The Thirty Years' War 205 Right well you knew, and all the world, Right well they know this thing, That Ferdinand alone can be Bohemia's lawful king. So come, dear Fritz, rouse up and go To Ferdinand, your king, And beg him graciously to show Full pardon for your sin. Give to your king what is his own, To God what is his due, So shall you for your sin atone And act the good prince, too. II. The Intervention of Gustavus Adolphus The boundless cruelty and insolence of Wallenstein — who had forced the emperor to make him duke of Mechlenburg after outlawing the legitimate dukes — aroused the suspicion and anger of the Catholic princes as well as of the Protestant. At a meeting of the elect- ors, summoned at Regensburg in the summer of 1630, all joined in demanding from the reluctant emperor the immediate dismissal of Wallenstein, just as Gustavus Adolphus had arrived on German soil. The electors, in a dignified and reasonable address, expressed their firm conviction that the whole blame for the misery, disgrace, and infamy, the cruel and unneces- sary military exactions, which were daily increasing, rested with the new duke in Mechlenburg, who, as commander of the imperial forces, had been invested, without the consent of the estates, with such powers as no one before him had ever exercised. The soldiery, now become unspeakably numerous, served no other purpose than to lay waste the common fatherland. Moreover war has been waged upon 296. The electors de- mand the dismissal of Wallen- stein (1630). (From a contempo- raneous history.)
