The attempt to snatch at a wise and beneficent peace by mingled force and intrigue had failed. Other generals--Cæsar, Cromwell, Napoleon--have succeeded to supreme power with the support of an armed force. But they did so by placing themselves at the head of the civil institutions of their respective countries, and by making themselves the organs of a strong national policy. Wallenstein stood alone in attempting to guide the political destinies of a people, while remaining a soldier and nothing more. The plan was doomed to failure, and is only excusable on the ground that there were no national institutions at the head of which Wallenstein could place himself; not even a chance of creating such institutions afresh. [Sidenote: § 6. Comparison between Gustavus and Wallenstein.] In spite of all his faults, Germany turns ever to Wallenstein as she turns to no other amongst the leaders of the Thirty Years' War. From amidst the divisions and weaknesses of his native country, a great poet enshrined his memory in a succession of noble dramas. Such faithfulness is not without a reason. Gustavus's was a higher nature than Wallenstein's. Some of his work, at least the rescue of German Protestantism from oppression, remained imperishable, whilst Wallenstein's military and political success vanished into nothingness. But Gustavus was a hero not of Germany as a nation, but of European Protestantism. His _Corpus Evangelicorum_ was at the best a choice of evils to a German. Wallenstein's wildest schemes, impossible of execution as they were by military violence, were always built upon the foundation of German unity. In the way in which he walked that unity was doubtless unattainable. To combine devotion to Ferdinand with religious liberty was as hopeless a conception as it was to burst all bonds of political authority on the chance that a new and better world would spring into being out of the discipline of the camp. But during the long dreary years of confusion which were to follow, it was something to think of the last supremely able man whose life had been spent in battling against the great evils of the land, against the spirit of religious intolerance, and the spirit of division. SECTION V.--_Imperialist Victories and the Treaty of Prague._ [Sidenote: § 1. Campaign of 1634.]