he hired to write the history of his
expedition that on this memorable day he gained a sufficient quantity of
glory to immortalize a dozen of the greatest heroes in Christendom!

CHAPTER IX.

Thanks to St. Nicholas, we have safely finished this tremendous battle.
Let us sit down, my worthy reader, and cool ourselves, for I am in a
prodigious sweat and agitation. Truly this fighting of battles is hot
work! and if your great commanders did but know what trouble they give
their historians, they would not have the conscience to achieve so many
horrible victories. But methinks I hear my reader complain that throughout
this boasted battle there is not the least slaughter, nor a single
individual maimed, if we except the unhappy Swede, who was shorn of his
queue by the trenchant blade of Peter Stuyvesant; all of which, he
observes, as a great outrage on probability, and highly injurious to the
interest of the narration.

This is certainly an objection of no little moment, but it arises entirely
from the obscurity enveloping the remote periods of time about which I
have undertaken to write. Thus, though doubtless, from the importance of
the object, and the prowess of the parties concerned, there must have been
terrible carnage and prodigies of valor displayed before the walls of
Christina, yet, not withstanding that I have consulted every history,
manuscript, and tradition, touching this memorable though long-forgotten
battle, I cannot find mention made of a single man killed or wounded in
the whole affair.

This is, without doubt, owing to the extreme modesty of our forefathers,
who, unlike their descendants, were never prone to vaunt of their
achievements; but it is a virtue which places their historian in a most
embarrassing predicament; for, having promised my readers a hideous and
unparalleled battle, and having worked them up into a warlike and
blood-thirsty state of mind, to put them off without any havoc and
slaughter would have been as bitter a disappointment as to summon a
multitude of good people to attend an execution, and then cruelly balk
them by a reprieve.

Had the Fates allowed me some half a score of dead men, I had been
content; for I would have made them such heroes as abounded in the olden
time, but whose race is now unfortunately extinct; any one of whom, if we
may believe those authentic writers, the poets, could drive great armies,
like sheep before him, and conquer and desolate whole cities