. The universal sorrow
absorbs all individual woes. The generals, still stupefied by the
unexpected blow, stood speechless and motionless around his bier, and no
one trusted himself enough to contemplate the full extent of their loss.

The Emperor, we are told by Khevenhuller, showed symptoms of deep, and
apparently sincere feeling, at the sight of the king's doublet stained
with blood, which had been stripped from him during the battle, and
carried to Vienna. "Willingly," said he, "would I have granted to the
unfortunate prince a longer life, and a safe return to his kingdom, had
Germany been at peace." But when a trait, which is nothing more than a
proof of a yet lingering humanity, and which a mere regard to
appearances and even self-love, would have extorted from the most
insensible, and the absence of which could exist only in the most
inhuman heart, has, by a Roman Catholic writer of modern times and
acknowledged merit, been made the subject of the highest eulogium, and
compared with the magnanimous tears of Alexander, for the fall of
Darius, our distrust is excited of the other virtues of the writer's
hero, and what is still worse, of his own ideas of moral dignity. But
even such praise, whatever its amount, is much for one, whose memory his
biographer has to clear from the suspicion of being privy to the
assassination of a king.

It was scarcely to be expected, that the strong leaning of mankind to
the marvellous, would leave to the common course of nature the glory of
ending the career of Gustavus Adolphus. The death of so formidable a
rival was too important an event for the Emperor, not to excite in his
bitter opponent a ready suspicion, that what was so much to his
interests, was also the result of his instigation. For the execution,
however, of this dark deed, the Emperor would require the aid of a
foreign arm, and this it was generally believed he had found in Francis
Albert, Duke of Saxe Lauenburg. The rank of the latter permitted him a
free access to the king's person, while it at the same time seemed to
place him above the suspicion of so foul a deed. This prince, however,
was in fact not incapable of this atrocity, and he had moreover
sufficient motives for its commission.

Francis Albert, the youngest of four sons of Francis II, Duke of
Lauenburg, and related by the mother's side to the race of Vasa, had, in
his early years, found a most friendly reception at the Swedish court.
Some offence which h