his province; they appealed to their privileges, and refused to
serve beyond the limits of their own country. Thus, the time that
should have been spent in active resistance, was lost in fruitless
negociation, and the entire province was abandoned to the ravages of the
Swedes.

While Torstensohn, by his marches and his victories, astonished friend
and foe, the armies of the allies had not been inactive in other parts
of the empire. The troops of Hesse, under Count Eberstein, and those of
Weimar, under Mareschal de Guebriant, had fallen into the Electorate of
Cologne, in order to take up their winter quarters there. To get rid of
these troublesome guests, the Elector called to his assistance the
imperial general Hatzfeldt, and assembled his own troops under General
Lamboy. The latter was attacked by the allies in January, 1642, and in
a decisive action near Kempen, defeated, with the loss of about 2000 men
killed, and about twice as many prisoners. This important victory
opened to them the whole Electorate and neighbouring territories, so
that the allies were not only enabled to maintain their winter quarters
there, but drew from the country large supplies of men and horses.

Guebriant left the Hessians to defend their conquests on the Lower Rhine
against Hatzfeldt, and advanced towards Thuringia, as if to second the
operations of Torstensohn in Saxony. But instead of joining the Swedes,
he soon hurried back to the Rhine and the Maine, from which he seemed to
think he had removed farther than was expedient. But being anticipated
in the Margraviate of Baden, by the Bavarians under Mercy and John de
Werth, he was obliged to wander about for several weeks, exposed,
without shelter, to the inclemency of the winter, and generally
encamping upon the snow, till he found a miserable refuge in Breisgau.
He at last took the field; and, in the next summer, by keeping the
Bavarian army employed in Suabia, prevented it from relieving
Thionville, which was besieged by Conde. But the superiority of the
enemy soon drove him back to Alsace, where he awaited a reinforcement.

The death of Cardinal Richelieu took place in November, 1642, and the
subsequent change in the throne and in the ministry, occasioned by the
death of Louis XIII., had for some time withdrawn the attention of
France from the German war, and was the cause of the inaction of its
troops in the field. But Mazarin, the inheritor, not only of
Richelieu's power, but also o