[_After a pause_.] What may have impell'd Your princely Highness in this wise to act Toward your Sovereign Lord and Emperor, Beseems not us to expound or criticise. The Swede is fighting for his good old cause, With his good sword and conscience. This concurrence, This opportunity, is in our favor, And all advantages in war are lawful. We take what offers without questioning; And if all have its due and just proportions-- WALLENST. Of what then are ye doubting? Of my will? Or of my power? I pledged me to the Chancellor, Would he trust _me_ with sixteen thousand men, That I would instantly go over to them With eighteen thousand of the Emperor's troops. WRANGEL. Your Grace is known to be a mighty war-chief, To be a second Attila and Pyrrhus. 'Tis talked of still with fresh astonishment, How some years past, beyond all human faith, You call'd an army forth, like a creation: But yet-- WALLENSTEIN. But yet? WRANGEL. But still the Chancellor thinks It might yet be an easier thing from nothing To call forth sixty thousand men of battle, Than to persuade one sixtieth part of them-- WALLENST. What now? Out with it, friend! WRANGEL. To break their oaths. WALLENST. And he thinks _so_? He judges like a Swede, And like a Protestant. You Lutherans Fight for your Bible. You are interested About the cause; and with your _hearts_ you follow Your banners. Among _you_, whoe'er deserts To the enemy hath broken covenant With two Lords at one time. We've no such fancies. WRANGEL. Great God in Heaven! Have then the people here No house and home, no fireside, no altar? WALLENST. I will explain that to you, how it stands:-- The Austrian _has_ a country, ay, and loves it, And has good cause to love it--but this army, That calls itself the Imperial, this that houses Here in Bohemia, this has none--no country; This is an outcast of all foreign lands, Unclaim'd by town or tribe, to whom belongs Nothing except the universal sun. And this Bohemian land for which we fight-- [Loves not the master whom the chance of war, Not its own choice or will, hath given to it. Men murmur at the oppression of their conscience, And power hath only awed but not appeased them; A glowing and avenging mem'ry lives Of cruel deeds committed on these plains; How can the son forget that here his father Was hunted by the blood-hound to the mass? A people thus oppress'd must still be feared, Whether they suffer or avenge their wrongs.] WRANGEL. But then the Nobles and the Officers? Such a desertion, such a felony, It is without example, my Lord Duke, In the world's history. WALLENSTEIN. They are all mine-- Mine unconditionally--mine on all terms. Not me, your own eyes you must trust. [_He gives him the paper containing the written oath._ WRANGEL _reads it through, and, having read it, lays it on the table, remaining silent_.]