ommission
Before these noble chieftains?

QUESTENBERG.
I am ready
To obey you; but will first entreat your highness,
And all these noble chieftains, to consider,
The imperial dignity and sovereign right
Speaks from my mouth, and not my own presumption.

WALLENSTEIN.
We excuse all preface.

QUESTENBERG.
When his majesty
The emperor to his courageous armies
Presented in the person of Duke Friedland
A most experienced and renowned commander,
He did it in glad hope and confidence
To give thereby to the fortune of the war
A rapid and auspicious change. The onset
Was favorable to his royal wishes.
Bohemia was delivered from the Saxons,
The Swede's career of conquest checked! These lands
Began to draw breath freely, as Duke Friedland
From all the streams of Germany forced hither
The scattered armies of the enemy;
Hither invoked as round one magic circle
The Rhinegrave, Bernhard, Banner, Oxenstiern,
Yea, and the never-conquered king himself;
Here finally, before the eye of Nuernberg,
The fearful game of battle to decide.

WALLENSTEIN.
To the point, so please you.

QUESTENBERG.
A new spirit
At once proclaimed to us the new commander.
No longer strove blind rage with rage more blind;
But in the enlightened field of skill was shown
How fortitude can triumph over boldness,
And scientific art outweary courage.
In vain they tempt him to the fight. He only
Entrenches him still deeper in his hold,
As if to build an everlasting fortress.
At length grown desperate, now, the king resolves
To storm the camp and lead his wasted legions,
Who daily fall by famine and by plague,
To quicker deaths and hunger and disease.
Through lines of barricades behind whose fence
Death lurks within a thousand mouths of fire,
He yet unconquered strives to storm his way.
There was attack, and there resistance, such
As mortal eye had never seen before;
Repulsed at last, the king withdrew his troops
From this so murderous field, and not a foot
Of ground was gained by all that fearful slaughter.

WALLENSTEIN.
Pray spare us these recitals from gazettes,
Which we ourselves beheld with deepest horror.

QUESTENBERG.
In Nuernberg's camp the Swedish monarch left
His fame--in Luetzen's plains his life. But who
Stood not astounded, when victorious Friedland
After this day of triumph, this proud day,
Marched toward Bohemia with the speed of flight,
And vanished from the theatre of war?
While the