The citizens of Prague, thus shamefully abandoned by their defenders,

had long taken their resolution; all that they had to do was to secure

their properties and liberties by an advantageous capitulation. No

sooner was the treaty signed by the Saxon general, in his master's

name, than the gates were opened, without further opposition; and upon

the 11th of November, 1631, the army made their triumphal entry. The

Elector soon after followed in person, to receive the homage of those

whom he had newly taken under his protection; for it was only in the

character of protector that the three towns of Prague had surrendered

to him. Their allegiance to the Austrian monarchy was not to be

dissolved by the step they had taken. In proportion as the Papists'

apprehensions of reprisals on the part of the Protestants had been

exaggerated, so was their surprise great at the moderation of the

Elector and the discipline of his troops. Field-Marshal Arnheim

plainly evinced, on this occasion, his respect for Wallenstein. Not

content with sparing his estates on his march, he now placed guards

over his palace, in Prague, to prevent the plunder of any of his

effects. The Roman Catholics of the town were allowed the fullest

liberty of conscience; and of all the churches they had wrested from

the Protestants, four only were now taken back from them. From this

general indulgence none was excluded but the Jesuits, who were

generally considered as the authors of all past grievances and thus

banished the kingdom.

John George belied not the submission and dependence with which the

terror of the imperial name inspired him; nor did he indulge at Prague

in a course of conduct which would assuredly have been pursued against

himself at Dresden by imperial generals, such as Tilly or Wallenstein.

He carefully distinguished between the enemy with whom he was at war,

and the head of the Empire, to whom he owed obedience. He did not

venture to touch the household furniture of the latter, while, without

scruple, he appropriated and transported to Dresden the cannon of the

former. He did not take up his residence in the imperial palace, but

in the house of Lichtenstein, being too modest to use the apartments

of one whom he had deprived of a kingdom. Had this trait been related

of a great man, and a hero, it would irresistibly excite our

admiration; but the character of this prince leaves us in doubt

whether such moderation ought to be ascribed to a noble self-command

or to the littleness of a weak mind which even good fortune could not

embolden and liberty itself could not strip of its habituated fetters.

The surrender of Prague, which was quickly followed by that of most of

the other towns, effected a great and sudden change in Bohemia. Many

of the Protestant nobility, who had hitherto been wandering about in

misery, now returned to their native country; and Count Thurn, the

famous author of the Bohemian insurrection, enjoyed the triumph of

returning as a conqueror to the scene of his crime and his

condemnation. Over the very bridge where the heads of his adherents,

exposed to view, held out a fearful picture of the fate which had

threatened himself, he now made his triumphal entry; and to remove

these ghastly objects was his first care. The exiles again took

possession of their properties, without thinking of recompensing for

the purchase money the present possessors, who had mostly taken to

flight. Even though they had received a price for their estates, they

seized on everything which had once been their own; and many had

reason to rejoice at the economy of the late possessors. The lands and

cattle had greatly improved in their hands; the apartments were now

decorated with the most costly furniture; the cellars, which had been

left empty, were richly filled; the stables supplied; the magazines

stored with provisions. But distrusting the constancy of that good

fortune, which had so unexpectedly smiled upon them, they hastened to

get rid of these insecure possessions, and to convert their immovable

into transferable property.

The presence of the Saxons inspired all the Protestants of the

kingdom with courage; and, both in the country and the capital, crowds

flocked to the newly opened Protestant churches. Many, whom fear alone

had retained in their adherence to Popery, now openly professed the

new doctrine; and many of the late converts to Roman Catholicism

gladly renounced a compulsory persuasion, to follow the earlier

conviction of their conscience. All the moderation of the new regency

could not restrain the manifestation of that just displeasure which

this persecuted people felt against their oppressors. They made a

fearful and cruel use of their newly recovered rights; and, in many

parts of the kingdom, their hatred of the religion which they had been

compelled to profess, could be satiated only by the blood of its

adherents.

Meantime the succors which the imperial generals, Goetz and

Tiefenbach, were conducting from Silesia, had entered Bohemia, where

they were joined by some of Tilly's regiments from the Upper

Palatinate. In order to disperse them before they should receive any

further reinforcement, Arnheim advanced with part of his army from

Prague, and made a vigorous attack on their intrenchments near

Limburg, on the Elbe. After a severe action, not without great loss,

he drove the enemy from their fortified camp and forced them, by his

heavy fire, to recross the Elbe and to destroy the bridge which they

had built over that river. Nevertheless, the Imperialists obtained the

advantage in several skirmishes, and the Croats pushed their

incursions to the very gates of Prague. Brilliant and promising as the

opening of the Bohemian campaign had been, the issue by no means

satisfied the expectations of Gustavus Adolphus. Instead of vigorously

following up their advantages, by forcing a passage to the Swedish

army through the conquered country, and then, with it, attacking the

imperial power in its centre, the Saxons weakened themselves in a war

of skirmishes, in which they were not always successful, while they

lost the time which should have been devoted to greater undertakings.

But the Elector's subsequent conduct betrayed the motives which had

prevented him from pushing his advantage over the Emperor, and by

consistent measures promoting the plans of the King of Sweden.

The Emperor had now lost the greater part of Bohemia, and the Saxons

were advancing against Austria, while the Swedish monarch was rapidly

moving to the same point through Franconia, Swabia, and Bavaria. A

long war had exhausted the strength of the Austrian monarchy, wasted

the country, and diminished its armies. The renown of its victories

was no more, as well as the confidence inspired by constant success;

its troops had lost the obedience and discipline to which those of the

Swedish monarch owed all their superiority in the field. The

confederates of the Emperor were disarmed, or their fidelity shaken by

the danger which threatened themselves. Even Maximilian of Bavaria,

Austria's most powerful ally, seemed disposed to yield to the

seductive proposition of neutrality; while his suspicious alliance

with France had long been a subject of apprehension to the Emperor.

The bishop of Würtzburg and Bamberg, the Elector of Mentz, and the

Duke of Lorraine, were either expelled from their territories or

threatened with immediate attack; Treves had placed itself under the

protection of France. The bravery of the Hollanders gave full

employment to the Spanish arms in the Netherlands; while Gustavus had

driven them from the Rhine. Poland was still fettered by the truce

which subsisted between that country and Sweden. The Hungarian

frontier was threatened by the Transylvania Prince, Ragotsky, a

successor of Bethlem Gabor and the inheritor of his restless mind;

while the Porte was making great preparation to profit by the

favorable conjuncture for aggression. Most of the Protestant states,

encouraged by their protector's success, were openly and actively

declaring against the Emperor. All the resources which had been

obtained by the violent and oppressive extortions of Tilly and

Wallenstein were exhausted; all these depôts, magazines, and

rallying-points were now lost to the Emperor; and the war could no

longer be carried on as before at the cost of others. To complete his

embarrassment, a dangerous insurrection broke out in the territory of

the Ens, where the ill-timed religious zeal of the government had

provoked the Protestants to resistance; and thus fanaticism lit its

torch within the empire, while a foreign enemy was already on its

frontier. After so long a continuance of good fortune, such brilliant

victories and extensive conquests, such fruitless effusion of blood,

the Emperor saw himself a second time on the brink of that abyss into

which he was so near falling at the commencement of his reign. If

Bavaria should embrace the neutrality; if Saxony should resist the

tempting offers he had held out; and France resolve to attack the

Spanish power at the same time in the Netherlands, in Italy and in

Catalonia, the ruin of Austria would be complete; the allied powers

would divide its spoils, and the political system of Germany would

undergo a total change.

The chain of these disasters began with the battle of Breitenfeld, the

unfortunate issue of which plainly revealed the long decided decline

of the Austrian power, whose weakness had hitherto been concealed

under the dazzling glitter of a grand name. The chief cause of the

Swedes' superiority in the field was evidently to be ascribed to the

unlimited power of their leader, who concentrated in himself the whole

strength of his party; and, unfettered in his enterprises by any

higher authority, was complete master of every favorable opportunity,

could control all his means to the accomplishment of his ends, and was

responsible to none but himself. But since Wallenstein's dismissal and

Tilly's defeat, the very reverse of this course was pursued by the

Emperor and the League. The generals wanted authority over their

troops, and liberty of acting at their discretion; the soldiers were

deficient in discipline and obedience; the scattered corps, in

combined operation; the states, in attachment to the cause; the

leaders lacked harmony among themselves, quickness to resolve, and

firmness to execute. What gave the Emperor's enemy so decided an

advantage over him was not so much their superior power, as their

manner of using it. The League and the Emperor did not want means, but

a mind capable of directing them with energy and effect. Even had

Count Tilly not lost his old renown, distrust of Bavaria would not

have allowed the Emperor to place the fate of Austria in the hands of

one who had never concealed his attachment to the Bavarian Elector.

The urgent want which Ferdinand felt was for a general possessed of

sufficient experience to form and to command an army and willing at

the same time to dedicate his services, with blind devotion, to the

Austrian monarchy.

This choice now occupied the attention of the Emperor's privy council

and divided the opinions of its members. In order to oppose one

monarch to another, and by the presence of their sovereign to animate

the courage of the troops, Ferdinand, in the ardor of the moment, had

offered himself to be the leader of his army; but little trouble was

required to overturn a resolution which was the offspring of despair

alone, and which yielded at once to calm reflection. But the situation

which his dignity, and the duties of administration, prevented the

Emperor from holding, might be filled by his son, a youth of talents

and bravery, and of whom the subjects of Austria had already formed

great expectations. Called by his birth to the defence of a monarchy,

of whose crowns he wore two already, Ferdinand III., King of Hungary

and Bohemia, united, with the natural dignity of heir to the throne,

the respect of the army, and the attachment of the people, whose

coöperation was indispensable to him in the conduct of the war. None

but the beloved heir to the crown could venture to impose new burdens

on a people already severely oppressed; his personal presence with the

army could alone suppress the pernicious jealousies of the several

leaders, and by the influence of his name restore the neglected

discipline of the troops to its former vigor. If so young a leader was

devoid of the maturity of judgment, prudence, and military experience

which practice alone could impart, this deficiency might be supplied

by a judicious choice of counsellors and assistants, who, under the

cover of his name, might be vested with supreme authority.

But plausible as were the arguments with which a part of the ministry

supported this plan, it was met by difficulties not less serious,

arising from the distrust, perhaps even the jealousy, of the Emperor,

and also from the desperate state of affairs. How dangerous was it to

intrust the fate of the monarchy to a youth who was himself in need of

counsel and support! How hazardous to oppose to the greatest general

of his age, a tyro, whose fitness for so important a post had never

yet been tested by experience; whose name, as yet unknown to fame, was

far too powerless to inspire a dispirited army with the assurance of

future victory! What a new burden on the country to support the state

a royal leader was required to maintain, and which the prejudices of

the age considered as inseparable from his presence with the army! How

serious a consideration for the prince himself, to commence his

political career with an office which must make him the scourge of his

people and the oppressor of the territories which he was hereafter to

rule.

But not only was a general to be found for the army; an army must also

be found for the general. Since the compulsory resignation of

Wallenstein, the Emperor had defended himself more by the assistance

of Bavaria and the League, than by his own armies; and it was this

dependence on equivocal allies, which he was endeavoring to escape, by

the appointment of a general of his own. But what possibility was

there of raising an army out of nothing, without the all-powerful aid

of gold and the inspiriting name of a victorious commander; above all,

an army which, by its discipline, warlike spirit, and activity, should

be fit to cope with the experienced troops of the northern conqueror?

In all Europe, there was but one man equal to this, and that one had

been mortally affronted.

The moment had at last arrived when more than ordinary satisfaction

was to be done to the wounded pride of the Duke of Friedland. Fate

itself had been his avenger, and an unbroken chain of disasters, which

had assailed Austria from the day of his dismissal, had wrung from the

Emperor the humiliating confession that with this general he had lost

his right arm. Every defeat of his troops opened afresh this wound;

every town which he lost revived in the mind of the deceived monarch

the memory of his own weakness and ingratitude. It would have been

well for him, if, in the offended general, he had only lost a leader

of his troops, and a defender of his dominions; but he was destined to

find in him an enemy, and the most dangerous of all, since he was

least armed against the stroke of treason. Removed from the theatre of

war and condemned to irksome inaction, while his rivals gathered

laurels on the field of glory, the haughty duke had beheld these

changes of fortune with affected composure, and concealed, under a

glittering and theatrical pomp, the dark designs of his restless

genius. Torn by burning passions within, while all without bespoke

calmness and indifference, he brooded over projects of ambition and

revenge, and slowly, but surely, advanced toward his end. All that he

owed to the Emperor was effaced from his mind; what he himself had

done for the Emperor was imprinted in burning characters on his

memory. To his insatiable thirst for power, the Emperor's ingratitude

was welcome, as it seemed to tear in pieces the record of past favors,

to absolve him from every obligation toward his former benefactor. In

the disguise of a righteous retaliation, the projects dictated by his

ambition now appeared to him just and pure. In proportion as the

external circle of his operations was narrowed, the world of hope

expanded before him, and his dreamy imagination revelled in boundless

projects, which, in any mind but such as his, madness alone could

have given birth to. His services had raised him to the proudest

height which it was possible for a man, by his own efforts, to attain.

Fortune had denied him nothing which the subject and the citizen could

lawfully enjoy. Till the moment of his dismissal, his demands had met

with no refusal, his ambition had met with no check; but the blow

which, at the diet of Ratisbon, humbled him, showed him the difference

between _original_ and _deputed_ power, the distance between the

subject and his sovereign. Roused from the intoxication of his own

greatness by this sudden reverse of fortune, he compared the authority

which he had possessed with that which had deprived him of it; and his

ambition marked the steps which it had yet to surmount upon the ladder

of fortune. From the moment when he had so bitterly experienced the

weight of sovereign power, his efforts were directed to attain it for

himself; the wrong which he himself had suffered made him a robber.

Had he not been outraged by injustice, he might have obediently moved

in his orbit round the majesty of the throne, satisfied with the glory

of being the brightest of its satellites. It was only when violently

forced from its sphere, that his wandering star threw in disorder the

system to which it belonged, and came in destructive collision with

its sun.

Gustavus Adolphus had overrun the north of Germany; one place after

another was lost; and at Leipzic the flower of the Austrian army had

fallen. The intelligence of this defeat soon reached the ears of

Wallenstein, who, in the retired obscurity of a private station in

Prague, contemplated from a calm distance the tumult of war. The news,

which filled the breasts of the Roman Catholics with dismay, announced

to him the return of greatness and good fortune. For him was Gustavus

Adolphus laboring. Scarcely had the king begun to gain reputation by

his exploits, when Wallenstein lost not a moment to court his

friendship and to make common cause with this successful enemy of

Austria. The banished Count Thurn, who had long entered the service

of Sweden, undertook to convey Wallenstein's congratulations to the

king, and to invite him to a close alliance with the duke. Wallenstein

required 15,000 men from the king; and with these, and the troops he

himself engaged to raise, he undertook to conquer Bohemia and Moravia,

to surprise Vienna, and drive his master, the Emperor, before him into

Italy. Welcome as was this unexpected proposition, its extravagant

promises were naturally calculated to excite suspicion. Gustavus

Adolphus was too good a judge of merit to reject with coldness the

offers of one who might be so important a friend. But when

Wallenstein, encouraged by the favorable reception of his first

message, renewed it after the battle of Breitenfeld, and pressed for a

decisive answer, the prudent monarch hesitated to trust his reputation

to the chimerical projects of so daring an adventurer and to commit so

large a force to the honesty of a man who felt no shame in openly

avowing himself a traitor. He excused himself, therefore, on the plea

of the weakness of his army which, if diminished by so large a

detachment, would certainly suffer in its march through the empire;

and thus, perhaps, by excess of caution, lost an opportunity of

putting an immediate end to the war. He afterward endeavored to renew

the negotiation; but the favorable moment was past, and Wallenstein's

offended pride never forgave the first neglect.

But the king's hesitation, perhaps, only accelerated the breach, which

their characters made inevitable sooner or later. Both framed by

nature to give laws, not to receive them, they could not long have

coöperated in an enterprise which eminently demanded mutual submission

and sacrifice. Wallenstein was _nothing_ where he was not

_everything_; he must either act with unlimited power, or not at

all. So cordially, too, did Gustavus dislike control that he had

almost renounced his advantageous alliance with France, because it

threatened to fetter his own independent judgment. Wallenstein was

lost to a party, if he could not lead; the latter was, if possible,

still less disposed to obey the instructions of another. If the

pretensions of a rival would be so irksome to the Duke of Friedland,

in the conduct of combined operations, in the division of the spoil

they would be insupportable. The proud monarch might condescend to

accept the assistance of a rebellious subject against the Emperor, and

to reward his valuable services with regal munificence; but he never

could so far lose sight of his own dignity, and the majesty of

royalty, as to bestow the recompense which the extravagant ambition of

Wallenstein demanded, and requite an act of treason, however useful,

with a crown. In him, therefore, even if all Europe should tacitly

acquiesce, Wallenstein had reason to expect the most decided and

formidable opponent to his views on the Bohemian crown; and in all

Europe he was the only one who could enforce his opposition.

Constituted Dictator in Germany by Wallenstein himself, he might turn

his arms against him, and consider himself bound by no obligations to

one who was himself a traitor. There was no room for a Wallenstein

under such an ally; and it was, apparently, this conviction, and not

any supposed designs upon the imperial throne, that he alluded to,

when, after the death of the King of Sweden, he exclaimed, "It is well

for him and me that he is gone! The German Empire does not require two

such leaders."

His first scheme of revenge on the house of Austria had indeed failed;

but the purpose itself remained unalterable; the choice of means alone

was changed. What he had failed in effecting with the King of Sweden,

he hoped to obtain with less difficulty and more advantage from the

Elector of Saxony. Him he was as certain of being able to bend to his

views as he had always been doubtful of Gustavus Adolphus. Having

always maintained a good understanding with his old friend Arnheim, he

now made use of him to bring about an alliance with Saxony, by which

he hoped to render himself equally formidable to the Emperor and the

King of Sweden. He had reason to expect that a scheme, which, if

successful, would deprive the Swedish monarch of his influence in

Germany, would be welcomed by the Elector of Saxony, who he knew was

jealous of the power and offended at the lofty pretensions of Gustavus

Adolphus. If he succeeded in separating Saxony from the Swedish

alliance and in establishing, conjointly with that power, a third

party in the Empire, the fate of the war would be placed in his hand;

and by this single step he would succeed in gratifying his revenge

against the Emperor, revenging the neglect of the Swedish monarch, and

on the ruin of both raising the edifice of his own greatness.

But whatever course he might follow in the prosecution of his designs,

he could not carry them into effect without an army entirely devoted

to him. Such a force could not be secretly raised without its coming

to the knowledge of the imperial court, where it would naturally

excite suspicion and thus frustrate his design in the very outset.

From the army, too, the rebellious purposes for which it was destined

must be concealed till the very moment of execution, since it could

scarcely be expected that they would at once be prepared to listen to

the voice of a traitor and serve against their legitimate sovereign.

Wallenstein, therefore, must raise it publicly and in the name of the

Emperor, and be placed at its head, with unlimited authority, by the

Emperor himself. But how could this be accomplished otherwise than by

his being appointed to the command of the army and intrusted with full

powers to conduct the war? Yet neither his pride nor his interest

permitted him to sue in person for this post and as a suppliant to

accept from the favor of the Emperor a limited power, when an

unlimited authority might be extorted from his fears. In order to make

himself the master of the terms on which he would resume the command

of the army, his course was to wait until the post should be forced

upon him. This was the advice he received from Arnheim, and this the

end for which he labored with profound policy and restless activity.

