IN MEMORIAM GUSTAVI ADOLPHI - MMXXII

 To the memory of Gustavus Adolphus Karlsson of Vasa

*Nyköping, Sweden, 9th of December 1594 
 + Lützen, Saxony, 6th of November 1632

His spouse Mary Eleanor (next to the throne), their daughter Christina Augusta 
(in his arms), his right-hand man Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna (next to the throne),
 his courtiers and his people, his officers and soldiers, will always
 keep his memory alive, as long as Sweden and freedom exist.

Beloved ruler of nations and leader of armies,

consort, father, friend, and lover

We were lost when the dark descended and the light gathered into a storm You appeared like a sunlit morning at the winds of a world at war...

Inspired by thirst

for glory, on the field of battle quaffed

instead death's bitter draught.

The last word was missing in his epic song:

the word that crowns every achievement.

The mourners have done their duty, right or wrong:

they wrote it in blood and bereavement.

He left us when we (and he) expected it the least, 
in the prime of his life and at the climax of his career,
before he could be tarnished by the failing vigour of an older age
or by the corruption brought upon him by success. 
A single bullet, just like any other, 
suddenly struck his back and entered his noble chest, 
to quench a flame that never could or should have burned brighter.

DAYS OF VICTORIES VI: LÜTZEN

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."

DAYS OF VICTORIES

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.

...

IN MEMORIAM GUSTAVI ADOLPHI 2014

To the memory of Gustavus Adolphus Karlsson of Vasa

*Nyköping, Sweden, 9th of December 1594 
 + Lützen, Saxony, 6th of November 1632

Beloved ruler of nations and leader of armies,

consort, father, friend, and lover

His spouse Mary Eleanor (next to the throne), their daughter Christina Augusta 
(in his arms), his right-hand man Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna (next to the throne),
 his courtiers and his people, his officers and soldiers, will always
 keep his memory alive, as long as Sweden and freedom exist.

Gustavus Adolphus at Lützen

Carl Wilhelm Böttiger (late nineteenth century)

Translated from the Swedish by Sandra Dermark

The Golden King his doublet took,

and then got on his steed,

and he reviewed his vanguard ranks

so gallantly indeed.

"Your breastplate!", they advised him.

"God shields me!", he demised them.

And like last year at Breitenfeld

against old Count Tilly,

the Swedish army was arranged,

a light to guide the free.

Before the bluecoats' right wing,

encouraged them the Light King.

When all the ranks are sure arranged,

with caring, loving glance,

he greeted all the warriors:

they stood ablaze, in trance.

He was so modest, yet so great!

Each heart was sworn to Crown and State!

"Today may be the final stand!"

"Hold on!", they heed his call.

The "Gott mit uns!" resounds once more,

yet whispers stir them all.

"Stirred is our Liege's nutbrown steed..."

"The Lord alone knows why, indeed..."

"All troubles and sorrows be banned!

It's time to sing and pray!

Do not despair, my little band!"

That song won't fade away.

"And to the field, after we sing!

Glory to us, after our King!"

Onward! onward! The battle seems forever!

King Gustavus on the frontline did lead.

His last words: "Hold on, boys! It's now or never!"

The fog hid both royal rider and steed.

His left arm broken, chest and back sore bleeding,

his hand lets the reins go, life is receding.

Oh, sorrow! Oh, despair! Oh, is there any

good Swede to take and cherish his last sigh?

Young Lübeling alone, out of so many,

sore wounded, by his hero's side doth lie.

He rises. Though his blood itself is surging,

His Majesty the youth to rise is urging.

Lübeling's soft hand by a rapier's broken,

yet to his precious treasure doth he cling.

Yet Gustavus falls, not a word he's spoken,

everything turns dark for the Golden King.

Soon enemies over the spoils are fighting,

Croatian riders on his form alighting.

Then, his brothers in arms feel suffocated,

their arms and hearts oppressed by despair.

"The King is bleeding!" His ranks know he's fated,

he's no more seen, he'll nevermore be there.

His stallion Streiff, saddled, without a master,

gallops forth alone, heralding disaster.

Yet, right before their faithful hearts are frozen,

revenge sets the officers' hearts on fire.

Feeling no pain, heroic death they've chosen,

within, a royal voice is heard inspire.

