"Long live Ferdinand the Second!" cried Devereaux.
"God prosper the house of Austria," added Geraldine; while Butler, Gordon, and Lesley, snatched up the candles, held them aloft, and drew their swords. Wallenstein's friends saw that they were betrayed; they sprang to their weapons, all flushed with wine and with fury at this treachery; the tables were dashed over, and a deadly combat began. Colonel Illo was rushing to his sword, which was hanging on the wall, when an Irishman ran him through the heart. Tzertzski placed himself in a corner, and slew three; for the assailants, believing him to be proof to mortal weapons, were afraid of him.
"Leave me, leave me for a moment," he continued to cry, while fighting with all the energy of despair; "leave me to deal with Lesley and Gordon—I will fight them both hand to hand—after that you may kill me; but, O, Gordon, what a supper is this for your friends."
At that instant he pierced the young Duke de Lerida by a mortal wound, but was almost immediately overpowered by ten strokes, and, with Kinski and Tzertzski, nearly hewn to pieces. Unglutted yet with blood, Captain Devereaux, finding his rapier broken, snatched up a partizan, and, followed by thirty soldiers, rushed to the apartments of Wallenstein; who, having heard the uproar in the hall, had double-bolted his door within; and they assailed it with noise and great fury, while Butler stood, with his sword drawn, on the staircase below. Even the bold heart of Wallenstein was appalled by the unusual uproar—he leaped from his bed, and threw on a dressing-gown. He raised the window of the room; but the wall of the tower was too high for escape, and he cried aloud—
"Will none here assist me? Alas! is no one here my friend?"
Upon this Devereaux knocked again, and commanded his soldiers to burst open the door. Five times their united strength failed before it, till he applied his own shoulder to it; and, being a man of great power, he broke it to fragments, and then they beheld before them the formidable Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland and Prince of the Vandal Isles, standing near a table, in his shirt, pale and composed, but defenceless—for he had neither sword nor pistols; for Schiller asserts that he was disturbed in the study of astrology.
"Art thou not the betrayer of Ferdinand and the Empire?" cried Captain Devereaux, as he charged his partizan; "if so, now thou must die."
Wallenstein made no reply, but opened his arms, as if still more to expose his naked breast, into which the Irish captain thrust his weapon, and he expired without a groan, while all the soldiers shrunk back, as if appalled by the act; yet his naked body, and the bodies of the Colonels Niemann, Tzertzski, Illo, and Kinski were carried in a cart through the streets of Egra, and tossed into a ditch. So perished the magnificent Wallenstein, the dictator of Germany!
James Butler and Devereaux hastened to Vienna, where the Emperor Ferdinand II. fastened round the neck of the former a valuable chain, giving, at the same time, his Imperial benison and a gold medal, saying, "Wear this, Colonel Butler, in memory of an emperor you have saved from ruin." He then created him a Count of the Holy Roman Empire, and gave him the gold key of the bedchamber, with extensive estates in the kingdom of Bohemia; and, to crown all, by an act of abominable hypocrisy, he ordered three thousand masses to be said for repose of the murdered general's soul. Devereaux also received a gold chain with the gold key and a colonelcy; but he left the Imperial service, and returned home to Ireland in 1638.