Convinced that extreme necessity would alone conquer the Emperor's

irresolution and render powerless the opposition of his bitter

enemies, Bavaria and Spain, he henceforth occupied himself in

promoting the success of the enemy and in increasing the

embarrassments of his master. It was apparently by his instigation and

advice that the Saxons, when on the route to Lusatia and Silesia, had

turned their march toward Bohemia and overrun that defenceless

kingdom, where their rapid conquests were partly the result of his

measures. By the fears which he affected to entertain he paralyzed

every effort at resistance; and his precipitate retreat caused the

delivery of the capital to the enemy. At a conference with the Saxon

general, which was held at Kaunitz under the pretext of negotiating

for a peace, the seal was put to the conspiracy, and the conquest of

Bohemia was the first fruits of this mutual understanding. While

Wallenstein was thus personally endeavoring to heighten the

perplexities of Austria, and while the rapid movements of the Swedes

upon the Rhine effectually promoted his designs, his friends and

bribed adherents in Vienna uttered loud complaints of the public

calamities and represented the dismissal of the general as the sole

cause of all these misfortunes. "Had Wallenstein commanded, matters

would never have come to this," exclaimed a thousand voices; while

their opinions found supporters, even in the Emperor's privy council.

Their repeated remonstrances were not needed to convince the

embarrassed Emperor of his general's merits and of his own error. His

dependence on Bavaria and the League had soon become insupportable;

but hitherto this dependence permitted him not to show his distrust,

or irritate the Elector by the recall of Wallenstein. But now when his

necessities grew every day more pressing, and the weakness of Bavaria

more apparent, he could no longer hesitate to listen to friends of the

duke, and to consider their overtures for his restoration to command.

The immense riches Wallenstein possessed, the universal reputation he

enjoyed, the rapidity with which six years before he had assembled an

army of 40,000 men, the little expense at which he had maintained this

formidable force, the actions he had performed at its head, and

lastly, the zeal and fidelity he had displayed for his master's honor,

still lived in the Emperor's recollection and made Wallenstein seem to

him the ablest instrument to restore the balance between the

belligerent powers, to save Austria, and preserve the Catholic

religion. However sensibly the imperial pride might feel the

humiliation, in being forced to make so unequivocal an admission of

past errors and present necessity; however painful it was to descend

to humble entreaties, from the height of imperial command; however

doubtful the fidelity of so deeply injured and implacable a character;

however loudly and urgently the Spanish minister and the Elector of

Bavaria protested against this step, the immediate pressure of

necessity finally overcame every other consideration, and the friends

of the duke were empowered to consult him on the subject and to hold

out the prospect of his restoration.

Informed of all that was transacted in the Emperor's cabinet to his

advantage, Wallenstein possessed sufficient self-command to conceal

his inward triumph and to assume the mask of indifference. The moment

of vengeance was at last come, and his proud heart exulted in the

prospect of repaying with interest the injuries of the Emperor. With

artful eloquence, he expatiated upon the happy tranquillity of a

private station, which had blessed him since his retirement from a

political stage. Too long, he said, had he tasted the pleasures of

ease and independence, to sacrifice to the vain phantom of glory the

uncertain favor of princes. All his desire of power and distinction

were extinct: tranquillity and repose were now the sole object of his

wishes. The better to conceal his real impatience, he declined the

Emperor's invitation to the court, but at the same time, to facilitate

the negotiations, came to Znaim in Moravia.

At first, it was proposed to limit the authority to be intrusted to

him, by the presence of a superior, in order, by this expedient, to

silence the objections of the Elector of Bavaria. The imperial

deputies, Questenberg and Werdenberg, who, as old friends of the duke,

had been employed in this delicate mission, were instructed to propose

that the King of Hungary should remain with the army and learn the art

of war under Wallenstein. But the very mention of his name threatened

to put a period to the whole negotiation. "No! never," exclaimed

Wallenstein, "will I submit to a colleague in my office. No--not even

if it were God himself with whom I should have to share my command."

But even when this obnoxious point was given up, Prince Eggenberg, the

Emperor's minister and favorite, who had always been the steady friend

and zealous champion of Wallenstein and was therefore expressly sent

to him, exhausted his eloquence in vain to overcome the pretended

reluctance of the duke. "The Emperor," he admitted, "had, in

Wallenstein, thrown away the most costly jewel in his crown: but

unwillingly and compulsorily only had he taken this step, which he had

since deeply repented of; while his esteem for the duke had remained

unaltered, his favor for him undiminished. Of these sentiments he now

gave the most decisive proof, by reposing unlimited confidence in his

fidelity and capacity to repair the mistakes of his predecessors and

to change the whole aspect of affairs. It would be great and noble to

sacrifice his just indignation to the good of his country; dignified

and worthy of him to refute the evil calumny of his enemies by the

double warmth of his zeal. This victory over himself," concluded the

prince, "would crown his other unparalleled services to the Empire and

render him the greatest man of his age."

These humiliating confessions and flattering assurances seemed at last

to disarm the anger of the duke; but not before he had disburdened his

heart of his reproaches against the Emperor, pompously dwelt upon his

own services, and humbled to the utmost the monarch who solicited his

assistance, did he condescend to listen to the attractive proposals of

the minister. As if he yielded entirely to the force of their

arguments, he condescended with a haughty reluctance to that which was

the most ardent wish of his heart and deigned to favor the ambassadors

with a ray of hope. But far from putting an end to the Emperor's

embarrassments, by giving at once a full and unconditional consent, he

only acceded to a part of his demands, that he might exalt the value

of that which still remained, and was of most importance. He accepted

the command, but only for three months; merely for the purpose of

raising, but not of leading, an army. He wished only to show his power

and ability in its organization, and to display before the eyes of the

Emperor the greatness of that assistance which he still retained in

his hands. Convinced that an army raised by his name alone would, if

deprived of its creator, soon sink again into nothing, he intended it

to serve only as a decoy to draw more important concessions from his

master. And yet Ferdinand congratulated himself, even in having gained

so much as he had.

Wallenstein did not long delay to fulfil those promises which all

Germany regarded as chimerical, and which Gustavus Adolphus had

considered as extravagant. But the foundation for the present

enterprise had long been laid, and he only put in motion the machinery

which for many years had been prepared for the purpose. Scarcely had

the news spread of Wallenstein's levies, when, from every quarter of

the Austrian monarchy, crowds of soldiers repaired to try their

fortunes under this experienced general. Many, who had before fought

under his standards, had been admiring eye-witnesses of his great

actions and experienced his magnanimity, came forward from their

retirement to share with him a second time both booty and glory. The

greatness of the pay he promised attracted thousands, and the

plentiful supplies the soldier was likely to enjoy at the cost of the

peasant was to the latter an irresistible inducement to embrace the

military life at once, rather than be the victim of its oppression.

All the Austrian provinces were compelled to assist in the equipment.

No class was exempt from taxation--no dignity or privilege from

capitation. The Spanish court, as well as the King of Hungary, agreed

to contribute a considerable sum. The ministers made large presents,

while Wallenstein himself advanced $200,000 from his personal income

to hasten the armament. The poorer officers he supported out of his

own revenues; and, by his own example, by brilliant promotions and

still more brilliant promises, he induced all, who were able, to raise

troops at their own expense. Whoever raised a corps at his own cost

was to be its commander. In the appointment of officers, religion made

no difference. Riches, bravery, and experience were more regarded than

creed. By this uniform treatment of different religious sects, and

still more by his express declaration that his present levy had

nothing to do with religion, the Protestant subjects of the Empire

were tranquilized and reconciled to bear their share of the public

burdens. The duke, at the same time, did not omit to treat, in his own

name, with foreign states for men and money. He prevailed on the Duke

of Lorraine, a second time, to espouse the cause of the Emperor.

Poland was urged to supply him with Cossacks, and Italy with warlike

necessaries. Before the three months were expired, the army which was

assembled in Moravia, amounted to no less than 40,000 men, chiefly

drawn from the unconquered parts of Bohemia, from Moravia, Silesia,

and the German provinces of the House of Austria. What to every one

had appeared impracticable, Wallenstein, to the astonishment of all

Europe, had in a short time effected. The charm of his name, his

treasures, and his genius, had assembled thousands in arms, where

before Austria had only looked for hundreds. Furnished, even to

superfluity, with all necessaries, commanded by experienced officers,

and inflamed by enthusiasm which assured itself of victory, this newly

created army only awaited the signal of their leader to show

themselves, by the bravery of their deeds, worthy of his choice. The

duke had fulfilled his promise, and the troops were ready to take the

field; he then retired and left to the Emperor to choose a commander.

But it would have been as easy to raise a second army like the first

as to find any other commander for it than Wallenstein. This promising

army, the last hope of the Emperor, was nothing but an illusion, as

soon as the charm was dissolved which had called it into existence; by

Wallenstein it had been raised, and, without him, it sank like a

creation of magic into its original nothingness. Its officers were

either bound to him as his debtors, or, as his creditors, closely

connected with his interests and the preservation of his power. The

regiments he had intrusted to his own relations, creatures, and

favorites. He, and he alone, could discharge to the troops the

extravagant promises by which they had been lured into his service.

His pledged word was the only security on which their bold

expectations rested; a blind reliance on his omnipotence, the only tie

which linked together in one common life and soul the various impulses

of their zeal. There was an end of the good fortune of each

individual, if he retired who alone was the voucher of its fulfilment.

However little Wallenstein was serious in his refusal, he successfully

employed this means to terrify the Emperor into consenting to his

extravagant conditions. The progress of the enemy every day increased

the pressure of the Emperor's difficulties, while the remedy was also

close at hand; a word from him might terminate the general

embarrassment. Prince Eggenberg at length received orders, for the

third and last time, at any cost and sacrifice, to induce his friend,

Wallenstein, to accept the command.

He found him at Znaim in Moravia, pompously surrounded by the troops,

the possession of which he made the Emperor so earnestly to long for.

As a suppliant did the haughty subject receive the deputy of his

sovereign. "He never could trust," he said, "to a restoration to

command, which he owned to the Emperor's necessities and not to his

sense of justice. He was now courted, because the danger had reached

its height and safety was hoped for from his arm only; but his

successful services would soon cause the servant to be forgotten, and

the return of security would bring back renewed ingratitude. If he

deceived the expectations formed of him, his long earned renown would

be forfeited; even if he fulfilled them, his repose and happiness must

be sacrificed. Soon would envy be excited anew, and the dependent

monarch would not hesitate, a second time, to make an offering of

convenience to a servant whom he could now dispense with. Better for

him at once, and voluntarily, to resign a post from which sooner or

later the intrigues of his enemies would expel him. Security and

content were to be found in the bosom of private life; and nothing but

the wish to oblige the Emperor had induced him, reluctantly enough, to

relinquish for a time his blissful repose."

Tired of this long farce, the minister at last assumed a serious tone

and threatened the obstinate duke with the Emperor's resentment if he

persisted in his refusal. "Low enough had the imperial dignity," he

added, "stooped already; and yet, instead of exciting his magnanimity

by its condescension, it had only flattered his pride and increased

his obstinacy. If this sacrifice had been made in vain, he would not

answer, but only that the suppliant might be converted into the

sovereign and the monarch might not avenge his injured dignity on his

rebellious subject. However greatly Ferdinand may have erred, the

Emperor at least had a claim to obedience; the man might be mistaken,

but the monarch could not confess his error. If the Duke of Friedland

had suffered by an unjust decree, he might yet be recompensed for all

his losses; the wound which it had itself inflicted, the hand of

Majesty might heal. If he asked security for his person and his

dignities, the Emperor's equity would refuse him no reasonable demand.

Majesty contemned, admitted not of any atonement; disobedience to its

commands cancelled the most brilliant services. The Emperor required

his services, and as Emperor he demanded them. Whatever price

Wallenstein might set upon them, the Emperor would readily agree to;

but he demanded obedience, or the weight of his indignation should

crush the refractory servant."

Wallenstein, whose extensive possessions within the Austrian monarchy

were momentarily exposed to the power of the Emperor, was keenly

sensible that this was no idle threat; yet it was not fear that at

last overcame his affected reluctance. This imperious tone was of

itself, to his mind, a plain proof of the weakness and despair which

dictated it, while the Emperor's readiness to yield all his demands

convinced him that he had attained the summit of his wishes. He now

made a show of yielding to the persuasions of Eggenberg; and left him,

in order to write down the conditions on which he accepted the

command.

Not without apprehension, did the minister receive the writing in

which the proudest of subjects had prescribed laws to the proudest of

sovereigns. But however little confidence he had in the moderation of

his friend, the extravagant contents of his writing surpassed even his

worst expectations. Wallenstein required the uncontrolled command over

all the German armies of Austria and Spain, with unlimited powers to

reward and punish. Neither the King of Hungary, nor the Emperor

himself, were to appear in the army, still less to exercise any act of

authority over it. No commission in the army, no pension or letter of

grace, was to be granted by the Emperor without Wallenstein's

approval. All the conquests and confiscations that should take place

were to be placed entirely at Wallenstein's disposal, to the exclusion

of every other tribunal. For his ordinary pay, an imperial hereditary

estate was to be assigned him, with another of the conquered estates

within the Empire for his extraordinary expenses. Every Austrian

province was to be opened to him if he required it in case of

retreat. He further demanded the assurance of the possession of the

Duchy of Mecklenburg, in the event of a future peace; and a formal and

timely intimation, if it should be deemed necessary a second time to

deprive him of the command.

In vain the minister entreated him to moderate his demands, which, if

granted, would deprive the Emperor of all authority over his own

troops and make him absolutely dependent on his general. The value

placed on his services had been too plainly manifested to prevent him

dictating the price at which they were to be purchased. If the

pressure of circumstances compelled the Emperor to grant these

demands, it was more than a mere feeling of haughtiness and desire of

revenge which induced the duke to make them. His plans of rebellion

were formed, to their success; every one of the conditions for which

Wallenstein stipulated in this treaty with the court was

indispensable. Those plans required that the Emperor should be

deprived of all authority in Germany and be placed at the mercy of his

general; and this object would be attained the moment Ferdinand

subscribed to the required conditions. The use which Wallenstein

intended to make of his army (widely different indeed from that for

which it was intrusted to him) brooked not of a divided power and

still less of an authority superior to his own. To be the sole master

of the will of his troops, he must also be the sole master of their

destinies; insensibly to supplant his sovereign and to transfer

permanently to his own person the rights of sovereignty, which were

only lent to him for a time by a higher authority, he must cautiously

keep the latter out of the view of the army. Hence his obstinate

refusal to allow any prince of the house of Austria to be present with

the army. The liberty of free disposal of all the conquered and

confiscated estates in the Empire would also afford him fearful means

of purchasing dependents and instruments of his plans, and of acting

the dictator in Germany more absolutely than ever any Emperor did in

time of peace. By the right to use any of the Austrian provinces as a

place of refuge, in case of need, he had full power to hold the

Emperor a prisoner by means of his own forces and within his own

dominions, to exhaust the strength and resources of these countries,

and to undermine the power of Austria in its very foundation.

Whatever might be the issue, he had equally secured his own advantage

by the conditions he had extorted from the Emperor. If circumstances

proved favorable to his daring project, this treaty with the Emperor

facilitated its execution; if, on the contrary, the course of things

ran counter to it, it would at least afford him a brilliant

compensation for the failure of his plans. But how could he consider

an agreement valid which was extorted from his sovereign and based

upon treason? How could he hope to bind the Emperor by a written

agreement, in the face of a law which condemned to death every one who

should have the presumption to impose conditions upon him? But this

criminal was the most indispensable man in the Empire, 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. Suddenly assembling his troops, he

appeared before Prague ere the Saxons had time to advance to its

relief. After a short resistance, the treachery of some Capuchins

opened the gates to one of his regiments; and the garrison, who had

taken refuge in the citadel, soon laid down their arms upon

disgraceful conditions. Master of the capital, he hoped to carry on

more successfully his negotiations at the Saxon court; but even while

he was renewing his proposals to Arnheim, he did not hesitate to give

them weight by striking a decisive blow. He hastened to seize the

narrow passes between Aussig and Pirna, with a view of cutting off

the retreat of the Saxons into their own country; but the rapidity of

Arnheim's operations fortunately extricated them from the danger.

After the retreat of this general, Egra and Leutmeritz, the last

strongholds of the Saxons, surrendered to the conqueror: and the whole

kingdom was restored to its legitimate sovereign, in less time than it

had been lost.

Wallenstein, less occupied with the interests of his master than with

the furtherance of his own plans, now purposed to carry the war into

Saxony, and by ravaging his territories, compel the Elector to enter

into a private treaty with the Emperor, or rather with himself. But

however little accustomed he was to make his will bend to

circumstances, he now perceived the necessity of postponing his

favorite scheme, for a time, to a more pressing emergency. While he

was driving the Saxons from Bohemia, Gustavus Adolphus had been

gaining the victories, already detailed, on the Rhine and the Danube,

and carried the war through Franconia and Swabia to the frontiers of

Bavaria. Maximilian, defeated on the Lech and deprived by death of

Count Tilly, his best support, urgently solicited the Emperor to send

with all speed the Duke of Friedland to his assistance from Bohemia,

and, by the defence of Bavaria, to avert the danger from Austria

itself. He also made the same request to Wallenstein, and entreated

him, till he could himself come with the main force, to dispatch in

the meantime a few regiments to his aid. Ferdinand seconded the

request with all his influence, and one messenger after another was

sent to Wallenstein, urging him to move toward the Danube.

It now appeared how completely the Emperor had sacrificed his

authority in surrendering to another the supreme command of his

troops. Indifferent to Maximilian's entreaties, and deaf to the

Emperor's repeated commands, Wallenstein remained inactive in Bohemia

and abandoned the Elector to his fate. The remembrance of the evil

service which Maximilian had rendered him with the Emperor, at the

Diet at Ratisbon, was deeply engraved on the implacable mind of the

duke, and the Elector's late attempts to prevent his reinstatement

were no secret to him. The moment of revenging this affront had now

arrived, and Maximilian was doomed to pay dearly for his folly in

provoking the most revengeful of men. Wallenstein maintained that

Bohemia ought not to be left exposed, and that Austria could not be

better protected than by allowing the Swedish army to waste its

strength before the Bavarian fortress. Thus, by the arm of the Swedes,

he chastised his enemy; and, while one place after another fell into

their hands, he allowed the Elector vainly to await his arrival in

Ratisbon. It was only when the complete subjugation of Bohemia left

him without excuse and the conquests of Gustavus Adolphus in Bavaria

threatened Austria itself, that he yielded to the pressing entreaties

of the Elector and the Emperor and determined to effect the

long-expected union with the former; an event, which, according to the

general anticipation of the Roman Catholics, would decide the fate of

the campaign.

Gustavus Adolphus, too weak in numbers to cope even with Wallenstein's

force alone, naturally dreaded the junction of such powerful armies,

and the little energy he used to prevent it was the occasion of great

surprise. Apparently he reckoned too much on the hatred which

alienated the leaders and seemed to render their effectual coöperation

improbable; when the event contradicted his views, it was too late to

repair his error. On the first certain intelligence he received of

their designs, he hastened to the Upper Palatinate for the purpose of

intercepting the Elector: but the latter had already arrived there and

the junction had been effected at Egra.