No mourning shall there be, unless victorious

they end the fight: consoled they are, and glorious.

They swear: "O'er Lützen's moors, the setting sun

shall witness that the Swedish army won!"

The oath was held. The battle kept on raging,

Count Pappenheim through Swedish fire did fall.

Gustavus, after dark, kept on war waging,

the victory won by his spirit's call.

His golden and blue boys, before the twilight,

when lying slain on the moors 'neath faint sky-light,

carved the victory runes, on Schwedenstein,

that, in our days, on Lützen's moors still shine.

Inspired by thirst

for glory, on the field of battle quaffed

instead death's bitter draught.

The last word was missing in his epic song:

the word that crowns every achievement.

The mourners have done their duty, right or wrong:

they wrote it in blood and bereavement.

He left us when we (and he) expected it the least, 

in the prime of his life and at the climax of his career,

before he could be tarnished by the failing vigour of an older age

or by the corruption brought upon him by success. 

A single bullet, just like any other, 

suddenly struck his back and entered his noble chest, 

to quench a flame that never could or should have burned brighter.

THE STANDARD BEARER

For María Calzada and all the others who helped me, here is a poem about a Cavalier ensign which reminds me of Snoilsky's "Lützen":

THE STANDARD BEARER

I

“How can I tell,” Sir Edmund said,  “Who has the right or the wrong o' this thing?  Cromwell stands for the people's cause,  Charles is crowned by the ancient laws;English meadows are sopping red,Englishmen striking each other dead,—  Times are black as a raven's wing.Out of the ruck and the murk I see    Only one thing!The King has trusted his banner to me,  And I must fight for the King.”

II

Into the thick of the Edgehill fight  Sir Edmund rode with a shout; and the ring  Of grim-faced, hard-hitting Parliament men  Swallowed him up,—it was one against ten!He fought for the standard with all his might,Never again did he come to sight—  Victor, hid by the raven's wing!After the battle had passed we found    Only one thing,—The hand of Sir Edmund gripped around  The banner-staff of his King.
Henry van Dyke.

THE RINGSTETTEN SAGA VII: LÜTZEN

Previously on The Ringstetten Saga:
By All Hallows (31-10/1-11), Leipzig, Halle, and the villages in the surrounding area have been taken back by the Imperialists. Eleanor is especially worried about the fate of her spouse, having seen his death on the battlefield in a prophetic dream. Gustavus has received and replied to a letter from his little daughter Christina at Stegeborg. Count Pappenheim, now Wallenstein's Man Friday, is commanding the garrison of Halle an der Saale and quelling an uprising in the local marketplace. Gerhard and Alois, especially our young lieutenant, are worried about the outcome of the upcoming confrontation. Liselotte and Hedwig are also worried, but about the ones they love. And Albrecht von Wallenstein, together with his son and heir Berthold, leaves Schloss Lützen, where the Wallensteins are quartered, for a cold and foggy battlefield... on the eve of battle, the evening before the sixth of November 1632.
From sunrise until about 11:30, a thick and cool morning fog covers the battlefield. On one side, a pale, lean, raven-haired overlord reviews his ranks from a scarlet velvet sedan chair, without saying a word, but casting heart-freezing glares at officers and privates.
Across the swampy plains, his strawberry blond and well-spoken opponent reviews the Protestant army on a nutbrown steed, while singing a song he has written himself in an incredible baritone voice, in Swedish and German. After which the Swedish army repeats the song in chorus (here is the English translation!):

"Do not despair, my little band,

though enemies throughout the land

are seeking to destroy you!

They rejoice, hoping you'll fall soon,

but they will sing another tune,

so keep on brave and coy, you!"

Right before midday, the fog clears like a curtain opening up before a play. And this one will prove one bloody, gory tragedy.

With thunder and lightning, two armies have clashed

at daybreak, one autumn morrow.

Through thick gray fog, gunfire has violently flashed,

stifling the wounded’s cries of sorrow.

On winning, on winning, on daring to dare

is hell-bent the mind of each rider,

though he lose the grip on the reins of his mare,

and rashly dismount, in a stride, her.

As the heavy cuirassier falls to the ground,

the pikeman, who would stand defeated,

sees his chance and thrusts his blade, turning around:

thus, rider and steed are mistreated.

