with the weaker Protestant states.  It was these that introduced the king into the heart of Germany; these covered his rear, supplied his troops with necessaries, received them into their fortresses, while they exposed their own lives in his battles.  His prudent regard to their national pride, his popular deportment, some brilliant acts of justice, and his respect for the laws, were so many ties by which he bound the German Protestants to his cause; while the crying atrocities of the Imperialists, the Spaniards, and the troops of Lorraine, powerfully contributed to set his own conduct and that of his army in a favorable light.

If Gustavus Adolphus owed his success chiefly to his own genius, at the same time, it must be owned, he was greatly favored by fortune and by circumstances.  Two great advantages gave him a decided superiority over the enemy.  While he removed the scene of war into the lands of the League, drew their youth as recruits, enriched himself with booty, and used the revenues of their fugitive princes as his own, he at once took from the enemy the means of effectual resistance and maintained an expensive war with little cost to himself.  And, moreover, while his opponents, the princes of the League, divided among themselves, and governed by different and often conflicting interests, acted without unanimity, and therefore without energy; while their generals were deficient in authority, their troops in obedience, the operations of their scattered armies without concert; while the general was separated from the lawgiver and the statesman—­these several functions were united in Gustavus Adolphus, the only source from which authority flowed, the sole object to which the eye of the warrior turned, the soul of his party, the inventor as well as the executor of his plans.  In him, therefore, the Protestants had a centre of unity and harmony, which was altogether wanting to their opponents.  No wonder, then, if favored by such advantages, at the head of such an army, with such a genius to direct it, and guided by such political prudence, Gustavus Adolphus was irresistible.

With the sword in one hand and mercy in the other, he traversed Germany as a conqueror, a lawgiver, and a judge, in as short a time almost as the tourist of pleasure.  The keys of towns and fortresses were delivered to him, as if to the native sovereign.  No fortress was inaccessible; no river checked his victorious career.  He conquered by the very terror of his name.  The Swedish standards were planted along the whole stream of the Main:  the Lower Palatinate was free, the troops of Spain and Lorraine had fled across the Rhine and the Moselle.  The Swedes and Hessians poured like a torrent into the territories of Mentz, of Wuertzburg, and Bamberg, and three fugitive bishops, at a distance from their sees, suffered dearly for their unfortunate attachment to the Emperor.  It was now the turn for Maximilian, the leader of the League, to feel in his own dominions