This frontier town had been chosen by Wallenstein for the scene of his

triumph over his proud rival. Not content with having seen him, as it

were, a suppliant at his feet, he imposed upon him the hard condition

of leaving his territories in his rear exposed to the enemy, and

declaring by this long march to meet him the necessity and distress

to which he was reduced. Even to this humiliation the haughty prince

patiently submitted. It had cost him a severe struggle to ask for

protection of the man who, if his own wishes had been consulted, would

never have had the power of granting it: but having once made up his

mind to it, he was ready to bear all the annoyances which were

inseparable from that resolve and sufficiently master of himself to

put up with petty grievances when an important end was in view.

But whatever pains it had cost to effect this junction, it was equally

difficult to settle the conditions on which it was to be maintained.

The united army must be placed under the command of one individual, if

any object was to be gained by the union, and each general was equally

averse to yield to the superior authority of the other. If Maximilian

rested his claim on his electoral dignity, the nobleness of his

descent, and his influence in the empire, Wallenstein's military

renown, and the unlimited command conferred on him by the Emperor,

gave an equally strong title to it. If it was deeply humiliating to

the pride of the former to serve under an imperial subject, the idea

of imposing laws on so imperious a spirit flattered in the same degree

the haughtiness of Wallenstein. An obstinate dispute ensued, which,

however, terminated in a mutual compromise to Wallenstein's advantage.

To him was assigned the unlimited command of both armies, particularly

in battle, while the Elector was deprived of all power of altering the

order of battle, or even the route of the army. He retained only the

bare right of punishing and rewarding his own troops and the free use

of these when not acting in conjunction with the Imperialists.

After these preliminaries were settled, the two generals at last

ventured upon an interview; but not until they had mutually promised

to bury the past in oblivion, and all the outward formalities of a

reconciliation had been settled. According to agreement, they

publicly embraced in the sight of their troops, and made mutual

professions of friendship, while in reality the hearts of both were

overflowing with malice. Maximilian, well versed in dissimulation, had

sufficient command over himself not to betray in a single feature his

real feelings; but a malicious triumph sparkled in the eyes of

Wallenstein, and the constraint which was visible in all his movements

betrayed the violence of the emotion which overpowered his proud soul.

The combined Imperial and Bavarian armies amounted to nearly 60,000

men, chiefly veterans. Before this force the King of Sweden was not in

a condition to keep the field. As his attempt to prevent their

junction had failed, he commenced a rapid retreat into Franconia and

waited there for some decisive movement on the part of the enemy, in

order to form his own plans. The position of the combined armies

between the frontiers of Saxony and Bavaria left it for some time

doubtful whether they would remove the war into the former, or

endeavor to drive the Swedes from the Danube and deliver Bavaria.

Saxony had been stripped of troops by Arnheim, who was pursuing his

conquests in Silesia; not without a secret design, it was generally

supposed, of favoring the entrance of the Duke of Friedland into that

electorate and of thus driving the irresolute John George into peace

with the Emperor. Gustavus Adolphus himself, fully persuaded that

Wallenstein's views were directed against Saxony, hastily dispatched a

strong reinforcement to the assistance of his confederate, with the

intention, as soon as circumstances would allow, of following with the

main body. But the movements of Wallenstein's army soon led him to

suspect that he himself was the object of attack; and the Duke's march

through the Upper Palatinate placed the matter beyond a doubt. The

question now was, how to provide for his own security, and the prize

was no longer his supremacy but his very existence. His fertile genius

must now supply the means, not of conquest, but of preservation. The

approach of the enemy had surprised him before he had time to

concentrate his troops, which were scattered all over Germany, or to

summon his allies to his aid. Too weak to meet the enemy in the field,

he had no choice left but either to throw himself into Nuremberg and

run the risk of being shut up in its walls, or to sacrifice that city

and await a reinforcement under the cannon of Donauwerth. Indifferent

to danger or difficulty, while he obeyed the call of humanity or

honor, he chose the first without hesitation, firmly resolved to bury

himself with his whole army under the ruins of Nuremberg rather than

to purchase his own safety by the sacrifice of his confederates.

Measures were immediately taken to surround the city and suburbs with

redoubts and to form an intrenched camp. Several thousand workmen

immediately commenced this extensive work, and an heroic determination

to hazard life and property in the common cause animated the

inhabitants of Nuremberg. A trench, eight feet deep and twelve broad,

surrounded the whole fortification; the lines were defended by

redoubts and batteries, the gates by half moons. The river Pegnitz,

which flows through Nuremberg, divided the whole camp into two

semicircles whose communication was secured by several bridges. About

three hundred pieces of cannon defended the town-walls and the

intrenchments. The peasantry from the neighboring villages, and the

inhabitants of Nuremberg, assisted the Swedish soldiers so zealously

that on the seventh day the army was able to enter the camp, and, in a

fortnight, this great work was completed.

While these operations were carried on without the walls, the

magistrates of Nuremberg were busily occupied in filling the magazines

with provisions and ammunition for a long siege. Measures were taken,

at the same time, to secure the health of the inhabitants, which was

likely to be endangered by the conflux of so many people; cleanliness

was enforced by the strictest regulations. In order, if necessary, to

support the King, the youth of the city were enlisted and trained to

arms, the militia of the town considerably reinforced, and a new

regiment raised, consisting of four-and-twenty names, according to the

letters of the alphabet. Gustavus had, in the meantime, called to his

assistance his allies, Duke William of Weimar, and the Landgrave of

Hesse Cassel; and ordered his generals on the Rhine, in Thuringia and

Lower Saxony, to commence their march immediately and join him with

their troops in Nuremberg. His army, which was encamped within the

lines, did not amount to more than 16,000 men, scarcely a third of the

enemy.

The Imperialists had, in the meantime, by slow marches, advanced to

Neumark, where Wallenstein made a general review. At the sight of this

formidable force, he could not refrain from indulging in a childish

boast: "In four days," said he, "it will be shown whether I or the

King of Sweden is to be master of the world." Yet, notwithstanding his

superiority, he did nothing to fulfil his promise; and even let slip

the opportunity of crushing his enemy when the latter had the

hardihood to leave his lines to meet him. "Battles enough have been

fought," was his answer to those who advised him to attack the King;

"it is now time to try another method." Wallenstein's well-founded

reputation required not any of those rash enterprises on which younger

soldiers rush, in the hope of gaining a name. Satisfied that the

enemy's despair would dearly sell a victory, while a defeat would

irretrievably ruin the Emperor's affairs, he resolved to wear out the

ardor of his opponent by a tedious blockade, and, by thus depriving

him of every opportunity of availing himself of his impetuous bravery,

take from him the very advantage which had hitherto rendered him

invincible. Without making any attack, therefore, he erected a strong

fortified camp on the other side of the Pegnitz, and opposite

Nuremberg; and, by this well chosen position, cut off from the city

and the camp of Gustavus all supplies from Franconia, Swabia, and

Thuringia. Thus he held in siege at once the city and the King, and

flattered himself with the hope of slowly, but surely, wearing out by

famine and pestilence the courage of his opponent whom he had no wish

to encounter in the field.

Little aware, however, of the resources and the strength of his

adversary, Wallenstein had not taken sufficient precautions to avert

from himself the fate he was designing for others. From the whole of

the neighboring country, the peasantry had fled with their property;

and what little provision remained must be obstinately contested with

the Swedes. The King spared the magazines within the town, as long as

it was possible to provision his army from without; and these forays

produced constant skirmishes between the Croats and the Swedish

cavalry, of which the surrounding country exhibited the most

melancholy traces. The necessaries of life must be obtained sword in

hand; and the foraging parties could not venture out without a

numerous escort. And when this supply failed the town opened its

magazines to the King, but Wallenstein had to support his troops from

a distance. A large convoy from Bavaria was on its way to him, with an

escort of a thousand men. Gustavus Adolphus having received

intelligence of its approach, immediately sent out a regiment of

cavalry to intercept it; and the darkness of the night favored the

enterprise. The whole convoy, with the town in which it was, fell into

the hands of the Swedes; the Imperial escort was broken up; about

1,200 cattle were carried off; and a thousand wagons, loaded with

bread, which could not be brought away, were set on fire. Seven

regiments, which Wallenstein had sent forward to Altdorp to cover the

entrance of the long and anxiously expected convoy, were attacked by

the King, who had, in like manner, advanced to cover the retreat of

his cavalry and routed after an obstinate action, being driven back

into the Imperial camp with the loss of 400 men. So many checks and

difficulties, and so firm and unexpected a resistance on the part of

the King, made the Duke of Friedland repent that he had declined to

hazard a battle. The strength of the Swedish camp rendered an attack

impracticable; and the armed youth of Nuremberg served the King as a

nursery from which he could supply his loss of troops. The want of

provisions, which began to be felt in the Imperial camp as strongly as

in the Swedish, rendered it uncertain which party would be first

compelled to give way.

Fifteen days had the two armies now remained in view of each other,

equally defended by inaccessible intrenchments, without attempting

anything more than slight attacks and unimportant skirmishes. On both

sides, infectious diseases, the natural consequences of bad food and a

crowded population, had occasioned a greater loss than the sword. And

this evil daily increased. But at length the long expected succor

arrived in the Swedish camp; and by this strong reinforcement the King

was now enabled to obey the dictates of his native courage and to

break the chains which had hitherto fettered him.

In obedience to his requisitions, the Duke of Weimar had hastily drawn

together a corps from the garrisons in Lower Saxony and Thuringia,

which, at Schweinfurt in Franconia, was joined by four Saxon

regiments, and at Kitzingen by the corps of the Rhine, which the

Landgrave of Hesse and the Palatine of Birkenfeld dispatched to the

relief of the King. The Chancellor, Oxenstiern, undertook to lead this

force to its destination. After being joined at Windsheim by the Duke

of Weimar himself and the Swedish General Banner, he advanced by rapid

marches to Bruck and Eltersdorf, where he passed the Rednitz and

reached the Swedish camp in safety. This reinforcement amounted to

nearly 50,000 men, and was attended by a train of 60 pieces of cannon

and 4,000 baggage wagons. Gustavus now saw himself at the head of an

army of nearly 70,000 strong, without reckoning the militia of

Nuremberg, which, in case of necessity, could bring into the field

about 30,000 fighting men; a formidable force, opposed to another not

less formidable. The war seemed at length compressed to the point of a

single battle, which was to decide its fearful issue. With divided

sympathies, Europe looked with anxiety upon this scene, where the

whole strength of the two contending parties was fearfully drawn, as

it were, to a focus.

If, before the arrival of the Swedish succor, a want of provisions had

been felt, the evil was now fearfully increased to a dreadful height

in both camps, for Wallenstein had also received reinforcements from

Bavaria. Besides the 120,000 men confronting each other, and more than

50,000 horses, in the two armies, and besides the inhabitants of

Nuremberg, whose number far exceeded the Swedish army, there were in

the camp of Wallenstein about 15,000 women, with as many drivers, and

nearly the same number in that of the Swedes. The custom of the time

permitted the soldier to carry his family with him to the field; a

number of prostitutes followed the Imperialists; while, with the view

of preventing the excesses practised by the latter, Gustavus's care

for the morals of his soldiers encouraged marriages. For the rising

generation who had this camp for their home and country, regular

military schools were established, which educated a race of excellent

warriors by whom the army might recruit itself in the course of a long

campaign. No wonder, then, if these wandering nations exhausted every

territory in which they encamped, and by their immense consumption

raised the necessaries of life to an exorbitant price. All the mills

of Nuremberg were insufficient to grind the corn required for each

day; and 15,000 pounds of bread, which were daily delivered by the

town into the Swedish camp, excited, without allaying, the hunger of

the soldiers. The laudable exertions of the magistrates of Nuremberg

could not prevent the greater part of the horses from dying for want

of forage, while the increasing mortality in the camp consigned more

than a hundred men daily to the grave.

To put an end to these distresses, Gustavus Adolphus, relying on his

numerical superiority, left his lines on the 25th day, forming before

the enemy in order of battle, while he cannonaded the duke's camp from

three batteries erected on the side of the Rednitz. But the duke

remained immovable in his intrenchments, and contented himself with

answering this challenge by a distant fire of cannon and musketry. His

plan was to wear out the king by his inactivity, and by the force of

famine to overcome his resolute determination; and neither the

remonstrances of Maximilian and the impatience of his army, nor the

ridicule of his opponent, could shake his purpose. Gustavus, deceived

in his hope of forcing a battle, and compelled by his increasing

necessities, now attempted impossibilities, and resolved to storm a

position which art and nature had combined to render impregnable.

Intrusting his own camp to the militia of Nuremberg, on the

fifty-eighth day of his encampment (the festival of St. Bartholomew),

he advanced in full order of battle, and passing the Rednitz at Furth,

easily drove the enemy's outposts before him. The main army of the

Imperialists was posted on the steep heights between the Biber and the

Rednitz, called the Old Fortress and Altenberg; while the camp itself,

commanded by these eminences, spread out immeasurably along the plain.

On these heights the whole of the artillery was placed. Deep trenches

surrounded inaccessible redoubts, while thick barricades, with pointed

palisades, defended the approaches to the heights, from the summits of

which Wallenstein calmly and securely discharged the lightnings of his

artillery from amid the dark thunder-clouds of smoke. A destructive

fire of musketry was maintained behind the breastworks, and a hundred

pieces of cannon threatened the desperate assailant with certain

destruction. Against this dangerous post Gustavus now directed his

attack; five hundred musketeers, supported by a few infantry (for a

greater number could not act in the narrow space), enjoyed the

unenvied privilege of first throwing themselves into the open jaws of

death. The assault was furious, the resistance obstinate. Exposed to

the whole fire of the enemy's artillery, and infuriated by the

prospect of inevitable death, these determined warriors rushed forward

to storm the heights which, in an instant, converted into a flaming

volcano, discharged on them a shower of shot. At the same moment, the

heavy cavalry rushed forward into the openings which the artillery had

made in the close ranks of the assailants, and divided them; till the

intrepid band, conquered by the strength of nature and of man, took to

flight, leaving a hundred dead upon the field. To Germans had Gustavus

yielded this post of honor. Exasperated at their retreat, he now led

on his Finlanders to the attack, thinking, by their northern courage,

to shame the cowardice of the Germans. But they, also, after a similar

hot reception, yielded to the superiority of the enemy; and a third

regiment succeeded them to experience the same fate. This was replaced

by a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth; so that, during a ten hours'

action, every regiment was brought to the attack to retire with bloody

loss from the contest. A thousand mangled bodies covered the field;

yet Gustavus undauntedly maintained the attack, and Wallenstein held

his position unshaken.

In the mean time, a sharp contest had taken place between the imperial

cavalry and the left wing of the Swedes which was posted in a thicket

on the Rednitz, with varying success but with equal intrepedity and

loss on both sides. The Duke of Friedland and Prince Bernard of Weimar

had each a horse shot under him; the king himself had the sole of his

boot carried off by a cannon ball. The combat was maintained with

undiminished obstinacy, till the approach of night separated the

combatants. But the Swedes had advanced too far to retreat without

hazard. While the king was seeking an officer to convey to the

regiments the order to retreat, he met Colonel Hepburn, a brave

Scotchman, whose native courage alone had drawn him from the camp to

share in the dangers of the day. Offended with the king for having,

not long before, preferred a younger officer for some post of danger,

he had rashly vowed never again to draw his sword for the king. To him

Gustavus now addressed himself, praising his courage and requesting

him to order the regiments to retreat. "Sire," replied the brave

soldier, "it is the only service I cannot refuse to your Majesty; for

it is a hazardous one"--and immediately hastened to carry the command.

One of the heights above the old fortress had, in the heat of the

action, been carried by the Duke of Weimar. It commanded the hills and

the whole camp. But the heavy rain which fell during the night

rendered it impossible to draw up the cannon; and this post, which had

been gained with so much bloodshed, was also voluntarily abandoned.

Diffident of fortune, which forsook him on this decisive day, the king

did not venture the following morning to renew the attack with his

exhausted troops; and vanquished for the first time, even because he

was not victor, he led back his troops over the Rednitz. Two thousand

dead which he left behind him on the field, testified to the extent of

his loss; and the Duke of Friedland remained unconquered within his

lines.

For fourteen days after this action, the two armies still continued in

front of each other, each in the hope that the other would be the

first to give way. Every day reduced their provisions, and, as

scarcity became greater, the unbridled excesses of the furious

soldiers exercised the wildest outrages on the peasantry. The

increasing distress broke up all discipline and order in the Swedish

camp; and the German regiments, in particular, distinguished

themselves for the ravages they practised indiscriminately on friend

and foe. The weak hand of a single individual could not check

excesses, encouraged by the silence, if not the actual example, of the

inferior officers. These shameful breaches of discipline, on the

maintenance of which he had hitherto justly prided himself, severely

pained the king; and the vehemence with which he reproached the German

officers for their negligence, bespoke the liveliness of his emotion.

"It is you yourselves, Germans," said he, "that rob your native

country, and ruin your own confederates in the faith. As God is my

judge, I abhor you, I loathe you; my heart sinks within me whenever I

look upon you. Ye break my orders; ye are the cause that the world

curses me, that the tears of poverty follow me, that complaints ring

in my ear--'The King, our friend, does us more harm than even our

worst enemies.' On your account I have stripped my own kingdom of its

treasures, and spent upon you more than 40 tons of gold;[61] while

from your German empire I have not received the least aid. I gave you

a share of all that God had given to me; and had ye regarded my orders

I would have gladly shared with you all my future acquisitions. Your

want of discipline convinces me of your evil intentions, whatever

cause I might otherwise have to applaud your bravery."

Nuremberg had exerted itself, almost beyond its power, to subsist for

eleven weeks the vast crowd which was compressed within its

boundaries; but its means were at length exhausted, and the king's

more numerous party was obliged to determine on a retreat. By the

casualties of war and sickness, Nuremberg had lost more than 10,000 of

its inhabitants, and Gustavus Adolphus nearly 20,000 of his soldiers.

The fields around the city were trampled down, the villages were in

ashes, the plundered peasantry lay faint and dying on the highways;

foul odors infected the air, and bad food, the exhalations from so

dense a population, and so many putrifying carcasses, together with

the heat of the dog-days, produced a desolating pestilence which raged

among men and beasts, and long after the retreat of both armies,

continued to load the country with misery and distress. Affected by

the general distress, and despairing of conquering the steady

determination of the Duke of Friedland, the king broke up his camp on

the 5th of September, leaving in Nuremberg a sufficient garrison. He

advanced in full order of battle before the enemy, who remained

motionless and did not attempt in the least to harass his retreat. His

route lay by the Aisch and Windsheim toward Neustadt, where he halted

five days to refresh his troops, and also to be near to Nuremberg in

case the enemy should make an attempt upon the town. But Wallenstein,

as exhausted as himself, had only awaited the retreat of the Swedes to

commence his own. Five days afterward he broke up his camp at Zirndorf

and set it on fire. A hundred columns of smoke, rising from all the

burning villages in the neighborhood, announced his retreat and showed

the city the fate it had escaped. His march, which was directed on

Forchheim, was marked by the most frightful ravages; but he was too

far advanced to be overtaken by the king. The latter now divided his

army, which the exhausted country was unable to support, and leaving

one division to protect Franconia, with the other he prosecuted in

person his conquests in Bavaria. In the mean time, the imperial

Bavarian army had marched into the Bishopric of Bamberg, where the

Duke of Friedland a second time mustered his troops. He found this

force, which so lately had amounted to 60,000 men, diminished by the

sword, desertion, and disease, to about 24,000, and of these a fourth

were Bavarians. Thus had the encampments before Nuremberg weakened

both parties more than two great battles would have done, apparently

without advancing the termination of the war, or satisfying, by any

decisive result, the expectations of Europe. The king's conquests in

Bavaria, were, it is true, checked for a time by this diversion before

Nuremberg, and Austria itself secured against the danger of immediate

invasion; but by the retreat of the king from that city, he was again

left at full liberty to make Bavaria the seat of war. Indifferent

toward the fate of that country, and weary of the restraint which his

union with the Elector imposed upon him, the Duke of Friedland eagerly

seized the opportunity of separating from this burdensome associate,

and prosecuting, with renewed earnestness, his favorite plans. Still

adhering to his purpose of detaching Saxony from its Swedish

alliance, he selected that country for his winter quarters, hoping by

his destructive presence to force the Elector the more readily into

his views.