The common soldier rushes into the fray:

his duty reads “dying or slaying”.

The commander watches his men the game play,

and soon heavy cards he’s seen playing.

While Wallenstein stays overlooking the fight in his sedan chair on top of a hill at the edge of the fields (due to his fear of gunshots), Gustavus rides forth into the frontline to encourage his men and keep them from yielding, as bravely as any subaltern officer. Call that foolhardiness or daring-do, whatever you will!

There he rides, his blue plume flutters! Lovely lad!

Cool eyes, every muscle in tension!

The tall, dashing figure in bright doublet clad

draws friends’ and enemies’ attention!

Thus he takes command of his faltering wing,

exposed like a leader of twenty.

Like a young lieutenant, risks takes the blond king:

his sword’s drawn, his scabbard is empty.

He’s shuttled by thunderstorm wings through the ranks,

into the fog, into the fire.

Like hail, many a bullet on a breastplate clanks

where enemy units conspire.

In the early afternoon, the fog returns, blurring the distinction between friend and foe, as gunshots stifle the officers' words of command and screams of pain from the wounded ones.

Gustavus gets lost and finds himself caught in the crossfire, as his men react to his disappearance and the fact that he is already wounded: an Austrian bullet has already pierced and broken His Majesty's left arm, though he does not react to the pain and has already bandaged the wound, using his blue sash as a sling (clever as always!)...

“Onward, my brave Swedish cavalry!

Onward, comrades of German breeding!”

In vain… they can’t catch up… their leader don’t see...

then, suddenly, hear: “The King’s bleeding!”

Into the dark bosom of Wallenstein’s troop

no one the wounded rider followed.

The yellow doublet was, at one fell swoop,

by the clanking iron wave swallowed.

The enemy leader closest to him recognizes such a high-ranking officer, and he doesn't waste any hot lead on such an important target...

A Croatian officer, who follows the King closely on horseback: Long time have I sought you! (He shoots Gustavus in the back. The bullet shatters his right shoulder blade, and then punctures his lung. Gustavus falls unconscious off his steed, to be stabbed thrice by Croatians in the chest and back, and receive three shots to the same region. The first wound in his back brings searing chest pain. The Croatians take his clothes, weapons, and accessories as spoils of war, leaving the Swedish ruler in a bloodstained shirt.)

The Croatian officer: Now he's suffered enough. Let me give him the mercy shot! (He shoots Gustavus in the nape of the neck).

The news of the King's death spreads across the battlefield like wildfire, amidst gunshots and clanking of steel. Enter Count Pappenheim, the leader of the Catholic cavalry, who wanted to challenge Gustavus to a duel (since he knows of a prophecy in which a scar-faced Count of Pappenheim will someday defeat and slay a great Nordic ruler in single combat, and he was born on the same day the same year as Gustavus!). He learns what has happened to Gustavus from a Swedish officer, who shoots him in the chest as he receives a gunshot in the same spot (the left breast) from one of Pappenheim's own riders. This officer is none other than Lieutenant Gerhard von Ringstetten himself. Both the Prussian youth and the Bavarian count are left each with a punctured lung: Gottfried zu Pappenheim "drowns painfully and slowly in his own blood", carried by his orderly Jakob towards Wallenstein's encampment (he will die in the same Leipzig morgue where he coaxed Tilly)... while the young Prussian, seized with searing pain and staggering from blood loss, makes it to the edge of the front near the Swedish garrison, before collapsing, coughing up blood and closing his veiled green eyes, in one of the trenches of the battlefield.

The Swedish army, through the fog and the fire, thirsts for revenge and lunges relentlessy upon Wallenstein's ranks, driving them to flight:

Then, a rising clamour sears flesh and bone:

“Gustavus! Our father! Our leader!”

Thus, his brigades combine: he won’t die alone.

They roar, rushing forward, dear reader.

Croatians retreat and Walloons take to flight,

and, buried in heaps of slain sinners,

the Friedlander’s cannons are hidden from sight:

the martyr’s men shall be the winners.

The last word was missing in his epic song:

the word that crowns every achievement.

The mourners have done their duty, right or wrong:

they wrote it in blood and bereavement.

