Suffice it to say that the Lithuanians, the Moravians, the Silesians, Bohemians, and Russians were represented at this meeting by their most formidable deities. There was Ilia, the great archer, whose arrows hit the mark after having passed through a thickness of nine fir trees; Radgost, the merciless destroyer; Flintz, the skeleton god, who bore a lion’s head on his shoulders and drove a chariot of flames; and the giant Yaga-Baba, whose head reached high above the loftiest mountains. When a warrior was seized with fear before he beheld the enemy, he immediately took him from the ranks and brayed him in a wooden mortar with an iron pestle.
All four of them brought in their retinue whole battalions of Strygi or blood-suckers, of voracious Trolls, Marowitzes, and Kikimoras, who smothered their victims; of Polkrans and Leschyes, the latter a kind of dwarf satyrs, who could at will change into giants, and the former half men and half dogs, singing and barking alternately. Their songs, as fearful as their barkings, spread terror around them, and they themselves killed at a hundred yards’ distance by the venom of their breath.
Such were the allies whom the Roman and Scandinavian gods arrayed against Christianity.
When the new comers had been properly organized, Jupiter’s eagle rose above the clouds, uttered three piercing cries, turning to the three points of the horizon, and at once from the East, from the West, and from the South, there came forth the gods of Rome and Greece, abandoning their mysterious retreats. There was Neptune with his Tritons, his Harpies, and his marine monsters; and there was Pluto with his Fates, his Furies, and his whole host from hell.
Odin struck his buckler, and from the far North came not only the gods and the Valkyrias, with the heroes of Walhalla, but even the adversaries of the Ases,—Hela, the wolf Fenris, the Giants of the Frost with Loki at their head,—and all enlisted under him to take part in the immense slaughter.
Never had the armies of a Darius, an Alexander, an Attila, or a Charlemagne, presented a more imposing and more terrible aspect; nor has the world ever seen the like since.
When the Sibyls and the Norns, the augurs and the witches had been consulted, the march began.
A few miles from the other side of the river, in the direction of Argentoratum (Strasbourg), about half way up the slope of a gentle hill, there stood a little chapel which had not been quite finished.
The Sibyls and Druidesses had pointed out this building as the end of the first day’s march, not doubting but that the god of the Christians would appear at the head of his legions, to defend his temple.
The Confederates were advancing silently under cover of the night in order to surprise the enemy, whom they thought fully prepared for resistance. Odin was in command of the right wing of the army, Jupiter of the left. The Scythian, Sarma-tian, Borussian, and Finnish deities under the orders of Tahiti, Perun, Percunos, Wainamoinen, and Radgost, commanded the centre.