No conjuncture could be more favorable for his designs. The Saxons had

invaded Silesia, where, reinforced by troops from Brandenburg and

Sweden, they had gained several advantages over the Emperor's troops.

Silesia would be saved by a diversion against the Elector in his own

territories, and the attempt was the more easy as Saxony, left

undefended during the war in Silesia, lay open on every side to

attack. The pretext of rescuing from the enemy a hereditary dominion

of Austria would silence the remonstrances of the Elector of Bavaria,

and, under the mask of a patriotic zeal for the Emperor's interests,

Maximilian might be sacrificed without much difficulty. By giving up

the rich country of Bavaria to the Swedes, he hoped to be left

unmolested by them in his enterprise against Saxony, while the

increasing coldness between Gustavus and the Saxon Court gave him

little reason to apprehend any extraordinary zeal for the deliverance

of John George. Thus a second time abandoned by his artful protector,

the Elector separated from Wallenstein at Bamberg, to protect his

defenceless territory with the small remains of his troops, while the

imperial army, under Wallenstein, directed its march through Bayreuth

and Coburg toward the Thuringian Forest.

An imperial general, Holk, had previously been sent into Vogtland with

6,000 men, to waste this defenceless province with fire and sword; he

was soon followed by Gallas, another of the Duke's generals, and an

equally faithful instrument of his inhuman orders. Finally,

Pappenheim, too, was recalled from Lower Saxony, to reinforce the

diminished army of the duke and to complete the miseries of the

devoted country. Ruined churches, villages in ashes, harvests wilfully

destroyed, families plundered, and murdered peasants, marked the

progress of these barbarians, under whose scourge the whole of

Thuringia, Vogtland, and Meissen, lay defenceless. Yet this was but

the prelude to greater sufferings with which Wallenstein himself, at

the head of the main army, threatened Saxony. After having left behind

him fearful monuments of his fury, in his march through Franconia and

Thuringia, he arrived with his whole army in the Circle of Leipzic,

and compelled the city, after a short resistance, to surrender. His

design was to push on to Dresden, and by the conquest of the whole

country to prescribe laws to the Elector. He had already approached

the Mulda, threatening to overpower the Saxon army which had advanced

as far as Torgau to meet him, when the King of Sweden's arrival at

Erfurt gave an unexpected check to his operations. Placed between the

Saxon and Swedish armies, which were likely to be further reinforced

by the troops of George, Duke of Lüneburg, from Lower Saxony, he

hastily retired upon Meresberg, to form a junction there with Count

Pappenheim and to repel the further advance of the Swedes.

Gustavus Adolphus had witnessed, with great uneasiness, the arts

employed by Spain and Austria to detach his allies from him. The more

important his alliance with Saxony, the more anxiety the inconstant

temper of John George caused him. Between himself and the Elector a

sincere friendship could never subsist. A prince, proud of his

political importance and accustomed to consider himself as the head of

his party, could not see without annoyance the interference of a

foreign power in the affairs of the Empire; and nothing but the

extreme danger of his dominions could overcome the aversion with which

he had long witnessed the progress of this unwelcome intruder. The

increasing influence of the king in Germany, his authority with the

Protestant states, the unambiguous proofs which he gave of his

ambitious views, which were of a character calculated to excite the

jealousies of all the states of the Empire, awakened in the Elector's

breast a thousand anxieties, which the imperial emissaries did not

fail skilfully to keep alive and cherish. Every arbitrary step on the

part of the King, every demand, however reasonable, which he

addressed to the princes of the Empire, was followed by bitter

complaints from the Elector, which seemed to announce an approaching

rupture. Even the generals of the two powers, whenever they were

called upon to act in common, manifested the same jealousy as divided

their leaders. John George's natural aversion to war, and a lingering

attachment to Austria, favored the efforts of Arnheim, who,

maintaining a constant correspondence with Wallenstein, labored

incessantly to effect a private treaty between his master and the

Emperor; and if his representatives were long disregarded, still the

event proved that they were not altogether without effect.

Gustavus Adolphus, naturally apprehensive of the consequences which

the defection of so powerful an ally would produce on his future

prospects in Germany, spared no pains to avert so pernicious an event;

and his remonstrances had hitherto had some effect upon the Elector.

But the formidable power with which the Emperor seconded his seductive

proposals, and the miseries which, in the case of hesitation, he

threatened to accumulate upon Saxony, might at length overcome the

resolution of the Elector, should he be left exposed to the vengeance

of his enemies; while an indifference to the fate of so powerful a

confederate would irreparably destroy the confidence of the other

allies in their protector. This consideration induced the king a

second time to yield to the pressing entreaties of the Elector and to

sacrifice his own brilliant prospects to the safety of this ally. He

had already resolved upon a second attack on Ingoldstadt; and the

weakness of the Elector of Bavaria gave him hopes of soon forcing this

exhausted enemy to accede to a neutrality. An insurrection of the

peasantry in Upper Austria opened to him a passage into that country,

and the capital might be in his possession before Wallenstein could

have time to advance to its defence. All these views he now gave up

for the sake of an ally, who, neither by his services nor his fidelity

was worthy of the sacrifices; who, on the pressing occasions of

common good, had steadily adhered to his own selfish projects; and who

was important, not for the services he was expected to render, but

merely for the injuries he had it in his power to inflict. Is it

possible, then, to refrain from indignation, when we know that, in

this expedition, undertaken for the benefit of such an ally, the great

king was destined to terminate his career?

Rapidly assembling his troops in Franconia, he followed the route of

Wallenstein through Thuringia. Duke Bernard of Weimar, who had been

dispatched to act against Pappenheim, joined the king at Armstadt, who

now saw himself at the head of 20,000 veterans. At Erfurt he took

leave of his queen, who was not to behold him save in his coffin at

Weissenfels. Their anxious adieus seemed to forbode an eternal

separation. He reached Naumburg on the 1st of November, 1632, before

the corps, which the Duke of Friedland had dispatched for that

purpose, could make itself master of that place. The inhabitants of

the surrounding country flocked in crowds to look upon the hero, the

avenger, the great king, who, a year before, had first appeared in

that quarter, like a guardian angel. Shouts of joy everywhere attended

his progress; the people knelt before him, and struggled for the honor

of touching the sheath of his sword or the hem of his garment. The

modest hero disliked this innocent tribute which a sincerely grateful

and admiring multitude paid him. "Is it not," said he, "as if this

people would make a God of me? Our affairs prosper, indeed; but I fear

the vengeance of Heaven will punish me for this presumption, and soon

enough reveal to this deluded multitude my human weakness and

mortality!" How amiable does Gustavus appear before us at this moment,

when about to leave us forever! Even in the plentitude of success, he

honors an avenging Nemesis, declines that homage which is due only to

the Immortal, and strengthens his title to our tears, the nearer the

moment approaches that is to call them forth! In the mean time, the

Duke of Friedland had determined to advance to meet the king, as far

as Weissenfels, and, even at the hazard of a battle, to secure his

winter-quarters in Saxony. His inactivity before Nuremberg had

occasioned a suspicion that he was unwilling to measure his powers

with those of the Hero of the North, and his hard-earned reputation

would be at stake, if, a second time, he should decline a battle. His

present superiority in numbers, though much less than what it was at

the beginning of the siege of Nuremberg, was still enough to give him

hopes of victory, if he could compel the king to give battle before

his junction with the Saxons. But his present reliance was not so much

in his numerical superiority as in the predictions of his astrologer

Seni, who had read in the stars that the good fortune of the Swedish

monarch would decline in the month of November. Besides, between

Naumburg and Weissenfels there was a range of narrow defiles formed by

a long mountainous ridge, and also the river Saal which ran at their

foot, along which the Swedes could not advance without difficulty, and

which might, with the assistance of a few troops, be rendered almost

impassable. If attacked there, the king would have no choice but

either to penetrate with great danger through the defiles, or commence

a laborious retreat through Thuringia, and to expose the greater part

of his army to a march through a desert country entirely destitute of

all necessary supplies. But the rapidity with which Gustavus Adolphus

had taken possession of Naumburg disappointed this plan, and it was

now Wallenstein himself who awaited the attack.

But in this expectation he was disappointed; for the king, instead of

advancing to meet him at Weissenfels, made preparations for

intrenching himself near Naumburg, with the intention of awaiting

there the reinforcements which the Duke of Luneburg was bringing up.

Undecided whether to advance against the king through the narrow

passes between Weissenfels and Naumburg or to remain inactive in his

camp, he called a council of war, in order to have the opinion of his

most experienced generals. None of these thought it prudent to attack

the king in his advantageous position. On the other hand, the

preparations which the latter made to fortify his camp plainly showed

that it was not his intention soon to abandon it. But the approach of

winter rendered it impossible to prolong the campaign and by a

continued encampment to exhaust the strength of the army, already so

much in need of repose. All voices were in favor of immediately

terminating the campaign, and the more so, as the important city of

Cologne upon the Rhine was threatened by the Dutch, while the progress

of the enemy in Westphalia and the Lower Rhine called for effective

reinforcements in that quarter. Wallenstein yielded to the weight of

these arguments, and, almost convinced that, at this season, he had no

reason to apprehend an attack from the King, he put his troops into

winter-quarters, but so that, if necessary, they might be rapidly

assembled. Count Pappenheim was dispatched, with a great part of the

army, to the assistance of Cologne, with orders to take possession, on

his march, of the fortress of Moritzburg, in the territory of Halle.

Different corps took up their winter-quarters in the neighboring

towns, to watch, on all sides, the motions of the enemy. Count

Colloredo guarded the castle of Weissenfels, and Wallenstein himself

encamped with the remainder not far from Merseburg, between Flotzgaben

and the Saal, from whence he purposed to march to Leipzic and to cut

off the communication between the Saxons and the Swedish army.

Scarcely had Gustavus Adolphus been informed of Pappenheim's

departure, when, suddenly breaking up his camp at Naumburg, he

hastened with his whole force to attack the enemy, now weakened to one

half. He advanced, by rapid marches, toward Weissenfels, from whence

the news of his arrival quickly reached the enemy and greatly

astonished the Duke of Friedland. But a speedy resolution was now

necessary; and the measures of Wallenstein were soon taken. Though he

had little more than 12,000 men to oppose to the 20,000 of the enemy,

he might hope to maintain his ground until the return of Pappenheim,

who could not have advanced farther than Halle, five miles distant.

Messengers were hastily dispatched to recall him, while Wallenstein

moved forward into the wide plain between the Canal and Lützen, where

lie awaited the King in full order of battle, and, by this position,

cut off his communication with Leipzic and the Saxons auxiliaries.

Three cannon shots, fired by Count Colloredo from the castle of

Weissenfels, announced the king's approach; and at this concerted

signal, the light troops of the Duke of Friedland, under the command

of the Croatian General Isolani, moved forward to possess themselves

of the villages lying upon the Rippach. Their weak resistance did not

impede the advance of the enemy, who crossed the Rippach, near the

village of that name, and formed in line below Lützen, opposite the

Imperialists. The high road which goes from Weissenfels to Leipzic is

intersected between Lützen and Markranstadt by the canal which extends

from Zeitz to Merseburg and unites the Elster with the Saal. On this

canal rested the left wing of the Imperialists, and the right of the

King of Sweden; but so that the cavalry of both extended themselves

along the opposite side. To the northward, behind Lützen, was

Wallenstein's right wing, and to the south of that town was posted the

left wing of the Swedes; both armies fronted the high road, which ran

between them and divided their order of battle; but the evening before

the battle, Wallenstein, to the great disadvantage of his opponent,

had possessed himself of this highway, deepened the trenches which ran

along its sides, and planted them with musketeers, so as to make the

crossing of it both difficult and dangerous. Behind these, again, was

erected a battery of seven large pieces of cannon, to support the fire

from the trenches; and at the windmills, close behind Lützen, fourteen

smaller field-pieces were ranged on an eminence from which they could

sweep the greater part of the plain. The infantry, divided into no

more than five unwieldy brigades, was drawn up at the distance of 300

paces from the road, and the cavalry covered the flanks. All the

baggage was sent to Leipzic that it might not impede the movements of

the army; and the ammunition-wagons alone remained, which were placed

in rear of the line. To conceal the weakness of the Imperialists, all

the camp-followers and sutlers were mounted and posted on the left

wing, but only until Pappenheim's troops arrived. These arrangements

were made during the darkness of the night; and when the morning

dawned all was ready for the reception of the enemy.

On the evening of the same day, Gustavus Adolphus appeared on the

opposite plain and formed his troops in the order of attack. His

disposition was the same as that which had been so successful the year

before at Leipzic. Small squadrons of horse were interspersed among

the divisions of the infantry, and troops of musketeers were placed

here and there among the cavalry. The army was arranged in two lines,

the canal on the right and in its rear, the high road in front, and

the town on the left. In the centre the infantry was formed, under the

command of Count Brahe; the cavalry on the wings; the artillery in

front. To the German hero, Bernard, Duke of Weimar, was intrusted the

command of the German cavalry of the left wing; while, on the right,

the king led on the Swedes in person, in order to excite the emulation

of the two nations to a noble competition. The second line was formed

in the same manner; and behind these was placed the reserve, commanded

by Henderson, a Scotchman.

In this position they awaited the eventful dawn of morning, to begin a

contest which long delay, rather than the probability of decisive

consequences, and the picked body, rather than the number of the

combatants, was to render so terrible and remarkable. The strained

expectation of Europe, so disappointed before Nuremberg, was now to be

gratified on the plains of Lützen. During the whole course of the

war, two such generals, so equally matched in renown and ability, had

not before been pitted against each other. Never, as yet, had daring

been cooled by so awful a hazard, or hope animated by so glorious a

prize. Europe was next day to learn who was her greatest

general--tomorrow the leader, who had hitherto been invincible, must

acknowledge a victor. This morning was to place it beyond a doubt

whether the victories of Gustavus at Leipzic and on the Lech were

owing to his own military genius, or to the incompetency of his

opponent; whether the services of Wallenstein were to vindicate the

Emperor's choice and justify the high price at which they had been

purchased. The victory was as yet doubtful, but certain were the labor

and the bloodshed by which it must be earned. Every private in both

armies felt a jealous share in their leader's reputation, and under

every corslet beat the same emotions that inflamed the bosoms of the

generals. Each army knew the enemy to which it was to be opposed: and

the anxiety which each in vain attempted to repress was a convincing

proof of their opponent's strength.

At last the fateful morning dawned; but an impenetrable fog, which

spread over the plain, delayed the attack till noon. Kneeling in front

of his lines, the king offered up his devotions; and the whole army,

at the same moment dropping on their knees, burst into a moving hymn,

accompanied by the military music. The king then mounted his horse,

and clad only in a leathern doublet and surtout (for a wound he had

formerly received prevented his wearing armor), rode along the ranks

to animate the courage of his troops with a joyful confidence, which,

however, the foreboding presentiment of his own bosom contradicted.

"God with us!" was the war-cry of the Swedes; "Jesus Maria!" that of

the Imperialists. About eleven the fog began to disperse, and the

enemy became visible. At the same moment Lützen was seen in flames,

having been set on fire by command of the duke to prevent his being

outflanked on that side. The charge was now sounded; the cavalry

rushed upon the enemy, and the infantry advanced against the trenches.

Received by a tremendous fire of musketry and heavy artillery, these

intrepid battalions maintained the attack with undaunted courage, till

the enemy's musketeers abandoned their posts, the trenches were

passed, the battery carried and turned against the enemy. They pressed

forward with irresistible impetuosity; the first of the five imperial

brigades was immediately routed, the second soon after, and the third

put to flight. But here the genius of Wallenstein opposed itself to

their progress. With the rapidity of lightning he was on the spot to

rally his discomfited troops; and his powerful word was itself

sufficient to stop the flight of the fugitives. Supported by three

regiments of cavalry, the vanquished brigades, forming anew, faced the

enemy and pressed vigorously into the broken ranks of the Swedes. A

murderous conflict ensued. The nearness of the enemy left no room for

fire-arms, the fury of the attack no time for loading; man was matched

to man, the useless musket exchanged for the sword and pike, and

science gave way to desperation. Overpowered by numbers, the wearied

Swedes at last retire beyond the trenches; and the captured battery is

again lost by the retreat. A thousand mangled bodies already strewed

the plain, and as yet not a single step of ground had been won. In the

meantime the king's right wing, led by himself, had fallen upon the

enemy's left. The first impetuous shock of the heavy Finland

cuirassiers dispersed the lightly-mounted Poles and Croats, who were

posted here, and their disorderly flight spread terror and confusion

among the rest of the cavalry. At this moment notice was brought the

king that his infantry were retreating over the trenches, and also

that his left wing, exposed to a severe fire from the enemy's cannon

posted at the windmills, was beginning to give way. With rapid

decision he committed to General Horn the pursuit of the enemy's left,

while he flew, at the head of the regiment of Steinboek, to repair

the disorder of his right wing. His noble charger bore him with the

velocity of lightning across the trenches, but the squadrons that

followed could not come on with the same speed, and only a few

horsemen, among whom was Francis Albert, Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg, were

able to keep up with the king. He rode directly to the place where his

infantry were most closely pressed, and while he was reconnoitering

the enemy's line for an exposed point of attack, the shortness of his

sight unfortunately led him too close to their ranks. An imperial

Gefreyter,[62] remarking that every one respectfully made way for him

as he rode along, immediately ordered a musketeer to take aim at him.

"Fire at him yonder," said he; "that must be a man of consequence."

The soldier fired, and the king's left arm was shattered. At that

moment his squadron came hurrying up, and a confused cry of "The king

bleeds! the king is shot!" spread terror and consternation through all

the ranks. "It is nothing--follow me," cried the king, collecting his

whole strength; but overcome by pain and nearly fainting, he requested

the Duke of Lauenburg, in French, to lead him unobserved out of the

tumult. While the duke proceeded toward the right wing with the king,

making a long circuit to keep this discouraging sight from the

disordered infantry, his majesty received a second shot through the

back, which deprived him of his remaining strength. "Brother," said

he, with a dying voice, "I have enough! look only to your own life."

At the same moment he fell from his horse pierced by several more

shots; and abandoned by all his attendants, he breathed his last

amidst the plundering hands of the Croats. His charger, flying without

its rider and covered with blood, soon made known to the Swedish

cavalry the fall of their king. They rushed madly forward to rescue

his sacred remains from the hands of the enemy. A murderous conflict

ensued over the body, till his mangled remains were buried beneath a

heap of slain.

