It was this strong hereditary Protestantism which had led my Father to join the religious wars in Germany. He held King Gustavus Adolphus, the Swede, to be the noblest man and the greatest general of ancient or modern times. And he held that the fearful conflict by which that great king turned the tide against the Popish arms was little less than a conflict between truth and falsehood, barbarism and civilization, light and darkness. It was enough to make any one believe in the necessity of hell, he said, to have seen, as he had, the city of Magdeburg, ten days after Tilly's soldiers had sacked it, when scarce three thousand corpse-like survivors crept around the blackened ruins where lay buried the mangled remains of their fourteen thousand happier dead. To see that, said my Father, would make any one understand what is meant by the wrath of the Lamb; and that there are things which can make a gospel of vengeance as precious to just men as a gospel of mercy. And some foretaste of that merciful vengeance, he said, had been given already. For after Magdeburg it was said Tilly never won a battle. My Father fought with the Swedish army till the death of the king, on the sixth of November, 1632; and that day of his victory and death at Lützen, was always kept in our household as a day of family mourning. Had Elizabeth been on the throne, my Father used to say, and Cecil at the helm of state, it would not have been the little northern kingdom of Sweden which should have stemmed the torrent of Popish and Imperial tyranny, while England stood by wringing helpless womanish hands, beholding her brethren in the faith tortured and slaughtered, her own king's daughter exiled and dethroned, and, at the same time, her brave soldiers and sailors trifled to inglorious death by thousands at the bidding of a musked and curled court favourite at Rhé and Rochelle. It was in Germany that my Father met my mother. She was a Saxon from Luther's own town, Wittemberg. Her name was Reichenbach, and her family retained affectionate personal memories of the great Reformer, as well as an enthusiastic devotion to his doctrines. She and Aunt Gretel (Magdalene and Margarethe) were orphan daughters of an officer in the Protestant armies. And I often count it among my mercies that our family history linked us with more forms of our religion than one, and extended our horizon beyond the sects and parties of England. Our mother died two years after my father's return to England, leaving him us two children, and a memory of a love as devoted, and a piety as simple, as ever lit up a home by keeping it open to heaven. It was during these years she made the acquaintance with Lady Lucy. They had been very closely attached, although political differences, and the long absences of the Davenants at Court, had prevented much intercourse between the families since her death.