The Thirty Years' War - James Aitken Wylie

who had grown up around him; in the army,
disciplined and hardened in many a campaign, now
gathered under his banners; in the union of great
qualities in himself, fitting him for his task; in his
power of command; in his love of order and
system; in his intuitive faculty of quick and rapid
combinations; in his genius for forming plans, and
the caution, united with daring courage, which
never permitted him to take a single step forward
without having secured a line of safe retreat in the
rear – in this assemblage of great attributes, so
fully possessed and so easily exercised by him, he
read the authentication of his great mission.
That mission was publicly and conclusively
certified to both friend and foe on the field of
Leipsic. That marvelous victory proclaimed
Gustavus Adolphus to be one of those saviors
whom the Great Ruler, at times, raises up in pity
for a fallen race, and whom he employs suddenly
and beneficently to change the current of history. A
greater consciousness of this breathes
henceforward in every word and act of Gustavus.
He displays greater elevation of soul, a nobler
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