The mournful tidings soon ran through the Swedish army; but instead

of destroying the courage of these brave troops, it but excited it

into a new, a wild, and consuming flame. Life had lessened in value,

now that the most sacred life of all was gone; death had no terrors

for the lowly since the anointed head was not spared. With the fury of

lions the Upland, Smäland, Finland, East and West Gothland regiments

rushed a second time upon the left wing of the enemy, which, already

making but feeble resistance to General Horn, was now entirely beaten

from the field. Bernard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, gave to the bereaved

Swedes a noble leader in his own person; and the spirit of Gustavus

led his victorious squadrons anew. The left wing quickly formed again

and vigorously pressed the right of the Imperialists. The artillery at

the windmills, which had maintained so murderous a fire upon the

Swedes, was captured and turned against the enemy. The centre, also,

of the Swedish infantry, commanded by the duke and Knyphausen,

advanced a second time against the trenches, which they successfully

passed, and retook the battery of seven cannons. The attack was now

renewed with redoubled fury upon the heavy battalions of the enemy's

centre; their resistance became gradually less, and chance conspired

with Swedish valor to complete the defeat. The imperial powder-wagons

took fire, and, with a tremendous explosion, grenades and bombs filled

the air. The enemy, now in confusion, thought they were attacked in

the rear, while the Swedish brigades pressed them in front. Their

courage began to fail them. Their left wing was already beaten, their

right wavering, and their artillery in the enemy's hands. The battle

seemed to be almost decided; another moment would settle the fate of

the day, when Pappenheim appeared on the field, with his cuirassiers

and dragoons; all the advantages already gained were lost, and the

battle was to be fought anew.

The order which recalled that general to Lützen had reached him in

Halle, while his troops were still plundering the town. It was

impossible to collect the scattered infantry with that rapidity which

the urgency of the order and Pappenheim's impatience required. Without

waiting for it, therefore, he ordered eight regiments of cavalry to

mount; and at their head he galloped at full speed for Lützen, to

share in the battle. He arrived in time to witness the flight of the

imperial right wing, which Gustavus Horn was driving from the field,

and to be at first involved in their rout. But with rapid presence of

mind he rallied the flying troops, and led them once more against the

enemy. Carried away by his wild bravery, and impatient to encounter

the king who he supposed was at the head of this wing, he burst

furiously upon the Swedish ranks, which, exhausted by victory, and

inferior in numbers, were, after a noble resistance, overpowered by

this fresh body of enemies. Pappenheim's unexpected appearance revived

the drooping courage of the Imperialists, and the Duke of Friedland

quickly availed himself of the favorable moment to re-form his line.

The closely serried battalions of the Swedes were, after a tremendous

conflict, again driven across the trenches; and the battery, which had

been twice lost, was again rescued from their hands. The whole yellow

regiment, the finest of all that distinguished themselves in this

dreadful day, lay dead on the field, covering the ground almost in the

same excellent order which, when alive, they maintained with such

unyielding courage. The same fate befell another regiment of Blues,

which Count Piccolomini attacked with the imperial cavalry and cut

down after a desperate contest. Seven times did this intrepid general

renew the attack; seven horses were shot under him, and he himself was

pierced with six musket balls; yet he would not leave the field, until

he was carried along in the general rout of the whole army.

Wallenstein himself was seen riding through his ranks with cool

intrepidity, amidst a shower of balls, assisting the distressed,

encouraging the valiant with praise, and the wavering by his fearful

glance. Around and close by him his men were falling thick, and his

own mantle was perforated by several shots. But avenging destiny this

day protected that breast for which another weapon was reserved; on

the same field where the noble Gustavus expired, Wallenstein was not

allowed to terminate his guilty career.

Less fortunate was Pappenheim, the Telamon of the army, the bravest

soldier of Austria and the church. An ardent desire to encounter the

king in person carried this daring leader into the thickest of the

fight, where he thought his noble opponent was most surely to be met.

Gustavus had also expressed a wish to meet his brave antagonist, but

these hostile wishes remained ungratified; death first brought

together these two great heroes. Two musket-balls pierced the breast

of Pappenheim; and his men forcibly carried him from the field. While

they were conveying him to the rear, a murmur reached him that he whom

he had sought lay dead upon the plain. When the truth of the report

was confirmed to him, his look became brighter, his dying eye sparkled

with a last gleam of joy. "I Tell the Duke of Friedland," said he,

"that I lie without hope of life, but that I die happy, since I know

that the implacable enemy of my religion has fallen on the same day."

With Pappenheim, the good fortune of the Imperialists departed. The

cavalry of the left wing, already beaten, and only rallied by his

exertions, no sooner missed their victorious leader than they gave up

everything for lost and abandoned the field of battle in spiritless

despair. The right wing fell into the same confusion, with the

exception of a few regiments which the bravery of their colonels Götz,

Terzky, Colloredo, and Piccolomini compelled to keep their ground. The

Swedish infantry, with prompt determination, profited by the enemy's

confusion. To fill up the gaps which death had made in the front line,

they formed both lines into one, and with it made the final and

decisive charge. A third time they crossed the trenches, and a third

time they captured the battery. The sun was setting when the two lines

closed. The strife grew hotter as it drew to an end; the last efforts

of strength were mutually exerted, and skill and courage did their

utmost to repair in these precious moments the fortune of the day. It

was in vain; despair endows every one with superhuman strength; no one

can conquer, no one will give way. The art of war seemed to exhaust

its powers on one side, only to unfold some new and untried

masterpiece of skill on the other. Night and darkness at last put at

end to the fight, before the fury of the combatants was exhausted; and

the contest ceased only when no one could any longer find an

antagonist. Both armies separated, as if by tacit agreement; the

trumpets sounded, and each party claiming the victory, quitted the

field.

The artillery on both sides, as the horses could not be found,

remained all night upon the field, at once the reward and the evidence

of victory to him who should hold it. Wallenstein, in his haste to

leave Leipzic and Saxony, forgot to remove his part. Not long after

the battle was ended, Pappenheim's infantry, who had been unable to

follow the rapid movements of their general and who amounted to six

regiments, marched on the field, but the work was done. A few hours

earlier, so considerable a reinforcement would perhaps have decided

the day in favor of the Imperialists; and, even now, by remaining on

the field, they might have saved the duke's artillery and made a prize

of that of the Swedes. But they had received no orders to act; and,

uncertain as to the issue of the battle, they retired to Leipzic,

where they hoped to join the main body.

The Duke of Friedland had retreated thither, and was followed on the

morrow by the scattered remains of his army, without artillery,

without colors, and almost without arms. The Duke of Weimar, it

appears, after the toils of this bloody day, allowed the Swedish army

some repose, between Lützen and Weissenfels, near enough to the field

of battle to oppose any attempt the enemy might make to recover it. Of

the two armies, more than 9,000 men lay dead; a still greater number

were wounded, and, among the Imperialists, scarcely a man escaped from

the field uninjured. The entire plain from Lützen to the Canal was

strewed with the wounded, the dying, and the dead. Many of the

principal nobility had fallen on both sides. Even the Abbot of Fulda,

who had mingled in the combat as a spectator, paid for his curiosity

and his ill-timed zeal with his life. History says nothing of

prisoners; a further proof of the animosity of the combatants, who

neither gave nor took quarter.

Pappenheim died the next day of his wounds at Leipzig; an irreparable

loss to the imperial army, which this brave warrior had so often led

on to victory. The battle of Prague, where together with Wallenstein,

he was present as colonel, was the beginning of his heroic career.

Dangerously wounded, with a few troops, he made an impetuous attack on

a regiment of the enemy, and lay for several hours mixed with the dead

upon the field, beneath the weight of his horse, till he was

discovered by some of his own men in plundering. With a small force he

defeated, in three different engagements, the rebels in Upper Austria,

though 40,000 strong. At the battle of Leipzic, he for a long time

delayed the defeat of Tilly by his bravery, and led the arms of the

Emperor on the Elbe and the Weser to victory. The wild impetuous fire

of his temperament, which no danger, however apparent, could cool, or

impossibilities check, made him the most powerful arm of the imperial

force, but unfitted him for acting at its head. The battle of Leipzic,

if Tilly may be believed, was lost through his rash ardor. At the

destruction of Magdeburg, his hands were deeply steeped in blood; war

rendered savage and ferocious his disposition, which had been

cultivated by youthful studies and various travels. On his forehead,

two red streaks, like swords, were perceptible, with which nature had

marked him at his very birth. Even in his later years these became

visible, as often as his blood was stirred by passion; and

superstition easily persuaded itself that the future destiny of the

man was thus impressed upon the forehead of the child. As a faithful

servant of the House of Austria, he had the strongest claims on the

gratitude of both its lines, but he did not survive to enjoy the most

brilliant proof of their regard. A messenger was already on his way

from Madrid, bearing to him the order of the Golden Fleece, when death

overtook him at Leipzic.

Though _Te Deum_, in all Spanish and Austrian lands, was sung in honor

of a victory, Wallenstein himself, by the haste with which he quitted

Leipzic and, soon after, all Saxony, and by renouncing his original

design of fixing there his winter-quarters, openly confessed his

defeat. It is true he made one more feeble attempt to dispute, even in

his flight, the honor of victory, by sending out his Croats next

morning to the field; but the sight of the Swedish army drawn up in

order of battle, immediately dispersed these flying bands, and Duke

Bernard, by keeping possession of the field, and soon after by the

capture of Leipzic, maintained indisputably his claim to the title of

victor.

But it was a dear conquest, a dearer triumph! It was not till the fury

of the contest was over that the full weight of the loss sustained was

felt and the shout of triumph died away into a silent gloom of

despair. He, who had led them to the charge, returned not with them:

there he lay upon the field which he had won, mingled with the dead

bodies of the common crowd. After a long and almost fruitless search,

the corpse of the king was discovered, not far from the great stone,

which, for a hundred years before, had stood between Lützen and the

Canal, and which, from the memorable disaster of that day, still bears

the name of the Stone of the Swede. Covered with blood and wounds so

as scarcely to be recognized, trampled beneath the horses' hoofs,

stripped by the rude hands of plunderers of its ornaments and clothes,

his body was drawn from beneath a heap of dead, conveyed to

Weissenfels, and there delivered up to the lamentations of his

soldiers and the last embraces of his queen. The first tribute had

been paid to revenge, and blood had atoned for the blood of the

monarch; but now affection assumes its rights, and tears of grief must

flow for the man. The universal sorrow absorbs all individual woes.

The generals, still stupefied by the unexpected blow, stood speechless

and motionless around his bier, and no one trusted himself enough to

contemplate the full extent of their loss.

The Emperor, we are told by Khevenhuller, showed symptoms of deep, and

apparently sincere feeling, at the sight of the king's doublet stained

with blood, which had been stripped from him during the battle and

carried to Vienna. "Willingly," said he, "would I have granted to the

unfortunate prince a longer life and a safe return to his kingdom, had

Germany been at peace." But when a trait, which is nothing more than a

proof of a yet lingering humanity and which a mere regard to

appearances and even self-love would have extorted from the most

insensible, and the absence of which could exist only in the most

inhuman heart, has, by a Roman Catholic writer of modern times and

acknowledged merit, been made the subject of the highest eulogium and

compared with the magnanimous tears of Alexander for the fall of

Darius, our distrust is excited of the other virtues of the writer's

hero, and, what is still worse, of his own ideas of moral dignity. But

even such praise, whatever its amount, is much for one whose memory

his biographer has to clear from the suspicion of being privy to the

assassination of a king.

It was scarcely to be expected that the strong leaning of mankind to

the marvelous would leave to the common course of nature the glory of

ending the career of Gustavus Adolphus. The death of so formidable a

rival was too important an event for the Emperor not to excite in his

bitter opponent a ready suspicion that what was so much to his

interests was also the result of his instigation. For the execution,

however, of this dark deed, the Emperor would require the aid of a

foreign arm, and this it was generally believed he had found in

Francis Albert, Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg. The rank of the latter

permitted him a free access to the king's person, while at the same

time it seemed to place him above the suspicion of so foul a deed.

This prince, however, was in fact not incapable of this atrocity, and

he had, moreover, sufficient motives for its commission.

Francis Albert, the youngest of four sons of Francis II., Duke of

Lauenburg, and related by the mother's side to the race of Vasa, had,

in his early years, found a most friendly reception at the Swedish

court. Some offence which he had committed against Gustavus Adolphus,

in the queen's chamber, was, it is said, repaid by this fiery youth

with a box on the ear; which, though immediately repented of, and

amply apologized for, laid the foundation of an irreconcilable hate in

the vindictive heart of the duke. Francis Albert subsequently entered

the imperial service, where he rose to the command of a regiment,

formed a close intimacy with Wallenstein, and condescended to be the

instrument of a secret negotiation with the Saxon court, which did

little honor to his rank. Without any sufficient cause being assigned,

he suddenly quitted the Austrian service, and appeared in the king's

camp at Nuremberg to offer his services as a volunteer. By his show of

zeal for the Protestant cause, and a prepossessing and flattering

deportment, he gained the heart of the king, who, warned in vain by

Oxenstiern, continued to lavish his favor and friendship on this

suspicious new comer. The battle of Lützen soon followed, in which

Francis Albert, like an evil genius, kept close to the king's side and

did not leave him till he fell. He owed, it was thought, his own

safety amidst the fire of the enemy, to a green sash which he wore,

the color of the Imperialists. He was at any rate the first to convey

to his friend Wallenstein the intelligence of the king's death. After

the battle, he exchanged the Swedish service for the Saxon; and, after

the murder of Wallenstein, being charged with being an accomplice of

that general, he escaped the sword of justice only by abjuring his

faith. His last appearance in life was as commander of an imperial

army in Silesia, where he died of the wounds he had received before

Schweidnitz. It requires some effort to believe in the innocence of a

man, who had run through a career like this, of the act charged

against him; but, however great may be the moral and physical

possibility of his committing such a crime, it must still be allowed

that there are no certain grounds for imputing it to him. Gustavus

Adolphus, it is well known, exposed himself to danger, like the

meanest soldier in his army, and where thousands fell, he, too, might

naturally meet his death. How it reached him, remains indeed buried in

mystery; but here, more than anywhere, does the maxim apply that where

the ordinary course of things is fully sufficient to account for the

fact, the honor of human nature ought not to be stained by any

suspicion of moral atrocity.

But by whatever hand he fell, his extraordinary destiny must appear a

great interposition of Providence. History, too often confined to the

ungrateful task of analyzing the uniform play of human passions, is

occasionally rewarded by the appearance of events which strike, like a

hand from heaven, into the nicely adjusted machinery of human plans

and carry the contemplative mind to a higher order of things. Of this

kind is the sudden retirement of Gustavus Adolphus from the

scene--stopping for a time the whole movement of the political machine

and disappointing all the calculations of human prudence. Yesterday,

the very soul, the great and animating principle of his own creation;

today, struck unpitiably to the ground in the very midst of his eagle

flight; untimely torn from a whole world of great designs and from the

ripening harvest of his expectations, he left his bereaved party

disconsolate; and the proud edifice of his past greatness sunk into

ruins. The Protestant party had identified its hopes with its

invincible leader, and scarcely can it now separate them from him;

with him, they now fear all good fortune is buried. But it was no

longer the benefactor of Germany who fell at Lützen; the beneficient

part of his career Gustavus Adolphus had already terminated; and now

the greatest service which he could render to the liberties of Germany

was--to die. The all-engrossing power of an individual was at an end,

but many came forward to essay their strength; the equivocal

assistance of an over-powerful protector gave place to a more noble

self-exertion on the part of the Estates; and those who were formerly

the mere instruments of his aggrandizement now began to work for

themselves. They now looked to their own exertions for the

emancipation which could not be received without danger from the hand

of the mighty; and the Swedish power, now incapable of sinking into

the oppressor, was henceforth restricted to the more modest part of an

ally.

The ambition of the Swedish monarch aspired unquestionably to

establish a power within Germany and to attain a firm footing in the

centre of the empire, which was inconsistent with the liberties of the

Estates. His aim was the imperial crown; and this dignity, supported

by his power and maintained by his energy and activity, would in his

hands be liable to more abuse than had ever been feared from the House

of Austria. Born in a foreign country, educated in the maxims of

arbitrary power, and by principles and enthusiasm a determined enemy

to Popery, he was ill qualified to maintain inviolate the constitution

of the German States, or to respect their liberties. The coercive

homage which Augsburg, with many other cities, was forced to pay to

the Swedish crown, bespoke the conqueror rather than the protector of

the empire; and this town, prouder of the title of a royal city than

of the higher dignity of the freedom of the empire, flattered itself

with the anticipation of becoming the capital of his future kingdom.

His ill-disguised attempts upon the Electorate of Mentz, which he

first intended to bestow upon the Elector of Brandenburg, as the dower

of his daughter Christina, and afterward destined for his chancellor

and friend Oxenstiern, evinced plainly what liberties he was disposed

to take with the constitution of the empire. His allies, the

Protestant princes, had claims on his gratitude, which could be

satisfied only at the expense of their Roman Catholic neighbors, and

particularly of the immediate Ecclesiastical Chapters; and it seems

probable a plan was early formed for dividing the conquered provinces

(after the precedent of the barbarian hordes who overran the German

empire) as a common spoil, among the German and Swedish confederates.

In his treatment of the Elector Palatine, he entirely belied the

magnanimity of the hero, and forgot the sacred character of a

protector. The Palatinate was in his hands, and the obligations both

of justice and honor demanded its full and immediate restoration to

the legitimate sovereign. But, by a subtlety unworthy of a great mind,

and disgraceful to the honorable title of protector of the oppressed,

he eluded that obligation. He treated the Palatinate as a conquest

wrested from the enemy, and thought that this circumstance gave him a

right to deal with it as he pleased. He surrendered it to the Elector

as a favor, not as a debt; and that, too, as a Swedish fief, fettered

by conditions which diminished half its value, and degraded this

unfortunate prince into a humble vassal of Sweden. One of these

conditions obliged the Elector, after the conclusion of the war, to

furnish, along with the other princes, his contribution toward the

maintenance of the Swedish army, a condition which plainly indicates

the fate which, in the event of the ultimate success of the king,

awaited Germany. His sudden disappearance secured the liberties of

Germany and saved his reputation, while it probably spared him the

mortification of seeing his own allies in arms against him and all the

fruits of his victories torn from him by a disadvantageous peace.

Saxony was already disposed to abandon him, Denmark viewed his success

with alarm and jealousy; and even France, the firmest and most potent

of his allies, terrified at the rapid growth of his power and the

imperious tone which he assumed, looked around for foreign alliances

at the very moment he passed the Lech in order to check the progress

of the Goths and restore to Europe the balance of power.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 59: Permission The Macmillan Co., New York, and G. Bell &

Sons, Ltd., London.]

[Footnote 60: Priests' plunder; alluding to the means by which the

expense of its erection had been defrayed.]

[Footnote 61: A ton of gold in Sweden amounts to 100,000 rix dollars.]

[Footnote 62: Gefreyter, a person exempt from watching duty, nearly

corresponding to the corporal.]

* * * * *

ON THE USE OF THE CHORUS IN TRAGEDY (1803)[63]

TRANSLATED BY A. LODGE

A Poetical work must vindicate itself--if the execution be defective,

little aid can be derived from commentaries.

On these grounds, I might safely leave the Chorus to be its own

advocate, if we had ever seen it presented in an appropriate manner.

But it must be remembered that a dramatic composition first assumes

the character of a whole by means of representation on the stage. The

Poet supplies only the words, to which, in a lyrical tragedy, music

and rhythmical motion are essential accessories. It follows, then,

that if the Chorus is deprived of accompaniments appealing so

powerfully to the senses, it will appear a superfluity in the economy

of the drama--mere hindrance to the development of the

plot--destructive to the illusion of the scene and wearisome to the

spectators. To do justice to the Chorus, more especially if our aims

in Poetry be of a grand and elevated character, we must transport

ourselves from the actual to a possible stage. It is the privilege of

Art to furnish for itself whatever is requisite, and the accidental

deficiency of auxiliaries ought not to confine the plastic imagination

of the Poet. He aspires to whatever is most dignified, he labors to

realize the ideal in his own mind-though in the execution of his

purpose he must needs accommodate himself to circumstances.