They’ve won. On the fields, with a lovely parade,

they honour their beloved leader,

but most of them have fallen within the glade:

the living are few, my dear reader.

At the end of the day, the sun sets over a swampy plain littered with lifeless bodies: casualties like Gustavus, Pappenheim, and Berthold von Wallenstein (the Generalissimo's only son) as well as countless unsung officers and privates on both sides of the conflict. "It is cold for the fallen, cold is the fog, but coldest are the hearts of the few survivors. The Protestants have finally won the battle, but they have lost much more than their liege." 
The slain lay, some of them, embracing one another like friends or like brothers, just like at Breitenfeld: Swede and Croat, Saxon and Austrian, reconciled in the afterlife.

The late king's lifeless body is discovered, bloodstained and riddled with gunshot and stab wounds, amidst a heap of slain Croatians. And Sweden's legendary Blue Brigade has dwindled to a dark sergeant (imprisoned and presumed dead) and a fatally injured lieutenant: Liselotte finds an unconscious and freezing Gerhard, whom she gives a drink of brandy from her canteen, takes to the surgeon, and tends to herself. Another nice draught of brandy (both to quench his thirst and ease his pain) down the lieutenant's throat almost brings him back from a state of near-death, but he will have to rest in bed at Breitenfeld all winter long, speaking and moving as little as possible, if he wants to survive: the bullet is lodged so deeply in his chest that it can't be taken out. The Leipzig Christmas wedding which Liselotte and he had dreamt of will have to be cancelled: they will marry in spring in the Swedish camp, if the wounded lieutenant survives.

Alois, however, has not been found, dead or alive. For one good reason: he strayed in the fog as well, was struck in the nape of his neck with a sword and suffers from amnesia, and thus he has joined Wallenstein's army as he was swept in the Friedlander's pell-mell retreat. After a brief stay in Leipzig before its fall, the amnesiac sergeant has followed the Wallenstein entourage eastward, into Friedland (the Wallensteins' shire, located in between Saxony and Bohemia). He has learned to know Isabella and Thekla von Wallenstein, His Lordship's wife and child (promoted to heiress after her brother's death), the former a blond and elegant Viennese noblewoman, the latter a raven-haired and reserved damsel who has lived in the shade of her father and brother... and is nowadays disturbed by her many suitors. Once in the province of Friedland, Wallenstein has had the local gallows prepared for executing four colonels and nine subaltern officers for cowardice, as scapegoats for the Lützen-Leipzig debacle. Alois, now raised to the rank of generalissimo's orderly's orderly's orderly (pretty high, isn't it?), has become aware that disobedient peasants and servants, officers, privates, and vassals, are bound to wear a hemp necklace at the pettiest offence (even stealing fruit, or not wearing the Wallensteinian colours, which are scarlet and black).
The Schloss Friedland chapel and those closest to it have got no bells, whose knell provokes His Lordship, but eunuchs calling from the church towers... Though very few people there are deeply religious. To start with, the Wallensteins and their associates are freethinkers.
 However, Friedland is a peaceful shire with public schools in the smallest villages, manufactures (early modern industries), steelworks, and medical care for the meanest subjects. The currency is a golden coin made in Friedland itself with Wallenstein's profile on one side and his crest on the other. Everything seems to betray that Wallenstein will take all this to imperial scale once he has dethroned the Kaiser: he is convinced that his reign will be remembered for its goodness and emphasis on welfare. Think of that, of an Enlightened despot born a century ahead of his times!

In a glass case in a parish church (in Weissenfels, Saxony), the hero of freedom is mourned for by officers, privates, and a heartbroken Queen Eleanor (perchance the saddest of them all).
Eleanor (Desperate): Oh, Gustavus! Darling! Without you, I'm so alone! I wither, helpless, on my own!

With the enbalmed form of her late spouse, his unusually large enbalmed heart in a golden baroque reliquary, and his wounded steed, she invites Hedwig and Liselotte to follow the funeral procession to the royal palace in Nyköping. The blond girl, trying in vain to comfort her queen, declines such a tempting offer: she will follow the Swedish ranks, sure that her beloved Alois is still alive somewhere and that they are destined to meet each other again. Liselotte declines as well, worried about Gerhard's state of health and having already decided to tend to his wounds. And also because she feels at home on the war front, not being that fond of courtly life.