last. It was therefore
determined to carry the war into the enemy's country, which, open and
defenceless as far as Vienna, invited attack. On their right, they
might fall upon the territories of the Roman Catholic princes, or
penetrate, on the left, into the hereditary dominions of Austria, and
make the Emperor tremble in his palace. Both plans were resolved on;
and the question that now remained was to assign its respective parts.
Gustavus Adolphus, at the head of a victorious army, had little
resistance to apprehend in his progress from Leipzig to Prague, Vienna,
and Presburg. As to Bohemia, Moravia, Austria, and Hungary, they had
been stripped of their defenders, while the oppressed Protestants in
these countries were ripe for a revolt. Ferdinand was no longer secure
in his capital: Vienna, on the first terror of surprise, would at once
open its gates. The loss of his territories would deprive the enemy of
the resources by which alone the war could be maintained; and Ferdinand
would, in all probability, gladly accede, on the hardest conditions, to
a peace which would remove a formidable enemy from the heart of his
dominions. This bold plan of operations was flattering to a conqueror,
and success perhaps might have justified it. But Gustavus Adolphus, as
prudent as he was brave, and more a statesman than a conqueror, rejected
it, because he had a higher end in view, and would not trust the issue
either to bravery or good fortune alone.

By marching towards Bohemia, Franconia and the Upper Rhine would be left
to the Elector of Saxony. But Tilly had already begun to recruit his
shattered army from the garrisons in Lower Saxony, and was likely to be
at the head of a formidable force upon the Weser, and to lose no time in
marching against the enemy. To so experienced a general, it would not
do to oppose an Arnheim, of whose military skill the battle of Leipzig
had afforded but equivocal proof; and of what avail would be the rapid
and brilliant career of the king in Bohemia and Austria, if Tilly should
recover his superiority in the Empire, animating the courage of the
Roman Catholics, and disarming, by a new series of victories, the allies
and confederates of the king? What would he gain by expelling the
Emperor from his hereditary dominions, if Tilly succeeded in conquering
for that Emperor the rest of Germany? Could he hope to reduce the
Emperor more than had been done, twelve years before, by the
insurrection of Bohem