s misconduct, was tried before
the council of war, at Heidelberg, and beheaded.

The king had protracted the campaign into the depth of winter, and the
severity of the season was perhaps one cause of the advantage his
soldiers gained over those of the enemy. But the exhausted troops now
stood in need of the repose of winter quarters, which, after the
surrender of Mentz, Gustavus assigned to them, in its neighbourhood. He
himself employed the interval of inactivity in the field, which the
season of the year enjoined, in arranging, with his chancellor, the
affairs of his cabinet, in treating for a neutrality with some of his
enemies, and adjusting some political disputes which had sprung up with
a neighbouring ally. He chose the city of Mentz for his winter
quarters, and the settlement of these state affairs, and showed a
greater partiality for this town, than seemed consistent with the
interests of the German princes, or the shortness of his visit to the
Empire. Not content with strongly fortifying it, he erected at the
opposite angle which the Maine forms with the Rhine, a new citadel,
which was named Gustavusburg from its founder, but which is better known
under the title of Pfaffenraub or Pfaffenzwang.--[Priests' plunder;
alluding to the means by which the expense of its erection had been
defrayed.]

While Gustavus Adolphus made himself master of the Rhine, and threatened
the three neighbouring electorates with his victorious arms, his
vigilant enemies in Paris and St. Germain's made use of every artifice
to deprive him of the support of France, and, if possible, to involve
him in a war with that power. By his sudden and equivocal march to the
Rhine, he had surprised his friends, and furnished his enemies with the
means of exciting a distrust of his intentions. After the conquest of
Wurtzburg, and of the greater part of Franconia, the road into Bavaria
and Austria lay open to him through Bamberg and the Upper Palatinate;
and the expectation was as general, as it was natural, that he would not
delay to attack the Emperor and the Duke of Bavaria in the very centre
of their power, and, by the reduction of his two principal enemies,
bring the war immediately to an end. But to the surprise of both
parties, Gustavus left the path which general expectation had thus
marked out for him; and instead of advancing to the right, turned to the
left, to make the less important and more innocent princes of the Rhine
feel his power,