The assertion so commonly made, that the Public degrades Art, is not

well founded. It is the artist that brings the Public to the level of

his own conceptions; and, in every age in which Art has gone to decay,

it has fallen through its professors. The People need feeling alone,

and feeling they possess. They take their station before the curtain

with an unvoiced longing, with a multifarious capacity. They bring

with them an aptitude for what is highest--they derive the greatest

pleasure from what is judicious and true; and if, with these powers of

appreciation, they deign to be satisfied with inferior productions,

still, if they have once tasted what is excellent, they will, in the

end, insist on having it supplied to them.

It is sometimes objected that the Poet may labor according to an

Ideal--that the critic may judge from ideas, but that mere executive

art is subject to contingencies and depends for effect on the

occasion. Managers will be obstinate; actors are bent on display--the

audience is inattentive and unruly. Their object is relaxation, and

they are disappointed if mental exertion be required, when they

expected only amusement. But if the Theatre be made instrumental

toward higher objects, the pleasure of the spectator will not be

increased, but ennobled. It will be a diversion, but a poetical one.

All Art is dedicated to pleasure, and there can be no higher and

worthier end than to make men happy. The true Art is that which

provides the highest degree of pleasure; and this consists in the

abandonment of the spirit to the free play of all its faculties.

Every one expects from the imaginative arts a certain emancipation

from the bounds of reality: we are willing to give a scope to Fancy,

and recreate ourselves with the possible. The man who expects it the

least will nevertheless forget his ordinary pursuits, his every-day

existence and individuality, and experience delight from uncommon

incidents: if he be of a serious turn of mind, he will acknowledge on

the stage that moral government of the world which he fails to

discover in real life. But he is, at the same time, perfectly aware

that all is an empty show, and that, in a true sense, he is feeding

only on dreams. When he returns from the theatre to the world of

realities, he is again compressed within its narrow bounds; he is its

denizen as before--for it remains what it was, and in him nothing has

been changed. What, then, has he gained beyond a momentary illusive

pleasure which vanished with the occasion?

It is because a passing recreation is alone desired that a mere show

of truth is thought sufficient. I mean that probability or

vraisemblance which is so highly esteemed, but which the commonest

workers are able to substitute for the true.

Art has for its object not merely to afford a transient pleasure, to

excite to a momentary dream of liberty; its aim is to make us

absolutely free; and this it accomplishes by awakening, exercising,

and perfecting in us a power to remove to an objective distance the

sensible world (which otherwise only burdens us as rugged matter and

presses us down with a brute influence); to transform it into the free

working of our spirit, and thus acquire a dominion over the material

by means of ideas. For the very reason also that true Art requires

somewhat of the objective and real, it is not satisfied with a show of

truth. It rears its ideal edifice on Truth itself--on the solid and

deep foundations of Nature.

But how Art can be at once altogether ideal, yet in the strictest

sense real; how it can entirely leave the actual, and yet harmonize

with Nature, is a problem to the multitude; hence the distorted views

which prevail in regard to poetical and plastic works for to ordinary

judgments these two requisites seem to counteract each other.

It is commonly supposed that one may be attained by the sacrifice of

the other--the result is a failure to arrive at either. One to whom

Nature has given a true sensibility, but denied the plastic

imaginative power, will be a faithful painter of the real; he will

adapt casual appearances, but never catch the spirit of Nature. He

will only reproduce to us the matter of the world, which, not being

our own work, the product of our creative spirit, can never have the

beneficent operation of Art, of which the essence is freedom. Serious,

indeed, but unpleasing, is the cast of thought with which such an

artist and poet dismisses us; we feel ourselves painfully thrust back

into the narrow sphere of reality by means of the very art which ought

to have emancipated us. On the other hand, a writer, endowed with a

lively fancy, but destitute of warmth and individuality of feeling,

will not concern himself in the least about truth; he will sport with

the stuff of the world, and endeavor to surprise by whimsical

combinations; and as his whole performance is nothing but foam and

glitter, he will, it is true, engage the attention for a time, but

build up and confirm nothing in the understanding. His playfulness is,

like the gravity of the other, thoroughly unpoetical. To string

together at will fantastical images, is not to travel into the realm

of the ideal; and the imitative reproduction of the actual cannot be

called the representation of nature. Both requisites stand so little

in contradiction to each other that they are rather one and the same

thing; that Art is true only as it altogether forsakes the actual and

becomes purely ideal. Nature herself is an idea of the mind, and is

never presented to the senses. She lies under the veil of appearances,

but is herself never apparent. To the art of the ideal alone is lent,

or rather, absolutely given, the privilege to grasp the spirit of the

All and bind it in a corporeal form.

Yet, in truth, even Art cannot present it to the senses, but by means

of her creative power to the imaginative faculty alone; and it is thus

that she becomes more true than all reality, and more real than all

experience. It follows from these premises that the artist can use no

single element taken from reality as he finds it--that his work must

be ideal in all its parts, if it be designed to have, as it were, an

intrinsic reality and to harmonize with nature.

What is true of Art and Poetry, in the abstract, holds good as to

their various kinds; and we may apply what has been advanced to the

subject of tragedy. In this department, it is still necessary to

controvert the ordinary notion of the natural, with which poetry is

altogether incompatible. A certain ideality has been allowed in

painting, though, I fear, on grounds rather conventional than

intrinsic; but in dramatic works what is desired is illusion, which,

if it could be accomplished by means of the actual, would be, at best,

a paltry deception. All the externals of a theatrical representation

are opposed to this notion; all is merely a symbol of the real. The

day itself in a theatre is an artificial one; the metrical dialogue is

itself ideal; yet the conduct of the play must forsooth be real, and

the general effect sacrificed to a part. Thus the French, who have

utterly misconceived the spirit of the ancients, adopted on their

stage the unities of time and place in the most common and empirical

sense; as though there were any place but the bare ideal one, or any

other time than the mere sequence of the incidents.

By the introduction of a metrical dialogue an important progress has

been made toward the poetical Tragedy. A few lyrical dramas have been

successful on the stage, and Poetry, by its own living energy, has

triumphed over prevailing prejudices. But so long as these erroneous

views are entertained little has been done--for it is not enough

barely to tolerate as a poetic license that which is, in truth, the

essence of all poetry. The introduction of the Chorus would be the

last and decisive step; and if it only served this end, namely, to

declare open and honorable warfare against naturalism in art, it would

be for us a living wall which Tragedy had drawn around herself, to

guard her from contact with the world of reality, and maintain her own

ideal soil, her poetical freedom.

It is well known that the Greek tragedy had its origin in the Chorus;

and though, in process of time, it became independent, still it may be

said that poetically, and in spirit, the Chorus was the source of its

existence, and that without these persevering supporters and witnesses

of the incident a totally different order of poetry would have grown

out of the drama. The abolition of the Chorus, and the debasement of

this sensibly powerful organ into the characterless substitute of a

confidant, is, by no means, such an improvement in tragedy as the

French, and their imitators, would have it supposed to be.

The old Tragedy, which at first only concerned itself with gods,

heroes and kings, introduced the Chorus as an essential accompaniment.

The poets found it in nature, and for that reason employed it. It grew

out of the poetical aspect of real life. In the new Tragedy it becomes

an organ of art which aids in making the poetry prominent. The modern

poet no longer finds the Chorus in nature; he must needs create and

introduce it poetically; that is, he must resolve on such an

adaptation of his story as will admit of its retrocession to those

primitive times and to that simple form of life.

The Chorus thus renders more substantial service to the modern

dramatist than to the old poet--and for this reason, that it

transforms the commonplace actual world into the old poetical one;

that it enables him to dispense with all that is repugnant to poetry,

and conducts him back to the most simple, original, and genuine

motives of action. The palaces of kings are in these days

closed-courts of justice have been transferred from the gates of

cities to the interior of buildings; writing has narrowed the province

of speech; the people itself--the sensibly living mass--when it does

not operate as brute force, has become a part of the civil polity, and

thereby an abstract idea in our minds; the deities have returned

within the bosoms of mankind. The poet must reopen the palaces--he

must place courts of justice beneath the canopy of heaven--restore the

gods, reproduce every extreme which the artificial frame of actual

life has abolished--throw aside every factitious influence on the mind

or condition of man which impedes the manifestation of his inward

nature and primitive character, as the statuary rejects modern

costume, and of all external circumstances adopts nothing but what is

palpable in the highest of forms--that of humanity. But precisely as

the painter throws around his figures draperies of ample volume, to

fill up the space of his picture richly and gracefully, to arrange its

several parts in harmonious masses, to give due play to color, which

charms and refreshes the eye--and at once to envelop human forms in a

spiritual veil, and make them visible--so the tragic poet inlays and

entwines his rigidly contracted plot and the strong outlines of his

characters with a tissue of lyrical magnificence, in which, as in

flowing robes of purple, they move freely and nobly, with a sustained

dignity and exalted repose.

In a higher organization, the material, or the elementary, need not be

visible; the chemical color vanishes in the finer tints of the

imaginative one. The material, however, has its peculiar effect, and

may be included in an artistical com position. But it must deserve its

place by animation, fulness and harmony, and give value to the ideal

forms which it surrounds, instead of stifling them by its weight.

In respect of the pictorial art, this is obvious to ordinary

apprehension, yet in poetry likewise, and in the tragical kind, which

is our immediate subject, the same doctrine holds good. Whatever

fascinates the senses alone is mere matter and the rude element of a

work of art:--if it take the lead it will inevitably destroy the

poetical--which lies at the exact medium between the ideal and the

sensible. But man is so constituted that he is ever impatient to pass

from what is fanciful to what is common; and reflection must,

therefore, have its place even in tragedy. But to merit this place it

must, by means of delivery, recover what it wants in actual life; for

if the two elements of poetry, the ideal and the sensible, do not

operate with an inward mutuality, they must at least act as allies--or

poetry is out of the question. If the balance be not intrinsically

perfect, the equipoise can be maintained only by an agitation of both

scales.

This is what the Chorus effects in tragedy. It is, in itself, not an

individual but a general conception; yet it is represented by a

palpable body which appeals to the senses with an imposing grandeur.

It forsakes the contracted sphere of the incidents to dilate itself

over the past and future, over distant times and nations and general

humanity, to deduce the grand results of life, and pronounce the

lessons of wisdom. But all this it does with the full power of

fancy--with a bold lyrical freedom which ascends, as with godlike

step, to the topmost height of worldly things; and it effects it in

conjunction with the whole sensible influence of melody and rhythm, in

tones and movements.

The Chorus thus exercises a purifying influence on tragic poetry,

insomuch as it keeps reflection apart from the incidents, and by this

separation arms it with a poetical vigor; as the painter, by means of

a rich drapery, changes the ordinary poverty of costume into a charm

and an ornament.

But as the painter finds himself obliged to strengthen the tone of

color of the living subject, in order to counter-balance the material

influences--so the--lyrical effusions of the Chorus impose upon the

poet the necessity of a proportionate elevation of his general

diction. It is the Chorus alone which entitles the poet to employ

this fulness of tone, which at once charms the senses, pervades the

spirit, and expands the mind. This one giant form on his canvas

obliges him to mount all his figures on the cothurnus, and thus impart

a tragical grandeur to his picture. If the Chorus be taken away, the

diction of the tragedy must generally be lowered, or what is now great

and majestic will appear forced and overstrained. The old Chorus

introduced into the French tragedy would present it in all its poverty

and reduce it to nothing; yet, without doubt, the same accomplishment

would impart to Shakespeare's tragedy its true significance.

As the Chorus gives life to the language--so also it gives repose to

the action; but it is that beautiful and lofty repose which is the

characteristic of a true work of art. For the mind of the spectator

ought to maintain its freedom through the most impassioned scenes; it

should not be the mere prey of impressions, but calmly and severely

detach itself from the emotions which it suffers. The commonplace

objection made to the Chorus that it disturbs the illusion and blunts

the edge of the feelings, is what constitutes its highest

recommendation; for it is this blind force of the affections which the

true artist deprecates this illusion is what he disdains to excite. If

the strokes which Tragedy inflicts on our bosoms followed without

respite--the passion would overpower the action. We should mix

ourselves up with the subject-matter, and no longer stand above it. It

is by holding asunder the different parts, and stepping between the

passions with its composing views, that the Chorus restores to us our

freedom, which would else be lost in the tempest. The characters of

the drama need this intermission in order to collect themselves; for

they are no real beings who obey the impulse of the moment, and

merely represent individuals--but ideal persons and representatives of

their species, who enunciate the deep things of Humanity.

Thus much on my attempt to revive the old Chorus on the tragic stage.

It is true that choruses are not unknown to modern tragedy; but the

Chorus of the Greek drama, as I have employed it--the Chorus, as a

single ideal person, furthering and accompanying the whole plot--is of

an entirely distinct character; and when, in discussion on the Greek

tragedy, I hear mention made of choruses, I generally suspect the

speaker's ignorance of his subject. In my view the Chorus has never

been reproduced since the decline of the old tragedy.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 63: Permission G. Bell & Sons, Ltd., London, and The

Macmillan Co., New York.]

* * * * *

SCHILLER-GOETHE CORRESPONDENCE[64]

TRANSLATED BY L. DORA SCHMITZ

SCHILLER _to_ GOETHE

Jena, August 23, 1794.

I yesterday received the welcome news that you had returned from your

journey. We may therefore hope to see you among us again soon, which

I, on my part, most heartily wish. My recent conversations with you

have put the whole store of my ideas in motion, for they related to a

subject which has actively engaged my thoughts for some years past.

Many things upon which I could not come to a right understanding with

myself have received new and unexpected light from the contemplation I

have had of your mind (for so I must call the general impression of

your ideas upon me). I needed the _object_, the body, for several of

my speculative ideas, and you have put me on the track of finding it.

Your calm and clear way of looking at things keeps you from getting on

the by-roads into which speculation as well as arbitrary

imagination--which merely follows its own bent--are so apt to lead one

astray. Your correct intuition grasps all things, and that far more

perfectly than what is laboriously sought for by analysis; and merely

because this lies within you as a whole, is the wealth of your mind

concealed from yourself. For, alas! we know only that which we can

take to pieces. Minds like yours, therefore, seldom know how far they

have penetrated and how little cause they have to borrow from

philosophy, which, in fact, can learn only from them. Philosophy can

merely dissect what is given it, but the giving itself is not the work

of the analyzer but of genius, which combines things according to

objective laws under the obscure but safe influence of pure reason.

[Illustration: MONUMENT TO GOETHE AND SCHILLER IN WEIMAR]

Although I have done so at a distance, I have long watched the course

which your mind has pursued, and have observed, with ever renewed

admiration, the path which you have marked out for yourself. You seek

for the necessary in nature, but you seek it by the most difficult

route--one which all weaker minds would take care to avoid. You look

at Nature as a whole, when seeking to get light thrown upon her

individual parts; you look for the explanation of the individual in

the totality of her various manifestations. From the simple organism

you ascend step by step to those that are more complex, in order, in

the end, genetically to form the most complicate of all--man--out of

the materials of nature as a whole. By thus, as it were, imitating

nature in creating him, you try to penetrate into his hidden

structure. This is a great and truly heroic idea, which sufficiently

shows how your mind keeps the whole wealth of its conceptions in one

beautiful unity. You can never have expected that your life would

suffice to attain such an end, but to have struck out such a path is

worth more than reaching the end of any other; and you, like Achilles

in the Iliad, made your choice between Phthia and immortality. Had you

been born a Greek, or even an Italian, and had you from infancy been

placed in the midst of choice natural surroundings and of an

idealizing Art, your path would have been infinitely shortened,

perhaps even have been rendered entirely superfluous. Had such been

the case, you would, on your first perception of things, have taken up

the form of the Necessary, and the grand style would have been

developed in you with your first experience. But being born a German,

and your Grecian spirit having been cast in this Northern mold, you

had no other choice but either to become a Northern artist; or, by the

help of the power of thought, to supply your imagination with what

reality withheld from it, and thus, as it were, to produce a Greek

from within by a reasoning process. At that period of life when the

soul, surrounded by defective forms, constructs its own inward nature

out of outward circumstances, you had already assumed a wild Northern

nature, and your victorious genius, rising above its materials, then

discovered this want from within, and became convinced of it from

without through its acquaintance with Greek nature. You had then, in

accordance with the better model which your developing mind created

for itself, to correct your old and less perfect nature, and this

could be effected only by following leading ideas. However, this

_logical_ direction which a reflecting mind is forced to pursue, is

not very compatible with the _esthetic_ state of mind by which alone a

reflecting mind becomes creative. You, therefore, had one task more:

for inasmuch as your mind had passed over from intuition to

abstraction, so you had now to go back and retranslate ideas into

intuitions, and to change thoughts into feelings; for it is only

through the latter that genius can be productive.

It is somewhat in this manner that I imagine the course pursued by

your mind, and whether I am right or not you will yourself know best.

However, what you yourself can scarcely be aware of (as genius ever

remains the greatest mystery to itself) is the beautiful harmony

between your philosophical instinct and the purest results of your

speculative reason. Upon a first view it does indeed seem as if there

could not be any greater opposites than the speculative mind which

proceeds from unity, and the intuitive mind which proceeds from

variety. If, however, the former seeks experience with a pure and

truthful spirit, and the latter seeks law with self-active and free

power of thought, then the two cannot fail to meet each other half

way. It is true that the intuitive mind has only to deal with

individuals, the speculative mind only with species. But if the

intuitive mind is that of a genius and seeks the nature of the

Necessary in experience, then individuals will be produced, it is

true, but they will possess the character of the species; and again,

if the speculative mind is that of a genius, and does not lose sight

of experience when rising above it, then it will indeed produce

species only, but with the possibility of individual life and with a

well-founded relation to actual objects.

But I find that in place of sending you a letter I am writing an

essay--pray excuse this, and ascribe it to the lively interest with

which the subject has filled me; and should you not recognize your

own image in this mirror, do not on that account flee from it, I pray.

* * *

Diderot's work[65], especially the first part, is very interesting,

and, considering the subject, is handled with edifying delicacy. I beg

to be permitted to keep this book for a few days longer.

It would, I think, be well if we could now soon start the new

periodical, and you would perhaps be kind enough to let the first

number be opened with something of yours. I, therefore, take the

liberty of asking you whether you would be willing to let your

novel[66] appear in our journal in successive numbers? But whether you

determine to let us have it or not, I should consider it a very great

favor to be allowed to read it.

My friends and my wife commend themselves to your kind remembrance.

* * * * *

GOETHE _to_ SCHILLER

Ettersburg, August 27, 1794.

On the anniversary of my birthday, which took place this week, I could

not have received a more acceptable gift than the letter in which you

give the sum of my existence in so friendly a manner, and in which, by

your sympathy, you encourage me to a more assiduous and active use of

my powers.

Pure enjoyment and true usefulness can only be reciprocal, and it will

be a pleasure to me to unfold to you at leisure what your conversation

has been to me; how I, too, regard those days as an epoch in my life,

and how contented I feel in having gone on my way without any

particular encouragement; for it seems to me that, after so unexpected

a meeting, we cannot but wander on in life together. I have always

prized the frank and rare earnestness which is displayed in all that

you have written and done, and I may now claim to be made acquainted

by yourself with the course taken by your own mind, more especially

during these latter years. If we make it clear to each other to which

point we have thus far attained, the better able we shall be to work

on together without interruption.

