WRANGEL.

I have here a duty merely, no opinion.

WALLENST.

The Emperor hath urged me to the uttermost: 
I can no longer honorably serve him;
For my security, in self-defence,
I take this hard step, which my conscience blames.

WRANGEL.

That I believe.  So far would no one go
Who was not forced to it.

[After a pause.]

What may have impell’d
Your princely Highness in this wise to act
Toward your Sovereign Lord and Emperor,
Beseems not us to expound or criticise. 
The Swede is fighting for his good old cause,
With his good sword and conscience.  This concurrence,
This opportunity, is in our favor,
And all advantages in war are lawful. 
We take what offers without questioning;
And if all have its due and just proportions—­

WALLENST.

Of what then are ye doubting?  Of my will? 
Or of my power?  I pledged me to the Chancellor,
Would he trust me with sixteen thousand men,
That I would instantly go over to them
With eighteen thousand of the Emperor’s troops.

WRANGEL.

Your Grace is known to be a mighty war-chief,
To be a second Attila and Pyrrhus. 
’Tis talked of still with fresh astonishment,
How some years past, beyond all human faith,
You call’d an army forth, like a creation: 
But yet—­

WALLENSTEIN.

But yet?

WRANGEL.

But still the Chancellor thinks
It might yet be an easier thing from nothing
To call forth sixty thousand men of battle,
Than to persuade one sixtieth part of them—­

WALLENST.

What now?  Out with it, friend!

WRANGEL.

To break their oaths.

WALLENST.

And he thinks so?  He judges like a Swede,
And like a Protestant.  You Lutherans
Fight for your Bible.  You are interested
About the cause; and with your hearts you follow
Your banners.  Among you, whoe’er deserts
To the enemy hath broken covenant
With two Lords at one time.  We’ve no such fancies.

WRANGEL.

Great God in Heaven!  Have then the people here
No house and home, no fireside, no altar?

WALLENST.

I will explain that to you, how it stands:—­
The Austrian has a country, ay, and loves it,
And has good cause to love it—­but this army,
That calls itself the Imperial, this that houses
Here in Bohemia, this has none—­no country;
This is an outcast of all foreign lands,
Unclaim’d by town or tribe, to whom belongs
Nothing except the universal sun. 
And this Bohemian land for which we fight—­
[Loves not the master whom the chance of war,
Not its own choice or will, hath given to it. 
Men murmur at the oppression of their conscience,
And power hath only awed but not appeased them;
A glowing and avenging mem’ry lives
Of cruel deeds committed on these plains;
How can the son forget that here his father
Was hunted by the blood-hound to the mass? 
A people thus oppress’d must still be feared,
Whether they suffer or avenge their wrongs.]