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| This translation is dedicated to the memory of Gustavus Adolphus Karlsson of Vasa *Nyköping, Sweden, 9th of September 1594 + Lützen, Saxony, 6th of November 1632 Ruler, leader, husband, father, lover, martyr of freedom. Beloved by friends, admired by foes, remembered by all, as long as Sweden and freedom exist. "Inspired by thirst For glory, on the field of battle quaffed Instead Death's bitter draught." |
A historical tale by Werner von Heidenstam
translated from the Swedish and adapted by Sandra Dermark
VI. Lützen
The quid of the question lay now in surprising Wallenstein, whose army was encamped at Lützen, and who, confident that the land would be in peace, had recently sent Pappenheim away with a considerable amount of troops. Men and horses sank deep into the swampy mire, until, late in a November evening, the church tower of Lützen rose, before their eyes, from the vast plains. The road to Leipzig stretched out, lined with earthworks like a high palisade, across the open field. That night, behind these earthworks, turning the ditches into trenches, Wallenstein placed his gunners. The Swedes lay on the muddy plains, and the King went to sleep in an old cart. The generals advised him to find a better resting place, but he replied:
"How could I ever be pleased with any comforts, if I see so many people lacking comforts around me?"
As the sun began to rise, with the red skies of dawn, he didn't want to eat or drink anything for breakfast. Fasting as if it were some ritual, he got on his horse, without his breastplate, dressed in his buff mooseskin doublet and gray overcoat. A thick fog hung upon the plains, but the first song of encouragement echoed already through the ranks. Far up north were the farmsteads of the Swedes. There, the elders and the maidens sat for a rest, laying their work aside, to listen at the gate if someone would ever come with greetings from their sons and sweethearts on the war front.
"Beloved brothers and countrymen!", the King said, reining his horse in before the vanguard of his army. "Now, the day has come, the day on which you will show the world what you have learned during so many campaigns! The enemy we have sought for so long is now right in front of us, no longer intrenched on unreachable heights or within strong fortifications, but out on the open field! You know, indeed, how carefully he avoided our confrontation before. Thus, onward, to fight for freedom, for good fortune and eternal happiness! If you, for this time, let go and yield to the foe, I ensure you that everything will be completely lost, without a chance to be saved, and not a single bone of ours shall return to the land of our birth. But why do you now question the courage of which I have seen so great proof? I know that you are ready to follow me today, unto the bitter end, for our sacred cause!"
Yes, indeed. Their sacred cause, for which they had taken so many heavy steps and waked for so many nights, had not to be sacrificed, whatever the price might be.
In the meantime, the fog had grown so thick that every detachment stood ostensibly on its own, without being able to see the others. Then, the King began to sing his cheerful battle song:
"Do not despair, my little band,
though enemies throughout the land
are seeking to destroy you!
Though o'er our fall they laugh secure,
their triumph shall not long endure,
so keep on brave and coy, you!"
His manly baritone was soon joined by the thousands of voices of the Swedish Army, regiment after regiment, and the meanest private felt happily secure that each and every one of his brothers in arms, on all sides, was ready for battle as well. After another hour or so of waiting, the white disk of the sun began to shine. The fog quickly parted and lifted from the ground, and, immediately, Wallenstein's army could be seen against the backdrop, far to the left, of the burning village of Lützen.
"Jesus, help me to fight today for the glory of Your Holy Name!", the King seriously said, in a loud and clear voice, both his hands clutching the hilt of his sword. "And now, onward!"
Wallenstein, who had the gout and was racked with pain, had been carried around among his soldiers in a sedan chair. He hastily put his foot through a ribbon-wrapped stirrup and swung himself onto the back of his war horse, a stallion.
"Jesus, Mary!", his soldiers shouted their battle-cry.
"Gott mit uns!", echoed the old warcry of the Swedes, as they stormed forth to the road and captured seven of the enemy cannons.
In the distance, by some windmills, a wild confrontation flared up on the edges of both the trenches, and the King rushed thither at the head of his cavalry.
"Follow me, my gallant lads!", he cried, as he thrust the spurs into the flanks of his horse Streiff, unaware that the others, who did not ride that fast steeds, were left behind.
Once more, the sun was veiled by misty darkness, as if by enchantment, and sword thrusts clanked on breastplates and lifted pistols.
"It's nothing, my boys", the King said in a carefree voice when his followers remarked that he was wounded, shot in the left arm, and bleeding.
A pale Gustavus leaned on his saddle against the one closest to him, but then, another bullet struck him in the back, at shoulder-blade height, and he fell unconscious off his steed. His devoted young pageboy, Leubelfingen, himself bleeding from several wounds, was the last one to stay by his side. Ready to die, the youth offered the King his own horse, but he couldn't lift the heavy unconscious form: he could only rest the royal head on his arms.
