his armies. Now he could
dictate his terms. Now he could humiliate his sovereign, and at the
same time obtain all the power his ambition craved. He declined
entering his service unless he had the unlimited command of all the
armies of Austria and Spain. No commission in the army was to be
granted by the emperor, without his own approval. He demanded the
ordinary pay, and an imperial hereditary estate. In short, he demanded
sovereign authority; and with such humiliating terms the emperor, in
his necessities, was obliged to comply.

[Sidenote: Death of Gustavus Adolphus.]

No sooner did he raise his standard, than it was resorted to by the
unprincipled, the rapacious, and the needy from all parts of the
empire. But Wallenstein now resolved to pursue, exclusively, his own
selfish interests, and directed all his aims to independent
sovereignty. When his forces were united with those of Maximilian, he
found himself at the head of sixty thousand men. Then really commenced
the severity of the contest, for Wallenstein was now stronger than
Gustavus. Nevertheless, the heroic Swede offered to give his rival
battle at Nuremburg, which was declined. He then attacked his camp,
but was repulsed with loss. At last, the two generals met on the
plains of Lutzen, in Saxony, 1632. During the whole course of the war,
two such generals had not been pitted against each other, nor had so
much been staked on the chance of a battle. Victory declared for the
troops of Gustavus, but the heroic leader himself was killed, in the
fulness of his glory. It was his fortune to die with an untarnished
fame. "By an untimely death," says Schiller, "his protecting genius
rescued him from the inevitable fate of man--that of forgetting
moderation in the intoxication of success, and justice in the
plenitude of power. It may be doubted whether, had he lived longer, he
would still have deserved the tears which Germany shed over his grave,
or maintained his title to the admiration with which posterity regards
him,--as the first and only just conqueror that the world has
produced. But it was no longer the benefactor of Germany who fell at
Lutzen; the beneficent part of his career Gustavus Adolphus had
already terminated; and now the greatest service which he could render
to the liberties of Germany was--to die. The all-engrossing power of
an individual was at an end; the equivocal assistance of an
over-powerful protector gave place to a more noble self-exertion