mpire, and Ferdinand,
well practised in dissimulation, granted him for the present all he
required.

At last, then, the imperial army had found a commander-in-chief worthy
of the name. Every other authority in the army, even that of the
Emperor himself, ceased from the moment Wallenstein assumed the
commander's baton, and every act was invalid which did not proceed
from him. From the banks of the Danube, to those of the Weser and the
Oder, was felt the life-giving dawning of this new star; a new spirit
seemed to inspire the troops of the Emperor, a new epoch of the war
began. The Papists form fresh hopes, the Protestant beholds with
anxiety the changed course of affairs.

The greater the price at which the services of the new general had
been purchased, the greater justly were the expectations from those
which the court of the Emperor entertained. But the duke was in no
hurry to fulfil these expectations. Already in the vicinity of
Bohemia and at the head of a formidable force, he had but to show
himself there in order to overpower the exhausted forces of the Saxons
and brilliantly to commence his new career by the reconquest of that
kingdom. But, contented with harassing the enemy with indecisive
skirmishes of his Croats, he abandoned the best part of that kingdom
to be plundered, and moved calmly forward in pursuit of his own
selfish plans. His design was, not to conquer the Saxons, but to unite
with them. Exclusively occupied with this important object, he
remained inactive in the hope of conquering more surely by means of
negotiation. He left no expedient untried, to detach this prince from
the Swedish alliance; and Ferdinand himself, ever inclined to an
accommodation with this prince, approved of this proceeding. But the
great debt which Saxony owed to Sweden was as yet too freshly
remembered to allow of such an act of perfidy; and even had the
Elector been disposed to yield to the temptation, the equivocal
character of Wallenstein and the bad character of Austrian policy
precluded any reliance in the integrity of its promises. Notorious
already as a treacherous statesman, he acted faithlessly upon the very
occasion when perhaps he intended to act honestly; and, moreover, was
denied, by circumstances, the opportunity of proving the sincerity of
his intentions, by the disclosure of his real motives.

He, therefore, unwillingly resolved to extort, by force of arms, what
he could not obtain by negotiation. Suddenl