Francis Albert, the youngest of four sons of Francis II., Duke of Lauenburg, and related by the mother’s side to the race of Vasa, had, in his early years, found a most friendly reception at the Swedish court.  Some offence which he had committed against Gustavus Adolphus, in the queen’s chamber, was, it is said, repaid by this fiery youth with a box on the ear; which, though immediately repented of, and amply apologized for, laid the foundation of an irreconcilable hate in the vindictive heart of the duke.  Francis Albert subsequently entered the imperial service, where he rose to the command of a regiment, formed a close intimacy with Wallenstein, and condescended to be the instrument of a secret negotiation with the Saxon court, which did little honor to his rank.  Without any sufficient cause being assigned, he suddenly quitted the Austrian service, and appeared in the king’s camp at Nuremberg to offer his services as a volunteer.  By his show of zeal for the Protestant cause, and a prepossessing and flattering deportment, he gained the heart of the king, who, warned in vain by Oxenstiern, continued to lavish his favor and friendship on this suspicious new comer.  The battle of Luetzen soon followed, in which Francis Albert, like an evil genius, kept close to the king’s side and did not leave him till he fell.  He owed, it was thought, his own safety amidst the fire of the enemy, to a green sash which he wore, the color of the Imperialists.  He was at any rate the first to convey to his friend Wallenstein the intelligence of the king’s death.  After the battle, he exchanged the Swedish service for the Saxon; and, after the murder of Wallenstein, being charged with being an accomplice of that general, he escaped the sword of justice only by abjuring his faith.  His last appearance in life was as commander of an imperial army in Silesia, where he died of the wounds he had received before Schweidnitz.  It requires some effort to believe in the innocence of a man, who had run through a career like this, of the act charged against him; but, however great may be the moral and physical possibility of his committing such a crime, it must still be allowed that there are no certain grounds for imputing it to him.  Gustavus Adolphus, it is well known, exposed himself to danger, like the meanest soldier in his army, and where thousands fell, he, too, might naturally meet his death.  How it reached him, remains indeed buried in mystery; but here, more than anywhere, does the maxim apply that where the ordinary course of things is fully sufficient to account for the fact, the honor of human nature ought not to be stained by any suspicion of moral atrocity.