ry, to support the state a royal
leader was required to maintain, and which the prejudices of the age
considered as inseparable from his presence with the army! How serious a
consideration for the prince himself, to commence his political career,
with an office which must make him the scourge of his people, and the
oppressor of the territories which he was hereafter to rule.

But not only was a general to be found for the army; an army must also
be found for the general. Since the compulsory resignation of
Wallenstein, the Emperor had defended himself more by the assistance of
Bavaria and the League, than by his own armies; and it was this
dependence on equivocal allies, which he was endeavouring to escape, by
the appointment of a general of his own. But what possibility was there
of raising an army out of nothing, without the all-powerful aid of gold,
and the inspiriting name of a victorious commander; above all, an army
which, by its discipline, warlike spirit, and activity, should be fit to
cope with the experienced troops of the northern conqueror? In all
Europe, there was but one man equal to this, and that one had been
mortally affronted.

The moment had at last arrived, when more than ordinary satisfaction was
to be done to the wounded pride of the Duke of Friedland. Fate itself
had been his avenger, and an unbroken chain of disasters, which had
assailed Austria from the day of his dismissal, had wrung from the
Emperor the humiliating confession, that with this general he had lost
his right arm. Every defeat of his troops opened afresh this wound;
every town which he lost, revived in the mind of the deceived monarch
the memory of his own weakness and ingratitude. It would have been well
for him, if, in the offended general, he had only lost a leader of his
troops, and a defender of his dominions; but he was destined to find in
him an enemy, and the most dangerous of all, since he was least armed
against the stroke of treason.

Removed from the theatre of war, and condemned to irksome inaction,
while his rivals gathered laurels on the field of glory, the haughty
duke had beheld these changes of fortune with affected composure, and
concealed, under a glittering and theatrical pomp, the dark designs of
his restless genius. Torn by burning passions within, while all without
bespoke calmness and indifference, he brooded over projects of ambition
and revenge, and slowly, but surely, advanced towards his end. All that