At last, then, the imperial army had found a commander-in-chief worthy of the name.  Every other authority in the army, even that of the Emperor himself, ceased from the moment Wallenstein assumed the commander’s baton, and every act was invalid which did not proceed from him.  From the banks of the Danube, to those of the Weser and the Oder, was felt the life-giving dawning of this new star; a new spirit seemed to inspire the troops of the Emperor, a new epoch of the war began.  The Papists form fresh hopes, the Protestant beholds with anxiety the changed course of affairs.

The greater the price at which the services of the new general had been purchased, the greater justly were the expectations from those which the court of the Emperor entertained.  But the duke was in no hurry to fulfil these expectations.  Already in the vicinity of Bohemia and at the head of a formidable force, he had but to show himself there in order to overpower the exhausted forces of the Saxons and brilliantly to commence his new career by the reconquest of that kingdom.  But, contented with harassing the enemy with indecisive skirmishes of his Croats, he abandoned the best part of that kingdom to be plundered, and moved calmly forward in pursuit of his own selfish plans.  His design was, not to conquer the Saxons, but to unite with them.  Exclusively occupied with this important object, he remained inactive in the hope of conquering more surely by means of negotiation.  He left no expedient untried, to detach this prince from the Swedish alliance; and Ferdinand himself, ever inclined to an accommodation with this prince, approved of this proceeding.  But the great debt which Saxony owed to Sweden was as yet too freshly remembered to allow of such an act of perfidy; and even had the Elector been disposed to yield to the temptation, the equivocal character of Wallenstein and the bad character of Austrian policy precluded any reliance in the integrity of its promises.  Notorious already as a treacherous statesman, he acted faithlessly upon the very occasion when perhaps he intended to act honestly; and, moreover, was denied, by circumstances, the opportunity of proving the sincerity of his intentions, by the disclosure of his real motives.

He, therefore, unwillingly resolved to extort, by force of arms, what he could not obtain by negotiation.  Suddenly assembling his troops, he appeared before Prague ere the Saxons had time to advance to its relief.  After a short resistance, the treachery of some Capuchins opened the gates to one of his regiments; and the garrison, who had taken refuge in the citadel, soon laid down their arms upon disgraceful conditions.  Master of the capital, he hoped to carry on more successfully his negotiations at the Saxon court; but even while he was renewing his proposals to Arnheim, he did not hesitate to give them weight by striking a decisive blow.  He hastened to seize the narrow passes between Aussig and Pirna, with a view of cutting off the retreat of the Saxons into their own country; but the rapidity of Arnheim’s operations fortunately extricated them from the danger.  After the retreat of this general, Egra and Leutmeritz, the last strongholds of the Saxons, surrendered to the conqueror:  and the whole kingdom was restored to its legitimate sovereign, in less time than it had been lost.