All that relates to myself I will gladly communicate to you; for,

being fully conscious that my undertaking far exceeds the measure of

human capabilities and their earthly duration, I should like to

deposit many things with you, and thereby not only preserve them but

give them life.

Of what great advantage your sympathy will be to me you will yourself

soon perceive, when, upon a closer acquaintance, you discover in me a

kind of obscurity and hesitation which I cannot entirely master,

although distinctly aware of their existence. Such phenomena, however,

are often found in our natures, and we quietly submit to them as long

as they do not become too tyrannical.

I hope to be able to spend some time with you soon, when we shall talk

over many things.

Unfortunately, a few weeks before receiving your proposal, I had given

my novel to Unger,[67] and the first proof sheets have already come to

hand. I have more than once thought, during these last days, that it

would have been very suitable for your periodical. It is the only

thing I have by me of any size, and is a kind of problematical work

such as the good Germans like.

I will send the first Book as soon as I get all the proof sheets. It

is so long since it was written that, in the actual sense of the word,

I may be said to be only the editor.

[Illustration:

The highest aim he reached

on soaring pinion

Closely allied to all we value most

Thus honor him! What life but

scantily

To Genius yields, in full shall

give Posterity.

Goethe on Schiller.]

If, among my projects, there were anything that would serve the

purpose you mention, we should, I think, easily agree as to the most

appropriate form to put it in, and there should be no delay in my

working it out. Farewell, and remember me to your circle.

* * * * *

SCHILLER _to_ GOETHE

Jena, August 31, 1794.

On my return from Weissenfels, where I met my friend Körner from

Dresden, I received your last letter but one, the contents of which

pleased me for two reasons; for I perceive from it that the view I

took of your mind coincides with your own feelings, and that you were

not displeased with the candor with which I allowed my heart to

express itself. Our acquaintance, although it comes late, awakens in

me many a delightful hope, and is to me another proof of how much

better it often is to let chance have its way than to forestall it

with too much officiousness. Great as my desire always was to become

more closely acquainted with you than is possible between the spirit

of a writer and his most attentive reader, I now clearly see that the

very different paths upon which you and I have moved could not, with

any advantage to ourselves, have brought us together sooner than at

the present time. I now hope, however, that we may travel over the

rest of our life's way together, and, moreover, do this with more than

usual advantage to each other, inasmuch as the last travelers who join

company on a long journey have always the most to say to each other.

Do not expect to find any great store of ideas in me; this is what I

shall find in you. My need and endeavor are to make much out of

little, and, when you once come to know my poverty in all so-called

acquired knowledge, you will perhaps find that I have sometimes

succeeded in doing this; for, the circle of my ideas being small, I

can the more rapidly and the more frequently run through it; for that

very reason I can use my small resources with more effect, and can, by

means of form, produce that variety which is wanting in the

subject-matter. You strive to simplify your great world of ideas; I

seek variety for my small means. You have to govern a whole realm, I

but a somewhat numerous family of ideas, which I would be heartily

glad to be able to extend into a little world.

Your mind works intuitively to an extraordinary degree, and all your

thinking powers appear, as it were, to have come to an agreement with

your imagination to be their common representative. In reality, this

is the most that a man can make of himself if only he succeeds in

generalizing his perceptions and making his feelings his supreme law.

This is what you have endeavored to do, and what in a great measure

you have already attained. My understanding works more in a

symbolizing method, and thus I hover, as a hybrid, between ideas and

intentions, between law and feeling, between a technical mind and

genius. This it is that, particularly in my earlier years, gave me a

rather awkward appearance both in the field of speculation and in that

of poetry; for the poetic mind generally got the better of me when I

ought to have philosophized, and my philosophical mind when I wished

to poetize. Even now it frequently enough happens that imagination

intrudes upon my abstractions, and cold reason upon my poetical

productions. If I could obtain such mastery over these two powers as

to assign to each its limits, I might yet look forward to a happy

fate; but, alas! just when I have begun to know and to use my moral

powers rightly, illness seizes me and threatens to undermine my

physical powers. I can scarcely hope to have time to complete any

great and general mental revolution in myself; but I will do what I

can, and when, at last, the building falls, I shall, perhaps, after

all, have snatched from the ruins what was most worthy of being

preserved.

You expressed a wish that I should speak of myself, and I have made

use of the permission. I make these confessions to you in

confidence, and venture to hope that you will receive them in a kindly

spirit.

I shall today refrain from entering into details about your essay,

which will at once lead our conversations on this subject upon the

most fertile track. My own researches--entered upon by a different

path--have led me to a result rather similar to that at which you have

arrived, and in the accompanying papers you will perhaps find ideas

which coincide with your own. I wrote them about a year and a half

ago, for which reason, as well as on account of the occasion for which

they were penned (they were intended for an indulgent friend), there

is some excuse for their crudeness of form. These ideas have, indeed,

since then, received in me a better foundation and greater precision,

and this may possibly bring them much nearer to yours.

I cannot sufficiently regret that _Wilhelm Meister_ is lost to our

periodical. However, I hope that your fertile mind and friendly

interest in our undertaking will give us some compensation for this

loss, whereby the admirers of your genius will be double gainers. In

the number of the _Thalia_ which I herewith send you, you will find

some ideas of Körner's on Declamation, which, I think, will please

you.

* * * * *

SCHILLER _to_ GOETHE

Jena, January 7, 1795.

Accept my best thanks for the copy of the novel you have sent me. The

feeling which penetrates and takes hold of me with increasing force

the further I read on in this work, I cannot better express in words

than by calling it a delicious, inward sense of comfort, a feeling of

mental and bodily well-being, and I will vouch that this will be the

effect produced upon all readers.

This sense of comfort I account for from the calm clearness,

smoothness, and transparency which pervade the whole of your work, and

which leave nothing to disturb or to dissatisfy the mind, and the mind

is not more excited than is necessary to fan and maintain a joyous

life. Of the individual parts I shall say nothing till I have seen the

Third Book, which I am looking forward to with longing.

I cannot express to you what a painful feeling it often is to me to

pass from a work of this kind into one of a philosophical character.

In the former all is so joyous, so alive, so harmoniously evolved, and

so true to human life; in the latter all is so stern, so rigid,

abstract, and so extremely unnatural; for all nature is synthesis, and

philosophy but antithesis. I can, in fact, give proof of having been

as true to nature in my speculations as is compatible with the idea of

analysis; indeed, I have perhaps been more faithful to her than our

Kantians would consider permissible or possible. But still I am no

less fully conscious of the infinite difference between Life and

Reasoning, and cannot, in such melancholy moments, help perceiving a

want in my own nature which in happier hours I am forced to think of

only as a natural duality of the thing itself. This much, however, is

certain--the poet is the only true man, and the best philosopher is

but a caricature in comparison with him.

I need scarcely assure you that I am in the utmost anxiety to know

what you have to say to my philosophy of the Beautiful. As the

Beautiful itself is derived from man as a whole, so my analysis of it

is drawn from _my_ own whole being, and I cannot but be deeply

interested in knowing how this accords with yours.

Your presence here will be a source of nourishment both to my mind and

my heart. Especially great is my longing to enjoy some poetical works

in common with you.

[Illustration: Schiller on Goethe]

You promised to let me hear some of your epigrams when an opportunity

occurred. It would be a great and additional pleasure to me if this

could be done during your approaching visit to Jena, as it is still

very uncertain when I may be able to get to W.

Just as I am about to close comes the welcome continuation of your

_Meister_. A thousand thanks for it!

* * * * *

GOETHE _to_ SCHILLER

Weimar, November 21, 1795.

Today I received twenty-one of Propertius' elegies from Knebel and

shall look them over carefully and then let the translator know where

I find anything to object to; for, as he has given himself so much

trouble, nothing ought, perhaps, to be altered without his sanction.

I wish you could induce Cotta to pay for this manuscript at once; it

could easily be calculated how many sheets it would print. I have, it

is true, no actual occasion to ask this, but it would look much

better, would encourage energetic coöperation, and also help in making

the good name of the _Horen_ better known. A publisher has often

enough to pay money in advance, so Cotta might surely once in a way

pay upon the receipt of a manuscript. Knebel wants the Elegies to be

divided into three contributions; I, too, think this the right

proportion, and we should thus have the first three numbers of next

year's _Horen_ nicely adorned. I will see to it that you get them in

proper time.

Have you seen Stolberg's abominable preface to his Platonic

discourses? The disclosures he there makes are so insipid and

intolerable that I feel very much inclined to step out and chastise

him. It would be a very simple matter to hold up to view the senseless

unreasonableness of this stupid set of people, if, in so doing, one

had but a rational public on one's side; this would at the same time

be a declaration of war against that superficiality which it has now

become necessary to combat in every department of learning. The secret

feuds of suppressing, misplacing, and misprinting, which it has

carried on against us, have long deserved that this declaration should

be held in honorable remembrance, and that continuously.

I find this doubly necessary and unavoidable in the case of my

scientific works, which I am gradually getting into order. I intend to

speak out my mind pretty frankly against reviewers, journalists,

collectors of magazines, and writers of abridgments, and, in a prelude

or prolog, openly to declare myself against the public; in this

instance, especially, I do not intend to allow any one's opposition or

reticence to pass.

What do you say, for instance, to Lichtenberg, with whom I have had

some correspondence about the optical subjects we spoke of, and with

whom, besides, I am on pretty good terms, not even mentioning my

essays in his new edition of Erxleben's Compendium, especially as a

new edition of a compendium is surely issued in order to introduce the

latest discoveries, and these gentlemen are usually quick enough in

noting down everything in their interleaved books! How many different

ways there are of dispatching a work like this, even though it were

but done in a passing manner I However, at the present moment, my

cunning brains cannot think of any one of these ways.

I am, at present, very far from being in anything like an esthetic or

sentimental mood, so what is to become of my poor novel? Meanwhile, I

am making use of my time as best I can, and my comfort is that, at so

low an ebb, one may hope that the flood is about to return.

Your dear letter reached me safely, and I thank you for your sympathy,

which I felt sure you would give me. In such cases one hardly knows

what is best to do--to let grief take its natural course or to fortify

oneself with the assistance which culture gives us. If one determines

to follow the latter course--as I always do--one feels better merely

for the moment, and. I have noticed that Nature always reasserts her

rights in other ways.

The Sixth Book of my novel has made a good impression here also; to be

sure, the poor reader never knows what he is about with works of this

kind, for he does not consider that he would probably never take them

up had not the author contrived to get the better of his thinking

powers, his feelings, and his curiosity.

Your testimony in favor of my tale I prize very highly, and I shall

henceforth work with more confidence at this species of composition.

The last volume of my novel cannot in any case appear before

Michaelmas; it would be well if we could arrange the plans we lately

discussed in reference to this.

My new story can, I think, hardly be ready by December, and,

moreover, I can scarcely venture to pass on to it till I have, in some

way or other, written something in explanation of the first. If, by

December, I could write something of this kind neatly, I should be

very glad of thus being able to give you a contribution for next

year's opening number. Farewell. May we long enjoy having around us

those who are nearest and dearest to us. Toward New Year's I hope

again to spend some time with you.

* * * * *

SCHILLER to GOETHE

Jena, July 2, 1796.

I have now run through all the eight Books of your novel, very

hurriedly, it is true, but the subject-matter alone is so large that I

could scarcely get through it in two days' reading. Properly speaking,

therefore, I ought not to say anything about it even today, for the

surprising and unparalleled variety which is therein _concealed_--in

the strictest sense of the word--is overpowering. I confess that what

I have as yet grasped correctly is but the _continuity_, not the

_unity_, although I do not for a moment doubt that I shall become

perfectly clear on this point also, if, as I think, in works of this

kind, the continuity is more than half the unity.

As, under the circumstances, you cannot exactly expect to receive from

me anything thoroughly satisfactory and yet wish to hear something,

you must be content with a few remarks; these, however, are not

altogether without value, inasmuch as they will tell of direct

impressions. To make up for this, I promise you that our discussions

about your novel shall continue throughout the month. To give an

adequate and truly esthetic estimate of a whole work, as a work of

art, is a serious undertaking. I shall devote the whole of the next

four months to it, and that with pleasure. Besides this, it is one of

the greatest blessings of my existence that I have lived to see this

work of yours completed, that it has been written while my faculties

are still in a state of growth, and that I may draw inspiration from

this pure source; further, the beautiful relation that exists between

us makes it seem to me a kind of religious duty to call your cause my

own, and to develop all that is real in my nature so fully that my

mind may become the clearest mirror of what exists beneath this

covering, and that I may deserve the name of being your friend in the

higher sense of the word. How vividly have I felt, at this time, that

excellence is a power, that it can influence selfish natures only as a

power, and that, as contrasted with excellence, there is no freedom

but love!

I cannot say how much I have been moved by the truth, the beautiful

vitality, and the simple fulness of your work. My agitation, it is

true, is greater than it will be when I have completely mastered your

subject, and that will be an important crisis in my intellectual life;

but yet this agitation is the effect of the Beautiful and only of the

Beautiful, and is merely the result of my reason not having yet been

able to master my feelings. I now quite understand what you meant by

saying that it was the Beautiful, the True, that could often move you

to tears. Calm and deep, clear and yet incomprehensible, like nature,

your work makes its influence felt; it stands there, and even the

smallest secondary incident shows the beautiful equanimity from which

all has emanated.

[Illustration: SCHILLER RECITING FROM HIS WORKS TO HIS WEIMAR FRIENDS]

But I cannot, as yet, find words to describe these impressions, and,

moreover, I must today confine myself to the Eighth Book. How well you

have succeeded in bringing the large and widely extended circle, the

different attitudes and scenes of the events, so closely together

again! Your work may be compared to a beautiful planetary system;

everything belongs together, and it is only the Italian figures which,

like comets and as weirdly as they, connect the system with one that

is more remote and larger. Further, these figures, as also Marianna

and Aurelia, run wholly out of this system again, and, after having

merely served to produce a poetical movement in it, separate

themselves from it as foreign individuals. How beautifully conceived

it is to derive what is practically monstrous and terribly pathetic in

the fate of Mignon and the Harpist from what is theoretically

monstrous, from the abortions of the understanding, so that nothing is

thereby laid to the charge of pure and healthy nature! Senseless

superstition alone gives birth to such monstrous fates as pursue

Mignon and the Harpist. Even Aurelia's ruin is but the result of her

own unnaturalness, her masculine nature. Toward Marianna alone could I

accuse you of poetic selfishness. I could almost say she has been made

a sacrifice to the novel, as the nature of the case would not permit

of her being saved. Her fate, therefore, will ever draw forth bitter

tears, while in the case of the three others the reader will gladly

turn from what is individual to the idea of the whole.

Wilhelm's false relationship to Theresa is admirably conceived,

motivated, and worked out, and still more admirably turned to account.

Many a reader will at first be actually alarmed at it, for I can

promise Theresa but few wellwishers; all the more beautiful is the way

in which the reader is rescued from this state of uneasiness. I cannot

imagine how this false relation could have been dissolved more

tenderly, more delicately, or more nobly. How pleased Richardson and

all his set would have been had you made a scene out of it and been

highly indelicate in the display of delicate sentiments! I have but

one little objection to raise: Theresa's courageous and determined

resistance to the person who wishes to rob her of her lover, even

although the possibility is thereby reopened to her of possessing

Lothar, is quite in accordance with nature, and is excellent; further,

I think there are good reasons for Wilhelm's showing deep indignation

and a certain amount of pain at the banterings of his fellowmen and of

fate--but it seems to me that he ought to complain less deeply of the

loss of a happiness which had already ceased to be anything of the

kind to him. In Natalie's presence, as it seems to me, his regained

freedom ought to be to him a greater happiness than he allows it to

be. I am quite aware of the complication of this state of things and

what is demanded by _delicatesse_, but, on the other hand, Natalie may

in some measure be said to be hurt by this same _delicatesse_ when, in

her presence, Wilhelm is allowed to lament over the loss of Theresa.

One other thing I specially admire in the concatenation of the events

is the great good which you have contrived to draw from Wilhelm's

already-mentioned false relation to Theresa so as most speedily to

bring about the true and desired end, the union of Natalie and

Wilhelm. In no other manner could this end have been arrived at so

well and so naturally as by the path you have pursued, although this

very path threatened to lead from it. It can now be maintained, with

the most perfect innocence and purity, that Wilhelm and Natalie belong

to each other; and Theresa's letters to Natalie lead up to this

beautifully. Such contrivances are of the greatest beauty, for they

unite all that could be desired, nay, all that appeared wholly

ununitable; they complicate, and yet carry the solution in themselves;

they produce restlessness, and yet lead to repose; they succeed in

reaching the goal, while appearing to be making every effort to keep

from it.

Mignon's death, although we are prepared for it, affects one

powerfully and deeply--so deeply, in fact, that many will think you

quit the subject too abruptly. This, upon first reading it, was a very

decided feeling in my own case; but, on reading it a second time, when

surprise had subsided, I felt it less, and yet I fear that you may

have, in this, gone a hair's breadth too far. Mignon, before her end,

had begun to appear more womanly and softer, and thus to have become

more interesting in herself; the repulsive heterogeneity of her nature

had relaxed, and with this relaxation some of her impetuosity had

likewise disappeared. Her last song, especially, melts one's heart to

the most intense sympathy. Hence it strikes one as odd that, directly

upon the affecting scene of her death, the doctor should make an

experiment upon her corpse, and that this living being should so soon

be able to forget the person, merely in order to regard her as the

instrument of a scientific inquiry. It strikes one as being equally

strange that Wilhelm--who, after all, is the cause of her death, and

is aware of it--should at that moment notice the instrument-case and

be lost in the recollection of past scenes, when the present should

have so wholly absorbed him.

You may, in this case also, justify yourself as having been quite true

to nature, but I doubt whether you will be able to do this as regards

the "sentimental" demands of your readers; and therefore--in order

that nothing should interfere with the reader's acceptance of a scene

which is so splendidly motivated and so well worked out--I would

advise you to pay some attention to it.

Otherwise, I find everything you do with Mignon, when living as well

as when dead, most uncommonly beautiful. This pure and poetic creature

is specially and excellently qualified to have so poetical a funeral.

In her isolated condition, her mysterious existence, her purity and

innocence, she is so truly a representative of the period of life in

which she stands that she moves one to a feeling of unmixed sadness

and genuine human sorrow, for nothing but pure humanity was manifested

in her. That which, in every other individual, would be inconsistent,

nay, in a certain sense, revolting, is, in her, sublime and noble.

I should have liked to see the appearance of the Marquis in the family

motivated by something more than his mere dilettanteism in art. He is

too indispensable to the development, and the _need_ of his

interference might easily have been made more conspicuous than the

inner necessity. You have yourself spoilt the reader by the

arrangement of the rest of your work, and have justified him in making

greater demands than can generally be required of novel writers. Could

not the Marquis be made an old acquaintance of Lothar or of the Uncle,

and his journey hither be more interwoven with the whole?

The end, as well as the whole history of the Harpist, excites the

greatest interest. I have already said how excellent I find your

thought of deriving the terrible destinies of the Harpist and of

Mignon from religious extravagance. The priest's notion of describing

a small transgression as monstrous, in order that a great crime--which

he will not mention for humanity's sake--may be atoned for by it, is

sublime of its kind and a worthy representative of this whole mode of

thinking. You might perhaps make Sperate's story a little shorter

still, as it comes in at the end where one is prone to hurry

impatiently to the goal.