"Who is the wounded man?" asked the Croatian-accented enemy riders who surrounded them in the gunsmoke.
Leubelfingen kept silence, to receive, in exchange, a rapier stab through his solar plexus. But the King opened his glossy blue eyes and said in a faint voice, with blood on his lips:
"I am the King of Sweden."
Then, from the wild circle thundered the pistol shot that, for ever, quenched his heroic life.
The riders threw themselves over the dead man, taking off his gold chain and clothes. But, in the meantime, with a gaping wound in his throat and an empty saddle, his nutbrown stallion galloped back into the Swedish ranks, where, in the heat of the battle, he still knew that he belonged. The soldiers immediately recognized Streiff, and they realized, full of shock, what had happened. They had recently been thrown back, but, after that moment, they would rather die to the last man than see the sun set over a battlefield where their fallen king lay in the enemy's clutches.
Duke Bernhard of Weimar, a gallant Protestant, who had always stayed loyal to the Swedes, placed himself at the head of the forth-rushing army.
"The defender of freedom is dead!", he cried. "For me, life is no longer life, if I can't avenge his fall!"
His own left arm soon bled as well, but he didn't mind that at all, and Stålhandske crossed the trenches with his men, Brahe fell with a broken knee, and around him fell the Yellow Brigade, whose members didn't want to survive their king's death. It was of no use that Pappenheim had, in the meantime, come back in time, riding on his white steed, like at Breitenfeld, to seek his royal opponent. After a while, he was carried away, fatally shot in the chest, over down-trodden furrows. Against the setting sun, that once more shed its reddish evening light through the mists, Wallenstein awaited the last attack, his cloak pierced by several bullets. But when night fell, the Swedish soldiers had reached their goal. The dark field, on which the leader lay fallen among so many of his best men, had been conquered.
With torches in their hands, they walked among the slain to find the body of their king. That was a dire wandering. Struck-down horses lifted their heads, staring at the firelight. Wounded, thirsty comrades rose up on their elbows, asking for water. In the end, the soldiers came to a spot which was completely silent. The battle had raged there with all its fury, and the slain ones slept the sleep of death. It was hard to tell a friend from a foe, since many of them had been robbed of their clothes and lay there nearly naked. The sashes, which had been a sign of identification during the battle (green for Swedes and red for Austrians), lay scattered about and downtrodden in the mire. The soldiers looked down, casting light on the pale faces, until, under a heap of slaughtered warriors, they finally found the King's body. Bereaved, they lifted him up from the ground and carried him to Weissenfels, the nearest village that Wallenstein's men had spared. The blood-stained doublet had fallen into enemy hands and been presented to the Kaiser, who for a long time looked at it with tears in his eyes.
Tired of religious conflicts, Wallenstein kept on marching about with his army, as the pain of his gout made him harder and more bitter. In a display of extravagant splendour, full of pomp and circumstance, he travelled in an ornate baroque coach-and-six, at the sound of gilded silver trumpets. And soon, a rumour spread that he was defiantly ready to rise up against his own liege lord. Some of the Kaiser's loyal courtiers seized the Bohemian royal crown and carried it from Prague to Vienna, fearing that he would ceremonially place it on his own head.
At the end of the day, forsaken by nearly everyone, he sat one evening, as usually, consulting the stars. They foretold evil deeds. But he did not want to listen to such a foretelling, and he went to bed, to dream daring dreams of universal peace in the name of freedom of worship. Complete silence had to reign around him as always. When the servant outside the locked door suddenly caught a glimpse of a detachment of soldiers, he laid his finger to his lips, to tell them that they should walk quietly.
"Friend!", their leader replied, "now it's time to make some noise!"
Thus, he knocked violently on the door, and, since it did not open, he breached it like a battering ram. Wallenstein was standing by the table, barefooted, dressed in his night shift. But warfare had taught him how vain it was to waste words on a band of killers. Throughout his life, keeping silence had been the greatest and most mysterious of his skills, and, this time, he kept silent before the door as well.
"Are you a scoundrel?" the leader asked him. "A traitor who secretly betrays his own kaiser? Now you must die!"
Too proud to give excuses, Wallenstein stretched out both his arms. Then, struck in the middle of the chest by the leader's pike, he collapsed upon the floor, dying without a single sound.
Long before that, the King's coffin had been carried across the Baltic, to Nyköping, and placed in a chapel while everything was being prepared for the funeral of state. The members of the Council and the people of Sweden mourned him as honestly as the army, for he had been a great person, as open-minded in the arts of peace as he had been in the arts of war. He hadn't had nearly any enemies at all.
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