romantic city by the Moldau, with its strange, half Oriental beauty, where Jesuitism now reigns supreme, and St John Nepemuch is the popular divinity, Protestantism and Jesuitism then lay in jealous neighbourhood,-Protestantism supported by the native nobility, from anarchical propensity as well as from religious conviction; Jesuitism patronized and furtively aided by the intrusive Austrian power. From the Emperor Rudolph II, the Protestants had obtained a charter of religious liberties. But Rudolph's successor, Ferdinand II, was the Philip II of Germany in bigotry, though not in cruelty. In his youth, after a pilgrimage to Loretto, he had vowed at the feet of the Pope to restore Catholicism at the hazard of his life. He was a pupil of the Jesuits, almost worshipped priests, was passionately devoted to the ceremonies of his religion, delighting even in the functions of an acolyte, and, as he said, preferred a desert to an empire full of heretics. He had, moreover, before his accession to the throne, come into collision with Protestantism where it was triumphant, and had found in its violence too good an excuse for his bigotry. It was inevitable that as King of Bohemia he should attempt to narrow the Protestant liberties. The hot Czech blood took fire, the fierceness of political turbulence mingled with that of religious zeal, and at a council held at Prague, in the old palace of the Bohemian kings, Martinitz and Slavata, the most hated of Ferdinand's creatures, were thrown out of a window in what was called good Bohemian fashion, and only by a marvellous accident escaped with their lives. The first blow was struck, the signal was given for thirty years of havoc. Insurrection flamed up in Bohemia. At the head of the insurgents, Count Thurn rushed on Vienna. The Emperor was saved only by a miracle, as Jesuitism averred, as Rationalism says, by the arrival of Dampierre's Imperial horse. He suffered a fright which must have made him more than

ever prefer a desert to an empire full of heretics. By a vote of the States of Bohemia the crown was taken from Ferdinand and offered to Frederic, Elector Palatine. Frederic was married to the bright and fascinating Princess Elizabeth of England, the darling of Protestant hearts; other qualifications for that crown of peril he had none. But in an evil hour he accepted the offer. Soon his unfitness appeared. A foreigner, he could not rein the restive and hardmouthed Czech nobility; a Calvinist and a pupil of the Huguenots, he unwisely let loose Calvinist iconaclasm among a people who clung to their ancient images though they had renounced their ancient faith. Supinely he allowed Austria and the Catholic League to raise their Croats and Walloons with the ready aid, so valuable in that age of unready finance, of Spanish gold. Supinely he saw the storm gather and roll towards him. Supinely he lingered in his palace, while on the White Hill, a name fatal in Protestant annals, his army, filled with his own discouragement, was broken by the combined forces of the Empire, under Bucquoi, and of the Catholic League, under Count Tilly. Still there was hope in resistance: yet Frederic fled. He was in great danger, say his apologists. It was to face a great danger, and show others how to face it, that he had come there. Let a man, before he takes the crown of Bohemia, look well into his own heart. Then followed a scaffold scene like that of Egmont and Horn, but on a larger scale. Ferdinand, it seems, hesitated to shed blood, but his confessor calmed his scruples. Before the City Hall of Prague, and near the Thein Church, bearing the Hussite emblems of the chalice and sword, amidst stern military pomp, the Emperor presiding in the person of his High Commissioner, twenty-four victims of high rank were led forth to death. Just as the executions commenced a bright rainbow spanned the sky. To the victims it seemed an assurance of Heaven's mercy. To the

gloom. By the side of the brave burghers who beat back the Prince of Parma from the cities of Holland, a place must be made in history for the brave burghers who beat back Wallenstein from Stralsund, after he had sworn, in his grand, impious way, that he would take it though it were bound by a chain to Heaven. The eyes of all Protestants were turned, says Richelieu, like those of sailors, towards the North. And from the North a deliverer came. On Midsummer day, 1630, a bright day in the annals of Protestantism, of Germany, and, as Protestants and Germans must believe, of human liberty and progress, Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, landed at Penemünde, on the Pomeranian coast, and knelt down on the shore to give thanks to God for his safe passage: then showed at once his knowledge of the art of war and of the soldier's heart, by himself taking spade in hand, and commencing the entrenchment of his camp. Gustavus was the grandson of that Gustavus Vasa who had broken at once the bonds of Denmark and of Rome, and had made Sweden independent and Lutheran. He was the son of that Charles Vasa who had defeated the counter-reformation. Devoted from his childhood to the Protestant cause, hardily trained in a country where even the palace was the abode of thrift and self-denial, his mind enlarged by a liberal education, in regard for which, amidst her poverty, as in the general character and habits of her people, his Sweden greatly resembled Scotland; his imagination stimulated by the wild scenery, the dark forests, the starry nights of Scandinavia; gifted by nature both in mind and body; the young king had already shown himself a hero. He had waged grim war with the powers of the icy north; he bore several scars, proofs of a valour only too great for the vast interests which depended on his life; he had been a successful innovator in tactics, or rather a successful restorer of the military science of the Romans. But the best of his military innovations were

