Gustavus Adolphus had overrun the north of Germany; one place after another was lost; and at Leipzic the flower of the Austrian army had fallen.  The intelligence of this defeat soon reached the ears of Wallenstein, who, in the retired obscurity of a private station in Prague, contemplated from a calm distance the tumult of war.  The news, which filled the breasts of the Roman Catholics with dismay, announced to him the return of greatness and good fortune.  For him was Gustavus Adolphus laboring.  Scarcely had the king begun to gain reputation by his exploits, when Wallenstein lost not a moment to court his friendship and to make common cause with this successful enemy of Austria.  The banished Count Thurn, who had long entered the service of Sweden, undertook to convey Wallenstein’s congratulations to the king, and to invite him to a close alliance with the duke.  Wallenstein required 15,000 men from the king; and with these, and the troops he himself engaged to raise, he undertook to conquer Bohemia and Moravia, to surprise Vienna, and drive his master, the Emperor, before him into Italy.  Welcome as was this unexpected proposition, its extravagant promises were naturally calculated to excite suspicion.  Gustavus Adolphus was too good a judge of merit to reject with coldness the offers of one who might be so important a friend.  But when Wallenstein, encouraged by the favorable reception of his first message, renewed it after the battle of Breitenfeld, and pressed for a decisive answer, the prudent monarch hesitated to trust his reputation to the chimerical projects of so daring an adventurer and to commit so large a force to the honesty of a man who felt no shame in openly avowing himself a traitor.  He excused himself, therefore, on the plea of the weakness of his army which, if diminished by so large a detachment, would certainly suffer in its march through the empire; and thus, perhaps, by excess of caution, lost an opportunity of putting an immediate end to the war.  He afterward endeavored to renew the negotiation; but the favorable moment was past, and Wallenstein’s offended pride never forgave the first neglect.

But the king’s hesitation, perhaps, only accelerated the breach, which their characters made inevitable sooner or later.  Both framed by nature to give laws, not to receive them, they could not long have cooeperated in an enterprise which eminently demanded mutual submission and sacrifice.  Wallenstein was nothing where he was not everything; he must either act with unlimited power, or not at all.  So cordially, too, did Gustavus dislike control that he had almost renounced his advantageous alliance with France, because it threatened to fetter his own independent judgment.  Wallenstein was lost to a party, if he could not lead; the latter was, if possible, still less disposed to obey the instructions of another.  If the pretensions of a rival would be so irksome to the Duke of Friedland, in the conduct of combined