lenstein's army, and the danger of Saxony. Duke
Bernard moving in his footsteps, and more fortunate than Gustavus, had
spread his victorious banners between the Iser and the Inn; but the near
approach of the enemy, vastly superior in force, obliged him to halt in
his victorious career, and lead back his troops. Wrangel now hoped to
accomplish the object in which his predecessors had failed, the more so,
as the Imperial and Bavarian army was far in his rear upon the Lahn, and
could only reach Bavaria by a long march through Franconia and the Upper
Palatinate. He moved hastily upon the Danube, defeated a Bavarian corps
near Donauwerth, and passed that river, as well as the Lech, unopposed.
But by wasting his time in the unsuccessful siege of Augsburg, he gave
opportunity to the Imperialists, not only to relieve that city, but also
to repulse him as far as Lauingen. No sooner, however, had they turned
towards Suabia, with a view to remove the war from Bavaria, than,
seizing the opportunity, he repassed the Lech, and guarded the passage
of it against the Imperialists themselves. Bavaria now lay open and
defenceless before him; the French and Swedes quickly overran it; and
the soldiery indemnified themselves for all dangers by frightful
outrages, robberies, and extortions. The arrival of the Imperial
troops, who at last succeeded in passing the Lech at Thierhaupten, only
increased the misery of this country, which friend and foe
indiscriminately plundered.

And now, for the first time during the whole course of this war, the
courage of Maximilian, which for eight-and-twenty years had stood
unshaken amidst fearful dangers, began to waver. Ferdinand II., his
school-companion at Ingoldstadt, and the friend of his youth, was no
more; and with the death of his friend and benefactor, the strong tie
was dissolved which had linked the Elector to the House of Austria. To
the father, habit, inclination, and gratitude had attached him; the son
was a stranger to his heart, and political interests alone could
preserve his fidelity to the latter prince.

Accordingly, the motives which the artifices of France now put in
operation, in order to detach him from the Austrian alliance, and to
induce him to lay down his arms, were drawn entirely from political
considerations. It was not without a selfish object that Mazarin had so
far overcome his jealousy of the growing power of the Swedes, as to
allow the French to accompany them into Bavaria