Christian Fischer travelled that way, the Saxon postilion would take off his hat as he passed the Schwedenstein. And if traditional reverence has since grown fainter, that which arises from wider education and an increased love of religious and political freedom has taken its place, and the memory of Gustavus Adolphus abides as life-like as ever. And most deservedly. History has grown cold and critical: the Clio of our times seems to have an old-maidish pleasure in decrying the subjects of our early enthusiasm, in lowering by a few pegs the special heroes of our imaginations. She has not ventured even to attempt this operation on Gustavus Adolphus. A halo of something like superhuman dignity surrounds him. So it was even with his contemporaries. Those who saw him every day seem still to have regarded him rather as an agent of Providence-the embodiment of a great purpose-than an ordinary man. He was thus marked by destiny from the beginning: when his father, Charles the Ninth, exhorted in council to designs to which he felt unequal, would lay his hand on the fair hair of his boy, and say, "Ille faciet; " when he relinquished the love of his youth and all the temptations of a throne, married for reasons of state, and set himself doggedly to the task of taming, one by one, his hard-mouthed neighbours of the North, as a preparation for the mightier destinies which he alone foresaw. Such he appeared to the Germans among whom he came as a deliverer; on whom his noble features, his bright blue eyes, his floating golden hair-il ré d'oro, the Italians called him-produced the effect of an angelic messenger. Not that he was affectedly superior to other men, or had anything of the prophet in his demeanour; on the contrary, every account represents him as simple, affable, freespoken among his associates, even to a fault. The Jesuits of Munich recounted with pride how he had disputed with them for an hour or so concerning transubstantiation and communion sub utrâque," ending, as they were pleased to assert, with high compliments to their order. The peasants of Bavaria would long tell the tale, how, as he forced them to drag his artillery, he would come among them with kind words and instructions how to place the lever, accompanied with occasional florins. But, in truth, he was an example, such as most of us may have witnessed in common life, of that class of men whose exceptional superiority of character is such that no familiarity seems to diminish the distance between them and others. Much of this was, no doubt, owing to that deep religious conviction which, when openly avowed and consistently acted on, always awes minds conscious of their own falling short. Cromwell could not have been more convinced of his own divine vocation, or more fearless in his expression of reliance on it; but there is something of the earth, earthy, in the zeal of Cromwell even when taken at its best, which contrasts unfavourably with the earnest, manly, single-minded piety of Gustavus. And the consequence is, that, while Cromwell's enemies made him out a hypocrite, and have left great part of the world persuaded that he was one, no detractor has ever endeavoured to fasten the like imputation on the Swede. With him, as with Cromwell, the constant sense of religion led to a familiarity of utterance respecting it which, to the ears of our reserved generation, seems almost startling. "Pray constantly praying hard is fighting hard," : But he was not content with preaching his conduct was throughout a noble exemplification of the religion which he professed. To take one trait only his strict maintenance of discipline. The Thirty Years' War was a hideous time, in which the military were not only permitted to indulge in every excess, but encouraged in it as a matter of policy; it being the received principle of noted leaders to employ their armies as a scourge, not only to intimidate the enemy, but to keep in order doubtful allies or personal foes, through the system of "free quarters." Of the unhappy agent of this system-the soldier -it might be said, in the language of the Norfolk Island convict, that when he entered the service "the heart of a man was taken from him, and there 66 was given to him the heart of a beast." From the beginning of his wars Gustavus set himself determinedly to the task of extirpating an evil which had become unendurable, while every campaign seemed to root it more firmly in the land. And he succeeded to an extent which seems almost miraculous. No army under his command was ever disgraced by unpunished enormity; and it was not until long after his death, when his example had ceased to act, that the Swedish forces became equally a terror to the country with the Imperialist. Had so noble a character the alloy of earthly ambition? Was it his purpose to extend the Swedish dominion, or to become the first Protestant Emperor of Germany, or to achieve supremacy in Western Europe? It may be so. He was a conqueror by profession-an ab |