id not believe in the Pope were, in this country, a new and
unheard-of phenomenon; the blind zeal of the priests represented them
to the peasantry as monsters, the children of hell, and their leader
as Antichrist. No wonder, then, if they thought themselves released
from all the ties of nature and humanity toward this brood of Satan,
and justified in committing the most savage atrocities upon them. Woe
to the Swedish soldier who fell into their hands! All the torments
which inventive malice could devise were exercised upon these unhappy
victims; and the sight of their mangled bodies exasperated the army to
a fearful retaliation. Gustavus Adolphus, alone, sullied the lustre of
his heroic character by no act of revenge; and the aversion which the
Bavarians felt toward his religion, far from making him depart from
the obligations of humanity toward that unfortunate people, seemed to
impose upon him the stricter duty to honor his religion by a more
constant clemency.

The approach of the king spread terror and consternation in the
capital, which, stripped of its defenders, and abandoned by its
principal inhabitants, placed all its hopes in the magnanimity of the
conqueror. By an unconditional and voluntary surrender, it hoped to
disarm his vengeance, and sent deputies even to Freysingen to lay at
his feet the keys of the city. Strongly as the king might have been
tempted by the inhumanity of the Bavarians, and the hostility of their
sovereign, to make a dreadful use of the rights of victory; pressed as
he was by Germans to avenge the fate of Magdeburg on the capital of
its destroyer, this great prince scorned this mean revenge; and the
very helplessness of his enemies disarmed his severity. Contented with
the more noble triumph of conducting the Palatine Frederick with the
pomp of a victor into the very palace of the prince who had been the
chief instrument of his ruin and the usurper of his territories, he
heightened the brilliancy of his triumphal entry by the brighter
splendor of moderation and clemency.

The king found in Munich only a forsaken palace, for the Elector's
treasures had been transported to Werfen. The magnificence of the
building astonished him; and he asked the guide who showed the
apartments, who was the architect. "No other," replied he, "than the
Elector himself."--"I wish," said the King, "I had this architect to
send to Stockholm." "That," he was answered, "the architect will take
care to prevent."