with all the temptations of luxury and ease, encountering all
sorts of perils and fatigues,--yea, offering up his life in battle in
order to emancipate suffering humanity,--then every generous impulse and
every dictate of enlightened reason urge me to add my praises with those
of past generations in honor of such exalted heroism.

According to the authors of those times, signs and prodigies appeared,
to warn mankind of the sanguinary struggle which was now to take place.
"In the dead of night, on wild heaths, in solitary valleys, the clang of
arms was heard. Armies were seen encountering each other in the heavens,
marshalled by aerial leaders, while monstrous births, mock suns, and
showers of fire filled the minds of the superstitious with fear and
dread. It would be puerile to believe these statements, yet if the
stupendous framework of external nature ever could exhibit sympathy with
the brief calamities of man, it may well be supposed to have been
displayed when one of the fairest portions of the earth was again to be
ravaged with fire and sword; and when the melancholy lesson, so often
exemplified before, was to receive still further confirmation,--that of
all the evils with which Divine wisdom permits this world to be visited,
none can be compared to those which the wrath of man is so often eager
to inflict upon his fellows."

I need not detail the various campaigns of the Swedish hero, his
marchings and counter-marchings, his sieges and battles and victories,
until the power of Austria was humbled and northern Germany was
delivered. The history of all war is the same. There is no variety
except to the eye of a military man. Military history is a dreary record
of dangers, sufferings, mistakes, and crimes; occasionally it is
relieved by brilliant feats of courage and genius, which create
enthusiastic admiration, but generally it is monotonous. It has but
little interest except to contemporaries. Who now reads the details of
our last great war? Who has not almost forgotten the names of its
ordinary generals? How sickening the description of the Crusades! The
mind cannot dwell on the conflagrations, the massacres, the starvations,
the desolations, of an invaded country. Few even read a description of
the famous battles of the world, which decided the fate of nations. When
battles and marches are actually taking place, and all is uncertainty,
then there is a vivid curiosity to learn immediate results; but when
wars ar