He had fixed upon Passau as the point beyond which Duke Bernhard should not be allowed to advance, and felt that should he attack that city he and his army were lost.  In front of him was the Inn, a broad and deep river protected by strongly fortified places; behind him John of Werth, a bitterly hostile country, and the river Isar.  On his left would be Wallenstein himself marching across the Bohemian forest.  When, therefore, he learned that Duke Bernhard was hastening on from the Isar towards Passau he put his army in motion and marched southward, so as to place himself in the left rear of the duke.  This movement Duke Bernhard heard of just when he arrived in sight of Passau, and he instantly recognized the extreme danger of his position, and perceived with his usual quickness of glance that to be caught before Passau by Wallenstein and John of Werth would be absolute destruction.  A moment’s hesitation and the Swedish army would have been lost.  Without an hour’s delay he issued the necessary orders, and the army retraced its steps with all speed to Ratisbon, and not stopping even there marched northward into the Upper Palatinate, to defend that conquered country against Wallenstein even at the cost of a battle.

But Wallenstein declined to fight a battle there.  He had but one army, and were that army destroyed, Duke Bernhard, with the prestige of victory upon him, could resume his march upon Vienna, which would then be open to him.  Therefore, having secured the safety of the capital, he fell back again into winter quarters in Bohemia.  Thus Ferdinand again owed his safety to Wallenstein, and should have been the more grateful since Wallenstein had saved him in defiance of his own orders.

At the time he fully admitted in his letters to Wallenstein that the general had acted wisely and prudently, nevertheless he was continually listening to the Spaniards, the Jesuits, and the many envious of Wallenstein’s great position, and hoping to benefit by his disgrace, and, in spite of all the services his great general had rendered him, was preparing to repeat the humiliation which he had formerly laid upon him and again to deprive him of his command.

Wallenstein was not ignorant of the intrigue against him.  Vast as were his possessions, his pride and ambition were even greater.  A consciousness of splendid services rendered and of great intellectual power, a belief that the army which had been raised by him and was to a great extent paid out of his private funds, and which he had so often led to victory, was devoted to him, and to him alone, excited in his mind the determination to resist by force the intriguers who dominated the bigoted and narrow minded emperor, and, if necessary, to hurl the latter from his throne.

CHAPTER XX FRIENDS IN TROUBLE

One day in the month of December, when Malcolm Graheme was with his regiment on outpost duty closely watching the Imperialists, a countryman approached.