e ended, we forget the intense excitements which we may have felt
when they were taking place. We gaze with eager interest on a game of
football, but when it is ended we care but little for the victors. It is
only when the remote consequences of great wars are traced by
philosophical historians, revealing the ways of Providence, retribution,
and eternal justice, that interest is enkindled. No book to me is more
dreary and uninteresting than the campaigns of Frederic II., though
painted by the hand of one of the greatest masters of modern times. Even
interest in the details of the battles of Napoleon is absorbed in the
interest we feel in the man,--how he was driven hither and thither by
the Providence he ignored, and made to point a moral to an immortal
tale. All we care about the histories of wars is the general results,
and the principles to be deduced as they bear on the cause of
civilization.

It was fortunate for the fame and the cause of Gustavus that at the very
outset of his career, when he landed in Pomerania, with his small army
of twenty thousand men, the Emperor had been prevailed upon by a
pressure he could not resist, and the intrigues of all the German
princes, to dispense with the services of Wallenstein. Spain, France,
Bavaria,--the whole Electoral College, Catholic as well as
Protestant,--clamored for the discharge of the most unscrupulous general
of modern times. He was detested and feared by everybody. Humanity shed
tears over his exactions and cruelties, while general fears were aroused
that his influence was dangerous to the public peace. Most people
supposed that the war was virtually ended, and that he was therefore no
longer needed.

Loath was Ferdinand to part with the man to whom he was indebted for the
establishment of his throne; and it seems he was also personally
attached to him. Long did he resist expostulations and threats. He felt
as poor Ganganelli felt when called upon by the Bourbon courts of Europe
to annul the charter of the Jesuits. Wallenstein would probably have
been retained by Ferdinand, had this been possible; but the Emperor was
forced to yield to overwhelming importunities. So the dismissal of the
general was decreed at the diet of Worms, and a messenger of the Emperor
delivered to the haughty victor the decree of his sovereign.

Wallenstein was then at the head of one hundred thousand men. Would he
obey the order? Would he retire to private life? Ambitious and
unscrupul