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The Thirty Years' War - James Aitken Wylie

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pavilion of cloud and fire and vapor of smoke.<br />

<strong>The</strong> masses that swarm and welter in the abyss<br />

Germany now became we cannot particularize. But<br />

out of the dust, the smoke, and the flame there<br />

emerge, towering above the others, a few gigantic<br />

forms, which let us name. Ernest of Mansfeld, the<br />

fantastic Brunswicker and Bernhard of Weimar<br />

form one group. Arrayed against these are<br />

Maximilian of Bavaria, and the generals of the<br />

League – Tilly and Pappenheim, leaders of the<br />

imperial host; the stern, inscrutable Wallenstein,<br />

Altringer, and the great Frenchmen, Conde and<br />

Turenne; among the Swedes, Horn, Bauer,<br />

Torstenson, Wrangel, and over all, lifting himself<br />

grandly above the others, is the warrior-prince<br />

Gustavus Adolphus. What a prodigious<br />

combination of military genius, raised in each case<br />

to its highest degree of intensity, by the greatness<br />

of the occasion and the wish to cope with a<br />

renowned antagonist or rival! <strong>The</strong> war is one of<br />

brilliant battles, of terrible sieges, but of quick<br />

alternations of fortune, the conqueror of today<br />

becoming often the vanquished of tomorrow. <strong>The</strong><br />

18

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