e and
tranquillity of manner, and seemed as if fully content with his present
state, and as if he cared no longer who fought the wars of the world.

But inwardly his ambition had in no sense declined. He beheld the
progress of the Swedish conqueror with secret joy, and when he saw Tilly
overthrown at Leipsic, and the fruits of twelve years of war wrested
from the emperor at a single blow, his heart throbbed high with hope.
His hour of revenge upon the emperor had come. Ferdinand must humiliate
himself and come for aid to his dismissed general, for there was not
another man in the kingdom capable of saving it from the triumphant foe.

He was right. The emperor's deputies came. He was requested, begged, to
head again the imperial armies. He received the envoys coldly. Urgent
persuasions were needed to induce him to raise an army of thirty
thousand men. Even then he would not agree to take command of it. He
would raise it and put it at the emperor's disposal.

He planted his standard; the men came; many of them his old followers.
Plenty and plunder were promised, and thousands flocked to his tents. By
March of 1632 the thirty thousand men were collected. Who should command
them? There was but one, and this the emperor and Wallenstein alike
knew. They would follow only the man to whose banner they had flocked.

The emperor begged him to take command. He consented, but only on
conditions to which an emperor has rarely agreed. Wallenstein was to
have exclusive control of the army, without interference of any kind,
was to be given irresponsible control over all the provinces he might
conquer, was to hold as security a portion of the Austrian patrimonial
estates, and after the war might choose any of the hereditary estates of
the empire for his seat of retirement. The emperor acceded, and
Wallenstein, clothed with almost imperial power, marched to war. His
subsequent fortunes the next narrative must declare.

_THE END OF TWO GREAT SOLDIERS._

Two armies faced each other in central Bavaria, two armies on which the
fate of Germany depended, those of Gustavus Adolphus, the right hand of
Protestantism, and of Wallenstein, the hope of Catholic imperialism.
Gustavus was strongly intrenched in the vicinity of Nuremberg, with an
army of but sixteen thousand men. Wallenstein faced him with an army of
sixty thousand, yet dared not attack him in his strong position. He
occupied himself in efforts to make his camp as impregnab