The Mercenary: A Tale of The Thirty Years' War

by W. J. Eccott

On the same day Nigel Charteris was summoned by the Emperor's Military Council, and bidden make his way through Bavaria to join his old commander Count Tilly. There and not in Austria or Bohemia it was thought that a period might be put to the King of Sweden's progress. Tilly had men enough in conjunction with the Elector Maximilian's, but lacked officers. The Council feared the Saxons less, who were at Prague, and so in a manner at their doors, than the foreigner Gustavus, who had so signally shown his mastery alike upon the Elbe and upon the Rhine.

Asking what forces he was to conduct, he was told that a mere escort would be sufficient. The road was open, and speed alone was necessary. Nigel was more flattered than if three regiments had been confided to him, for the Council made it appear that it was he, Nigel, and not regiments, that was wanted. He knew that at the moment there was no superfluity of troops in and around Vienna to defend it should the Saxons decide to move southward, but his experience of the behaviour of the Saxon troops at Breitenfeld had left him with a poor opinion of their courage, their initiative, and their leadership.

Father Lamormain saw him after he had received his orders. He made no reference to Pastor Rad, of whose nearness Nigel was unaware, nor to the orchard close, nor to Stephanie. That some prowler or other had been about the trysting-place Nigel was aware, and, on account of the Archduchess, he had refrained from encountering him. Having seen nothing himself, he imagined that his own and his mistress's persons had enjoyed a like invisibility. Unaccustomed to fear himself, he had not understood why Stephanie in her concluding embrace had trembled and clung to him with the mingled weakness, tenderness, and passionate strength of which woman is capable at supreme moments of danger. It had touched his heart. It had left him determined that nothing at the last should separate them but the hand of death itself. So he looked upon this expected summons to resume duty at the front with the confidence of youth, that nothing but a few short weeks lay between him and her he loved,—weeks perhaps in which he might compass more of that military glory he coveted, and so lessen the distance that yawned between them. What if he should find the opportunity to wrest from the pretendedly reluctant and chaffering Wallenstein the laurels of the Empire to lay at her feet?

So Nigel met Father Lamormain with no suspicion at the back of his mind, but rather with brave hopes and the supreme joy that a man feels who knows that he is beloved by her whom he conceives to be the star of womanhood.

Father Lamormain bade him exert himself to the utmost. He told him that the armies of Tilly and Maximilian constituted the final barrier that prevented the Swedish hosts, reinforced by Germans from every Protestant state, from rolling through Bavaria, resistless as the Danube in flood, and finally reaching Vienna. He made him feel, as the clumsy brief remarks and explanations of the Army Council had not, though they had borne some suggestion, that on his own personal devotion and intelligence depended the whole fortune of the Empire. The appeal was the more sure that it was in the first place an appeal to his simple loyalty as a mercenary soldier, and not to his nationality. In the second place, Father Lamormain appealed to his faith. He spoke in no uncertain way of the fate of those heretics who should fall, striving against the Emperor and Holy Church. He touched slightly on the indifference of the Holy Father, Urban the Eighth, to the calls of the Emperor for succour, and the apparent hostility of the fervently Catholic King of France and his Cardinal Minister. He deplored them, but did not gloss them over. He was evidently, so Nigel thought, working towards producing in Nigel a proper state of mind from which might spring the spiritual flower of a heroic death. It was the rule of the order. For the individual, sacrifice; for the cause of the order, everything that might enhance its progress.

It was as if the Jesuit strove to wean him from earthly aims, to instil into him something of the essence of his own self-lessness: and, for the brief while that the audience lasted, Nigel's soul and mind took some impress in its wax of youth of the deep and hard graven die that was the Jesuit's.

More than before Nigel felt that an active benevolence in regard to him ran like a golden thread through the tissue of Father Lamormain's talk, that, while urging self-immolation on the altar of the Empire, he urged it only as a means of spiritual safety from pitfalls that otherwise yawned for him in this world and the next.

To the hidden meaning Nigel possessed no clue. The one all-obliterating fact of his love for the Archduchess and her love for him prevented the die of the Jesuit making more than a faint permanent impression upon his mind, sufficient only to be memorable.

Father Lamormain seemed to be aware of this faintness of impression, for he sighed deeply as Nigel, having received his last benediction, took his final leave.

Nigel rode forth towards Bavaria fully determined to fight the Swede, but whether the eyes of Stephanie, or the heavenly crown pictured for him by Father Lamormain, glittered the more brightly to his thoughts, is a question each one must settle for himself.