think you we would fare," asked the King once, when the
chancellor saw obstacles in their way which he would brush aside,
"if my fire did not thaw the chill in you?"

"But for my chill cooling your Majesty's fire," was his friend's
retort, "you would have long since been burned up." The King laughed
and owned that he was right.

Instead of bearding the Emperor in his capital he turned toward the
Rhine where millions of Protestants were praying for his coming and
where his army might find rest and abundance. The cathedral city of
Wuerzburg he took by storm. The bishop who ruled it fled at his
approach, but the full treasury of the Jesuits fell into his hands.
The Madonna of beaten gold and the twelve solid silver apostles,
famous throughout Europe, were sent to the mint and coined into
money to pay his army. In the cellar they found chests filled with
ducats. The bottom fell out of one as they carried it up and the
gold rolled out on the pavement. The soldiers swarmed to pick it up,
but a good many coins stuck to their pockets. The King saw it and
laughed: "Since you have them, boys, keep them." The dead were still
lying in the castle yard after the siege, a number of monks among
them. The color of some of them seemed high for corpses. "Arise from
the dead," he said waggishly, "no one will hurt you," and the
frightened monks got upon their feet and scampered away.

Frankfort opened its gates to his victorious host and Nuernberg
received him as a heaven-sent liberator. But Tilly was in the field
with a fresh army, burning to avenge Breitenfeld. He had surprised
General Horn at Bamberg and beaten him. At the approach of the King
he camped where the river Lech joins the Danube, awaiting attack.
There was but one place to cross to get at him, and right there he
stood. The king seized Donauworth and Ulm, and under cover of the
fire of seventy guns threw a bridge across the Lech. Three hundred
Finns carrying picks and spades ran across the shaky planks upon
which the fire of Tilly's whole artillery park was concentrated.
Once across, they burrowed in the ground like moles and, with
bullets raining upon them, threw up earthworks for shelter. Squad
after squad of volunteers followed. Duke Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar
swam his horsemen across the river farther up-stream and took the
Bavarian troops in the flank, beating them back far enough to let
him join the Finns at the landing. The King himself was directing
the artillery on