ania. He could have
captured Wilna, if he had not wasted time in banquets and waiting for
auxiliaries. Autumn came; Wallenrod, leaving the camp without provisions,
retired in the greatest disorder to Prussia. The chroniclers and later
historians were not able to imagine the cause of this sudden departure,
not finding in contemporary circumstances any cause therefor. Some have
assigned the flight of Wallenrod to derangement of intellect. All the
contradictions mentioned in the character and conduct of our hero may be
reconciled with each other, if we suppose that he was a Lithuanian, and
that he had entered the Order to take vengeance on it; especially since
his rule gave the severest shock to the power of the Order. We suppose
that Wallenrod was Walter Stadion (see note), shortening only by some
years the time which passed between the departure of Walter from
Lithuania, and the appearance of Konrad in Marienbourg. Wallenrod died
suddenly in the year 1394; strange events were said to have accompanied
his death. 'Er starb,' says the chronicle; 'in Raserei ohne letzte
Oehlung, ohne Priestersegen, kurz vor seinem Tode wuetheten Stuerme,
Regensguesse, Wasserfluthen; die Weichsel und die Nogat durchwuehlten ihre
Daemme; hingegen wuehlten die gewaesser sich eine neue Tiefe da, wo jetzt
Pilau steht!' Halban, or, as the chroniclers call him, Doctor Leander von
Albanus, a monk, the solitary and inseparable companion of Wallenrod,
though he assumed the appearance of piety, was according to the
chroniclers a heretic, a pagan, and perhaps a wizard. Concerning Halban's
death, there are no certain accounts. Some write that he was drowned,
others that he disappeared secretly, or was carried away by demons. I have
drawn the chronicles chiefly from the works of Kotzebue, 'Preussens
Geschichte, Belege und Erlaeuterungen.' Hartknoch, in calling Wallenrod
'unsinnig,' gives a very short account of him."

As to the conditions under which the poem was written, it is perhaps
needful to state that it was composed by Mickiewicz, during the term of
his banishment into Russia, and was first published at St. Petersburg in
the year 1828. In the character of the hero of the story, and in various
circumstances of the poem, it is impossible not to recognise the influence
of Lord Byron's poetry, which obtained so powerful an ascendency over the
works and imaginations of the Continental romanticists, and had thus an
influence over foreign literature not co