ace. By
the right to use any of the Austrian provinces as a place of refuge, in
case of need, he had full power to hold the Emperor a prisoner by means
of his own forces, and within his own dominions; to exhaust the strength
and resources of these countries, and to undermine the power of Austria
in its very foundation.

Whatever might be the issue, he had equally secured his own advantage,
by the conditions he had extorted from the Emperor. If circumstances
proved favourable to his daring project, this treaty with the Emperor
facilitated its execution; if on the contrary, the course of things ran
counter to it, it would at least afford him a brilliant compensation for
the failure of his plans. But how could he consider an agreement valid,
which was extorted from his sovereign, and based upon treason? How could
he hope to bind the Emperor by a written agreement, in the face of a law
which condemned to death every one who should have the presumption to
impose conditions upon him? But this criminal was the most
indispensable man in the empire, and Ferdinand, well practised in
dissimulation, granted him for the present all he required.

At last, then, the imperial army had found a commander-in-chief worthy
of the name. Every other authority in the army, even that of the
Emperor himself, ceased from the moment Wallenstein assumed the
commander's baton, and every act was invalid which did not proceed from
him. From the banks of the Danube, to those of the Weser and the Oder,
was felt the life-giving dawning of this new star; a new spirit seemed
to inspire the troops of the emperor, a new epoch of the war began. The
Papists form fresh hopes, the Protestant beholds with anxiety the
changed course of affairs.

The greater the price at which the services of the new general had been
purchased, the greater justly were the expectations from those which the
court of the Emperor entertained. But the duke was in no hurry to
fulfil these expectations. Already in the vicinity of Bohemia, and at
the head of a formidable force, he had but to show himself there, in
order to overpower the exhausted force of the Saxons, and brilliantly to
commence his new career by the reconquest of that kingdom. But,
contented with harassing the enemy with indecisive skirmishes of his
Croats, he abandoned the best part of that kingdom to be plundered, and
moved calmly forward in pursuit of his own selfish plans. His design
was, not to conquer the Saxons,