he met the former in a decisive battle at Lutter-am-Baremberg.  King Christian’s army was beaten and put to rout.  He himself fled bareheaded through the forests of the Hartz Mountains, pursued by the enemy’s horsemen.  It was hardly necessary for the Emperor to make him promise as the price of peace to keep out of German affairs thenceforth.  His allies had left him to fight it out alone.  All their fine speeches went for nothing when it came to the test, and King Christian rode back to Denmark, a sadder and wiser man.  It was left to Gustav Adolf, after all, to teach the German generals the lesson they needed.

In the years of peace before that unhappy war, Danish trade and Danish culture had blossomed exceedingly, thanks to the wisdom, the clever management, and untiring industry of the King.  He built factories, cloth-mills, silk-mills, paper-mills, dammed the North Sea out from the rich marshlands with great dikes, taught the farmers profitable ways of tilling their fields; for he was a wondrous manager for whom nothing was too little and nothing too big.  He kept minute account of his children’s socks and little shirts, and found ways of providing money for his war-ships and for countless building schemes he had in hand both in Denmark and Norway.  For many of them he himself drew the plans.  Wherever one goes to this day, his monogram, which heads this story, stares at him from the splendid buildings he erected.  The Bourse in Copenhagen and the Round Tower, the beautiful palace of Rosenborg, a sort of miniature of his beloved Frederiksborg which also he rebuilt on a more magnificent scale—­these are among his works which every traveller in the North knows.  He built more cities and strongholds than those who went before or came after him for centuries.  Christiania and Christiansand in Norway bear his name.  He laid out a whole quarter of Copenhagen for his sailors, and the quaint little houses still serve that purpose.  Regentsen, a dormitory for poor students at the university, was built by him.  He created seven new chairs of learning and saw to it that all the professors got better pay.  He ferreted out and dismissed in disgrace all the grafting officials in Norway, and administered justice with an even hand.  At the same time he burned witches without end, or let it be done for their souls’ sake.  That was the way of his time; and when he needed fireworks for his son’s wedding (he made them himself, too), he sent around to all the old cloisters and cathedral churches for the old parchments they had.  Heaven only knows what treasures that can never be replaced went up in fire and smoke for that one night’s fun.