His attention was not now called for the first time to the progress of the war. Like all the Lutheran princes, he had thoroughly disapproved of Frederick's Bohemian enterprise. But when Frederick was a fugitive he had seen that a strong force was needed to stop the Emperor from a retaliation which would be ruinous to the Protestants, and he had in the beginning of 1621 given a willing ear to James's proposal for a joint armament in defence of the Palatinate. Had the war been undertaken then, with the character of moderation which James and Christian would have been certain to impress upon it, the world might perhaps have been spared the spectacle of Mansfeld's plunderings, with their unhappy results. But James came too soon to the conclusion that it was unnecessary to arm till mediation had failed; and Christian, auguring no good from such a course, drew back and left the Palatinate to its fate. But the events which followed had increased his anxiety, and in 1624 his mind was distracted between his desire to check the growth of the imperial power and his hesitation to act with allies so vacillating and helpless as the Lower Saxon princes were proving themselves to be. In his own lands he had shown himself a good administrator and able ruler. Whether he was possessed of sufficient military capacity to cope with Tilly remained to be seen. [Sidenote: § 4. Gustavus Adolphus.] Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, was a man of a higher stamp. His is the one of the few names which relieve the continental Protestantism of the seventeenth century from the charge of barrenness. Possessed of a high and brilliant imagination, and of a temperament restless and indefatigable, to which inaction was the sorest of trials, he was never happier than when he was infusing his own glowing spirit into the comrades of some perilous enterprise. Christian of Brunswick was not more ready than he to lead a charge or to conduct a storm. But he had, too, that of which no thought ever entered the mind of Christian for an instant--the power of seeing facts in their infinite variety as they really were, and the self-restraint with which he curbed in his struggling spirit and his passionate longing for action whenever a calm survey of the conditions around showed him that action was inexpedient. In all the pages of history there is probably no man who leaves such an impression of that energy under restraint, which is the truest mark of greatness in human character as it is the source of all that is sublime or lovely in nature or in art. [Sidenote: § 5. His conflict with Poland and Russia.]