That the Harpist should prove to be Mignon's father, and that you

yourself do not mention it or thrust it at the reader, makes the

effect all the greater. One is forced to reflect upon the fact

oneself, to recall to mind how close in life was the relation which

existed between these two mysterious natures, and to look down into an

unfathomable depth of fate. But no more for today. My wife wishes to

inclose a little note to tell you her impressions of your Eighth Book.

Farewell, my beloved, my esteemed friend! I am deeply moved when I

think that that which we otherwise look for and rarely find in the far

distance of favored antiquity lies so close to me in you. You need no

longer be astonished that there are so few who are capable or worthy

of understanding you. The wonderful naturalness, truth, and fluency of

your description hide from the common herd of critics every thought of

the difficulty, of the grandness of your art, and those who are

capable of following the artist, who perceive the means by which the

effects have been produced, will feel themselves so averse, so hostile

toward the genial power which they there see in action, and find their

needy selves in such straits, that they will angrily thrust the work

from them, while in their hearts--though with _de mauvaise

grace_--they are certain to be your liveliest worshippers.

* * * * *

GOETHE _to_ SCHILLER Weimar, July 5, 1796.

As soon as I received your first letter I at once sat down to write to

you; but verily your two following letters have come to me, in the

midst of my truly worldly occupations, like two voices from another

world to which I can do naught but listen. Pray continue to refresh

and to encourage me! Your suggestions will enable me to finish the

Eighth Book as soon as I am able again to take it in hand. I already

possess the means to satisfy nearly every one of your suggestions, by

which, moreover, even to my mind, the whole work becomes more

connected at the points in question, and both truer and more pleasing.

Do not become weary of telling me your opinion frankly, and keep the

book a week longer. What you require of _Cellini_ I shall meanwhile

push forward; I shall also give you a sketch of what I still think of

doing to my Eighth Book, and hence the last transcript shall be out of

our hands by the beginning of August.

Your letters are now my sole recreation, and you must know how

grateful I am to you for having so unexpectedly set my mind at ease

about so many points. Farewell, and give my kind greetings to your

dear wife.

* * * * *

GOETHE _to_ SCHILLER

March 18, 1799.

I congratulate you with all my heart upon having finished your work;

it has given me particular satisfaction, although I have, so to say,

but tasted the outside of it, and that on a most disturbed morning.

For stage purposes it is quite sufficiently developed; the new

motives, which I did not know of, are very good and to the point.

If, at some future time, you could cut off a little from _The

Piccolomini_, both pieces would be a priceless gift to the German

stage, and they would have to be given throughout many a long year.

The last piece has, it is true, this great merit, that everything

ceases to be political and becomes of purely human interest; nay, the

historical element itself is but a light veil through which we have

the purely human element shining forth. The effect upon the mind is

neither interfered with nor disturbed.

I would certainly close with the monologue by the Princess, for it is,

in any case, left to the imagination as to what becomes of her. It

might perhaps be well, eventually, to have the Equerry introduced in

the first piece.

The close of the whole with the address of the letter is, in reality,

frightening, especially considering the tender state of one's feelings

at the moment. It is doubtless an exceptional case to conclude with

what is terrible after having exhausted all that was capable of

rousing fear and pity.

I shall not add more, and can but say that I am delighted at the

prospect of enjoying this work with you. I hope still to be able to

start on Thursday. You shall know for certain on Wednesday; we will

then read the play together, and I intend then to enjoy it in a

thoroughly composed state of mind.

Farewell; take a rest now and let us both begin a new life during the

vacation. My kind greetings to your dear wife, and think of me.

I do not intend, just yet, to boast of the work extorted from the

Muses; it is still a great question whether it is worth anything; in

any case, however, it may be regarded as preparatory.

* * * * *

SCHILLER _to_ GOETHE

Jena, March 19, 1799.

I have for long dreaded the moment when I should be rid of my work,

much as I wished for the time to come; and, in fact, I do feel my

present freedom to be worse than the state of bondage I have hitherto

been in. The mass which has formerly drawn and held me to it has now

gone, and I feel as if I were hanging indefinitely in empty space. At

the same time I feel also as if it were absolutely impossible for me

ever to produce anything again; I shall not be at rest till I once

more have my thoughts turned to some definite subject, with hope and

inclination in view. When I again have some definite object before me,

I shall be rid of the feeling of restlessness which at present is also

drawing me off from smaller things I have in hand. When you come I

mean to lay before you some tragic materials of my own invention, in

order that I may not, in the first instance, make a mistake as regards

subject. Inclination and necessity draw me toward subjects of pure

fancy, not to historical ones, and toward such in which the interest

is of a purely sentimental and human character; for of soldiers,

heroes, and commanders, I am now heartily tired.

How I envy you your present activity--your latest! You are standing on

the purest and sublimest poetic ground, in the most beautiful world of

definite figures where everything is ready-made or can be re-made. You

are, so to say, living in the home of poetry and being waited upon by

the gods. During these last days I have again been looking into

Homer, and there have read of the visit of Thetis to Vulcan with

immense pleasure. There is, in the graceful description of a domestic

visit such as we might receive any day, and in an account of any kind

of handicraft, an infinity of material and form, and the Naïve shows

the full nature of the Divine.

Your hope of being able to finish the _Achilleid_ by August, or, at

least, your believing it to be possible to do so, is to me

inconceivable, notwithstanding all the proofs I have myself had of the

rapidity with which you get through things, especially as you do not

even reckon upon having April for work. I sincerely regret that you

will lose this month; perhaps, however, you will be able to preserve

your epic mood; if so, be sure not to allow theatrical cares to

disturb you. I will gladly relieve you of whatever trouble I can in

connection with _Wallenstein_.

A few days ago Imhof sent me the last two cantos of her poem, which

have given me very great pleasure. The development is extremely

refined and pure, and is accomplished by simple means and unusual

elegance. When you come we will talk it over together.

I herewith return _The Piccolomini_, and beg you to let me have

_Wallenstein's Camp_, which I wish likewise to have copied out, and

shall then, at last, be able to send the three plays to Körner.

The box of groats has been called for and delivered up in your name to

a Herr Meyer. You have, no doubt, already received it. Farewell. My

wife sends kindest greetings. Tomorrow I hope to hear that we may

expect you on Thursday.

* * * * *

SCHILLER _to_ GOETHE

Weimar, July 30, 1800. The cheerful tone of your letter proves to me

that things are going well with you in Jena, and I congratulate you

that such is the case. I cannot boast the same of myself; the state of

the barometer, which is so favorable to you, brings on my spasms, and

I do not sleep well. Owing to this state of things, it was very

welcome news to me to hear from Körner that he could not undertake the

journey. I shall, therefore, not go to Lauchstedt, and shall thus have

an unexpected gain in time and also in money; for, much as I should

have liked to see him again, it would just at present have been a

little inconvenient to me.

I congratulate you upon the progress you have made in your work. The

liberty which you appear to be taking with the French original, I look

upon as a good sign of the productive state of your mind, and also

augur from this that the work will bring us a step further forward

than _Mahomet_ did. I am looking forward eagerly to seeing your work

and to our discussions upon it.

If you carry out your idea respecting the choruses, we shall be making

an important experiment on the stage. My piece, too, will, I hope, be

so far advanced by the time you return that I may lay the finished

sketch of it before you, in order to assure myself that you approve of

it before I set about working it out. During the last few days I have

likewise been engaged with the conclusion of my collection of poems.

The stanzas on _Mahomet I_ have also had printed in it. If you are

curious to see them, Goepferdt could send you sheets R and S as soon

as they have been printed off.

Kirms sent me a very welcome today, for which I send you my best

thanks.

My wife sends kindest greetings. May you farewell and enjoy the gay

variety of entertainments by which you are surrounded in Jena. Mellish

passed through here yesterday, and has again taken up his abode in

Doernburg. I hear a great deal about the merry life they are leading

in Wilhelmsthal, where the proceedings are evidently very Utopian. My

sister-in-law met with a serious accident in the carriage, which broke

in two; however, she herself was not hurt. Farewell.

* * * * *

GOETHE _to_ SCHILLER

Jena, August I, 1800.

_Tancred_ I laid aside yesterday morning. I have translated--and here

and there a little more than this--the close of the second act and the

third and fourth acts, with the exception of the close of the two

latter. By this means, as I think, I have secured the worthier parts

of the piece, to which I shall now have to add something of my own

that is life-giving, so that the beginning and the end may become

somewhat fuller than the original. The choruses will be very

appropriate; however, I shall nevertheless have to act very cautiously

so as not to injure the whole. Still, once being upon the path we have

entered, I shall never regret working out and accomplishing this task.

Yesterday I attended to some business matters, and today solved a

small difficulty in _Faust_; if I could remain here another fortnight

it should assume quite a different appearance. However, I have

unfortunately taken it into my head that my presence is required in

Weimar, and I am going to sacrifice my dearest wish to this fancy.

In other ways, also, these last few days have not been unfruitful in

many good things. We have long pondered over a _Bride in Sorrow_.

Tieck, in his poetic journal, reminds me of an old marionette play

called the _Hoellenbraul_, which I too remember to have seen in my

young days. It is a pendent to _Faust_, or, rather, to _Don Juan_. An

extremely vain and heartless girl, who has ruined her faithful lover,

consents to accept an unknown stranger as her betrothed, and he, in

the end, as a devil, carries her off with him--as she deserves. Ought

we not to be able to find the idea for a bride in sorrow here--at

least in this direction?

I have been reading a treatise of Baader's on the Pythagorean square

in nature, or the four quarters of the globe. Whether it be that I

have for some years past interested myself more in this species of

writing, or that he has contrived to make his intentions clearer, the

little work has pleased me and has served me as an introduction to his

earlier writings; however, my faculties are still unable to comprehend

all of the latter.

A student here, who is engaged with the anatomy of insects, dissected

some very neatly and explained them to me, and I have thus made

progress in this branch also, partly in knowledge of the subject

itself, partly also in the treatment of it.

If a young man like this could have some definite object given him to

work at, if only for four months, many very pleasant things might be

the result. However, if I can come over here again before the time

when certain cater-pillars change into chrysalies, I shall assuredly

try to make use of his ability and dexterity. One might, indeed,

easily do such things oneself, were it not that they would at once

lead one over into an entirely different sphere. On Monday I shall

be with you again, and shall have a number of things to bring with me

and to relate.

Farewell meanwhile, and hold me in remembrance.

* * * * *

GOETHE _to_ SCHILLER

Ober-Rossla, April 6, 1801.

I wish you all happiness upon your return to Weimar, and hope soon to

see you again, either by your coming to pay me a visit or by my again

repairing to town.

My stay here suits me very well, partly because I move about in the

open air all day, partly because I am drawn down to the common objects

of life, and thus there comes over me a certain feeling of nonchalance

and indifference such as I have not known for a long time.

With regard to the questions contained in your last letter, I not only

agree with your opinion, but go even further. I think that everything

that is done by genius as genius, is done unconsciously. A person of

genius can also act rationally, with reflection, from conviction, but

this is all done, as it were, indirectly. No work of genius can be

improved or be freed from its faults by reflection and its immediate

results, but genius can, by means of reflection and action, be

gradually raised to a degree that in the end shall produce exemplary

works. The more genius a century possesses, the more are individual

things advanced.

With regard to the great demands now made of the poet, I too am of

the opinion that these will not readily call forth a poet. The art of

poetry requires of the person who is to exercise it a certain

good-natured kind of narrowness enamored of what is Real, behind which

lies concealed what is Absolute. Demands made by criticism destroy the

innocent, productive state, and give us as genuine poetry--in place of

poetry--something that is in fact no poetry at all, as unfortunately

we have seen in our own day; and the same is the case with the kindred

arts--nay, with Art in its widest sense.

This is my confession of faith, which otherwise does not make any

further claims.

[Illustration: THE GOETHE AND SCHILLER ARCHIVES IN WEIMAR]

I expect much good from your latest work. It is well conceived, and,

if you devote sufficient time to it, will round itself off of its own

accord. _Faust_ also has meanwhile had something done to it. I hope

that soon the only thing wanting in the great gap will be the

disputation; this, it is true, will have to be looked upon as a

distinct piece of work, and one which will not be accomplished at a

moment's notice.

The famous prize-question also has not been lost sight of during these

days. In order to obtain an empiric foundation for my observations, I

have commenced examining the character of the different European

nations. In Link's _Travels_ I have read a good deal more about

Portugal, and shall now pass on to Spain. I am daily becoming more

convinced how much more limited everything appears when such

observations are made from within.

Ritter came to see me for a minute, and has, among other things,

directed my attention again to the theory of colors. Herschel's new

discoveries, which have been carried further and extended by our young

naturalist, are very beautifully connected with that observation which

I have frequently told you of--that Bolognian phosphorus does not

receive any light on the yellow-red side of the spectrum, but

certainly does so on the blue-red side. The physical colors are

thereby identified with the chemical colors. The time and care which

I have devoted to this subject give me the greatest advantage in

judging of new observations, inasmuch as, in fact, I have thought out

some new experiments which will carry the matter further still. I

foresee that I shall this year write at least two or three chapters

more in my theory of colors. I am anxious, some day soon, to show you

the latest.

Would you care to come to me on Thursday with Professor Meyer? Please

talk this over with him, and I will then write to him more fully on

the subject. Meanwhile, farewell.

* * * * *

SCHILLER _to_ GOETHE

Weimar, August 18, 1802.

You can never be inactive, and what you call an unproductive mood most

other people would consider time fully occupied. If only some

subordinate genius--one of those very persons residing and presiding

at the universities--would give the finishing touch to your scientific

ideas, collect and edit them fairly, and, in this way, preserve them

for the world! For, unfortunately, you yourself will always be putting

off this business, because, as I think, what is actually didactic is

not a part of your nature. You are, in reality, very well qualified

for being appropriated and plundered by others during your own

lifetime, as has already happened to you several times and would

happen more frequently still if people understood their own advantage

better.

If we had become acquainted with each other half a dozen years earlier

than we did, I should have had time to master your scientific

investigations; I should perhaps have sustained your inclination to

give these important subjects their ultimate shape, and, in any case,

should have honestly looked after what belonged to you.

I have lately been reading some notices on the elder Pliny, which have

astonished me in regard to what a man can accomplish by putting time

to good use. Compared with him, even Haller was a time-squanderer. But

I am afraid that the immense amount of time he devoted to reading,

making quotations and dictating, left him no proper time for

independent reflection, and he seems to have applied all the activity

of his mind to acquiring knowledge; for on one occasion he called his

nephew severely to task for walking up and down the garden without

having a book in his hand.

During these last days I have been hard at work with my play, and,

moreover, not unsuccessfully; and I have never yet learned so much

from any work of my own as from this. It is one I can more readily

survey and also more readily manage; besides, it is a more grateful

and enjoyable task to make a simple subject rich and full of substance

than to limit one that is too rich and broad.

Otherwise, however, a variety of things are at present engaging my

thoughts; and, as political affairs may also affect my circumstances,

I am awaiting my fate not without anxiety. There are also other things

which threaten to drag me out of my old position, and which,

therefore, are not agreeable to me.

The repairs I am having made and other arrangements will, I hope, be

finished this week; and when you return I shall be able to bid you

welcome in a clean and pretty house. Farewell, and let me soon hear

that you are coming back to us with a rich gift.

* * * * *

GOETHE _to_ SCHILLER

Jena, December 13, 1803.

It was to be expected that I should be recalled when Madame de Stael

came to Weimar. * * * If she comes to pay me a visit, she shall be

well received, and, if I know of her coming four-and-twenty hours

beforehand, a part of Loder's house shall be furnished for her use;

she would find homely fare, but we should really meet and speak to

each other, and she could remain as long as she liked. What I have to

do here can be done at odd quarters of an hour, and the rest of my

time I would place at her disposal; but to drive over in such weather

as this, to have to dress, to be at court and in society, is utterly

impossible. This I maintain as positively as was ever declared by

yourself in similar circumstances.

Take this as a friendly guidance for your actions, for I desire

nothing more than actually to see and to become acquainted with this

remarkable and highly respected woman, and I wish for nothing so much

as that she may care to take this drive of a couple of hours for my

sake. On her journey she must have become accustomed to worse fare

than she will find here. Arrange and manage these things with your

gentle, friendly hand, and send me an express messenger at once, as

soon as anything important occurs.

I wish you success in everything that your solitude produces,

according as you yourself may wish and desire! I am rowing about in a

foreign element, nay, I may say that I am merely paddling about in it,

with loss to things without, and without satisfaction from within or

toward within. But--as I am always learning more distinctly from

Polygnotus and Homer--we have in reality to conceive hell as existing

here; thus it may be considered to be also a life. A thousand

farewells in a heavenly sense!

* * * * *

SCHILLER _to_ GOETHE

January 14, 1805.

I am very sorry to hear that your having to keep at home is not

voluntary on your part. Unfortunately, we are none of us quite strong,

and he who is of necessity forced to learn to put up with being ill

has the best of it. I am very glad now that I formed a determination

and have commenced to occupy myself with a translation; thus these

days of misery have, at all events, been put to some use, and I have

lived and been active. During the next eight days I shall try to see

whether I can put myself into the proper humor for my _Demetrius_,

which, however, I fear I shall not be able to do. If it cannot be

managed, I shall have to look up some other semi-mechanical work.

[Illustration: FACSIMILIE OF A LEAF FROM THE ALBUM OF SCHILLERS

LETTERS TO CHARLOTTE VON LENGEFELD]

Herewith I send you what has been copied out. Tomorrow my Rudolph will

get the whole finished.

Would you look over the first sheets, occasionally compare them with

the original, and mark in pencil whatever you may have to suggest? I

should like to have it ready as soon as possible, and before the rôles

are copied out.

If the rôles are commenced day after tomorrow, we could have a

reading-rehearsal next Sunday, and there would still be ten days

before the thirtieth.

The Duke has given me permission to read the _Memoirs of Marmontel_,

which you now have; therefore, please let me have them when you have

finished with them.

The Grand Duchess yesterday again spoke with great interest about your

late recital. She is looking forward to seeing and hearing many other

things at your house.

Farewell; and let me, too, soon hear from you again. Should you not be

in the humor to read the sheets through, please send them back to me,

so that I can make use of the time for having them copied out.

* * * * *

SCHILLER _to_ GOETHE

February 22, 1805.

It was pleasant to me to see a few lines in your handwriting, and it

has again awakened my belief in the return of the old state of

things--which I have at times quite despaired of. The two severe

attacks which I have had within the space of seven months have shaken

my system to its very foundation, and I shall have difficulty in

recovering my strength.

It is true that my present attack seems to have been merely the

general epidemic that is going about, but the fever in my case was so

great, and it seized me when I was already in such a weak state, that

I feel as if I had arisen from a most severe illness, and find it

specially difficult to struggle against a certain listlessness which

is the worst trouble in my case.

I am anxious to hear whether you have yet sent off the manuscript of

_Rameau_. Goeschen has not written anything about it to me, and, in

fact, for the last fortnight I have not heard of anything that is

going on in the world.

I trust that things may daily and hourly improve with you and with me

too, so that we may soon see each other in gladness.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 64: Permission The Macmillan Co., New York, and G. Bell &

Sons, Ltd., London.]

[Footnote 65: Les Bijoux _Indiscrets._]

[Footnote 66: Goethe's _Wilhelm Meister._]

[Footnote 67: A publisher in Berlin]

* * * * *