The Thirty Years' War - James Aitken Wylie

foreign nationalities respond to the recruitingdrum,
as crows flock to a battle-field, lured thither
by the effluvia of corpses, but all the peoples of
Christian Europe were drawn into its all-embracing
vortex. From the west and from the east, from the
north and from the south, came men to fight on the
German plains, and mingle their blood with the
waters of the Rhine, the Danube, and the Elbe.
Englishmen and Scotchmen crossed the sea and
hastened to place themselves under one or other of
the opposing standards. Danes, Swedes, Finns,
crowding to the theater of action, and mingling
with the Netherlanders, contended with them in the
bloody fray in behalf of the Protestant liberties.
The Laplander, hearing amid his snows the bruit of
this great conflict, yoked his reindeer, and hurried
in his sledge across the ice, brining with him furs
for the clothing of the Swedish troops. The
imperial army was even more varied in respect of
nationality, of speech, of costume, and of manners.
A motley host of Romish Walloons, of Irish
adventurers, of Spaniards and Italians were
assembled under the banners of the League.
Almost every Slav race broke into the land in this
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