the deepest interest, besought the king to permit them to aid the retreating column.  But Rodolph firmly refused.  He watched the combatants sternly, but without moving a muscle, until the main body of Henry’s army was in motion, and then Gilbert could see the smile he had marked at Fladenheim, curling the hero’s lip and lighting up his eye.  Yet it was not the same smile:  there was something sadder, yet fiercer in it.  Never had his eye flashed forth such wild lustre, or his bosom heaved with such pent-up emotion.

Then, as the main body of the Saxons pressed rapidly forward under Otto of Nordheim, against the foe disordered by pursuit, and Rodolph saw his plans accomplished, he turned to the Archbishop of Mayence, and exclaimed, in a voice broken by deep feeling: 

“The day is ours!”

The prelate uttered a prayer of thanksgiving, and, turning to the king, said: 

“I give your highness joy!”

“I may need your prayers rather than your congratulations,” replied Rodolph, in a whisper, and he closed his visor.

The king still occupied the height from which he had directed the battle, that had now become general.  Around him were the chivalry of Suabia and his former faithful subjects, acting in concert with a large body of Saxons.  Henry’s army was divided into two bodies, one of which, commanded by the monarch in person, was engaged with Otto, while the other, led by Godfrey de Bouillon and Frederick of Hohenstaufen, assailed the Bavarians.  Welf, borne down by numbers, still retreated in obedience to his instructions.

“Our turn has come at last, gentlemen,” cried the king.  “Forward!”

The barons, who had waited as impatiently as hounds in the leash, required no second bidding, but dashed after their chivalrous monarch, who was in full course with his lance in rest.  Already, in Henry’s camp, the Te Deum was sounding in anticipation of the victory promised by the supposed rout of the Bavarians.  But the arrival of Rodolph changed the face of affairs.  The strife then began in earnest.  The enemy recoiled at first before the king’s impetuous charge, but they were commanded by the ablest knights in the empire, and soon recovered from their momentary panic.  Foremost of all his gallant chiefs, Rodolph carried death and terror into the Bohemian ranks.  He seemed endowed with supernatural strength, and neither lance nor mace could arrest his brilliant career.  Wherever the foe was thickest, or the fight most dubious, his white crest gleamed like some fearful meteor.  It was difficult for the Suabian nobles to keep up with their invincible monarch, and only by dint of the most extraordinary efforts about twenty of the best lances of his army could prevent his falling alone upon the hostile masses.  Among those who fought at his side were the lords of Stramen and Hers, Gilbert and Henry.  At this moment a band of perhaps thirty horsemen, with their spears in rest, headed by a knight of gigantic size and another whose deeds had proclaimed him equally formidable, came like a thunderbolt through the opening files of the Bohemians, and fell upon the Suabian group.