discipline and religion. His discipline redeemed the war from savagery, and made it again, so far as war, and war in that iron age could be, a school of humanity and selfcontrol. In religion he was himself not an ascetic saint: there is one light passage at least in his early life: and at Augsburg they show a ruff plucked from his neck by a fair Augsburger at the crisis of a very brisk flirtation. But he was devout, and he inspired his army with his devotion. The traveller is still struck with the prayer and hymn which open and close the march of the soldiers of Gustavus. Schools for the soldiers' children were held in his camp. It is true that the besetting sin of the Swedes, and of all dwellers in cold countries, is disclosed by the article in his military code directed against the drunkenness of army chaplains.

Sir Thomas Roe, the most sagacious of the English diplomatists of that age, wrote of Gustavus to James I. :-“The king hath solemnly protested that he will not depose arms till he hath spoken one word for your majesty in Germany (that was his own phrase); and glory will contend with policy in his resolution; for he hath unlimited thoughts, and is the likeliest instrument for God to work by in Europe. We have often observed great alterations to follow great spirits, as if they were fitted for the times. Certainly, ambit fortunam Cæsaris: he thinks the ship cannot sink that carries him, and doth thus oblige prosperity."

Gustavus justified his landing in Germany by a manifesto setting forth hostile acts of the Emperor against him in Poland. No doubt, there was a technical casus belli. But, morally, the landing of Gustavus was a glorious breach of the principle of non-intervention. He came to save the world. He was not the less a fit instrument for God to work by because it was likely that he would rule the world when he had saved it.

"A snow king!" tittered the courtiers of Vienna, "he will soon melt away." He soon began to prove to them, both in war and di

fought and won. He was a Walloon by birth, a pupil of the Jesuits, a sincere devotee, and could boast that he had never yielded to the allurements of wine or women, as well as that he had never lost a battle. His name was now one of horror, for he was the captor of Magdeburg, and if he had not commanded the massacre, or, as it was said, jested at it, he could not be acquitted of cruel connivance. That it was the death of his honour to survive the butchery which he ought to have died, if necessary, in resist ing sword in hand, is a soldier's judgment on his case. At his side was Pappenheim, another pupil of the Jesuits, the Dundee of the thirty years' war, with all the devotion, all the loyalty, all the ferocity of the Cavalier, the most fiery and brilliant of cavalry officers, the leader of the storming column at Magdeburg.

In those armies the heavy cavalry was the principal arm. The musket was a heavy matchlock fired from a rest, and without a

bayonet, so that in the infantry regiments it was necessary to combine pikemen with the musketeers. Cannon there were of all cali

bres and with a whole vocabulary of fantastic names, but none capable of advancing and manoeuvring with troops in battle. The Imperial troops were formed in heavy masses. Gustavus, taking his lesson from the Roman legion, had introduced a more open order— he had lightened the musket, dispensed with the rest, given the musketeer a cartridge box instead of the flapping bandoleer. He had trained his cavalry, instead of firing their carbines and wheeling to charge home with

the sword. He had created a real field ar

tillery of imperfect structure, but which told on the Imperial masses.

rising ground overlooking the broad plain of Breitenfeldt. On him marched the allies in two columns-Gustavus with his Swedes upon the right, the Elector with his Saxons on the left. As they passed a brook in front of the Imperial position, Pappenheim dashed upon them with his cavalry, but was driven back, and the two columns deployed upon the plain. The night before the battle Gustavus had dreamt that he was wrestling with Tilly, and that Tilly bit him in the left arm, but that he overpowered Tilly with his right arm. That dream came through the Gate of Horn, for the Saxons who formed the left wing were raw troops, but victory was sure to the Swede. Soldiers of the old school proudly compare the shock of charging armies at Leipsic with modern battles, which they call battles of skirmishers with armies in reserve. However this may be, all that day the plain of Breitenfeldt with the fierce eddies of a hand-to-hand struggle between mail-clad masses, their cuirasses clouds of smoke and dust, the mortal shock and helmets gleaming fitfully amidst the of the charge and the deadly ring of steel ble in modern battle. Tilly with his right striking the ear with a distinctness impossisoon shattered the Saxons, but his centre and left were shattered by the unconquerable Swede. The day was won by the genius of the Swedish king, by the steadiness with which his troops manoeuvered, and the front when the defeat of the Saxons exposed promptness with which they formed a new their left, by the rapidity of their fire and by the vigour with which their cavalry charged. The victory was complete. At sunset four veteran Walloon regiments made a last stand

for the honour of the Empire, and with dif ficulty bore off their redoubtable commander from his first lost field. Through all Protestant Europe flew the tidings of a great deliverance and the name of a great deliverer.