The Lion of the North: A Tale of the Times of Gustavus AdolphusHenty, G. A. (George Alfred)
History
The Lion of the North: A Tale of the Times of Gustavus Adolphus
Henty, G. A. (George Alfred)
Gustav II Adolf, King of Sweden, 1594-1632 -- Fiction; Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648 -- Fiction
“Wallenstein, knowing that the game was in his hands, and that the
emperor must finally agree to any terms which he chose to dictate, has,
while he has been negotiating, been collecting an army; and when the
emperor finally agreed to his conditions, that he was at the conclusion
of the peace to be assured a royal title and the fief of a sovereign
state, he had an army ready to his hand, and is now on the point of
entering Bohemia with 40,000 men.”
“What his plans may be we cannot yet say, but at any rate it would
not do to be delaying here and leaving Germany open to Wallenstein to
operate as he will. It was a stern day at Leipzig, but, mark my words,
it will be sterner still when we meet Wallenstein; for, great captain as
Tilly undoubtedly was, Wallenstein is far greater, and Europe will hold
its breath when Gustavus and he, the two greatest captains of the age,
meet in a pitched battle.”
At Munich the regiments of Munro and Spynie were quartered in the
magnificent Electoral Palace, where they fared sumptuously and enjoyed
not a little their comfortable quarters and the stores of old wines in
the cellar. Sir John Hepburn was appointed military governor of Munich.
In the arsenal armour, arms, and clothing sufficient for 10,000 infantry
were found, and a hundred and forty pieces of cannon were discovered
buried beneath the floors of the palace. Their carriages were ready in
the arsenal, and they were soon put in order for battle. For three
weeks the army remained at Munich, Gustavus waiting to see what course
Wallenstein was taking. The Imperialist general had entered Bohemia,
had driven thence, with scarcely an effort, Arnheim and the Saxons, and
formed a junction near Eger with the remnants of the army which had been
beaten on the Lech; then, leaving a strong garrison in Ratisbon, he had
marched on with an army of sixty thousand men.
He saw that his best plan to force Gustavus to loose his hold of
Bavaria was to march on some important point lying between him and North
Germany. He therefore selected a place which Gustavus could not abandon,
and so would be obliged to leave Bavaria garrisoned only by a force
insufficient to withstand the attacks of Pappenheim, who had collected
a considerable army for the recovery of the territories of Maximilian.
Such a point was Nuremberg, the greatest and strongest of the free
cities, and which had been the first to open its gates to Gustavus. The
Swedish king could hardly abandon this friendly city to the assaults of
the Imperialists, and indeed its fall would have been followed by the
general defection from his cause of all that part of Germany, and he
would have found himself isolated and cut off from the North.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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