He had tried
for half a dozen years to make peace between them. At last he drew
the sword and went down to force it. After a year of fighting Tilly
and Wallenstein, the Emperor's great generals, he met the former in
a decisive battle at Lutter-am-Baremberg. King Christian's army was
beaten and put to rout. He himself fled bareheaded through the
forests of the Hartz Mountains, pursued by the enemy's horsemen. It
was hardly necessary for the Emperor to make him promise as the
price of peace to keep out of German affairs thenceforth. His allies
had left him to fight it out alone. All their fine speeches went for
nothing when it came to the test, and King Christian rode back to
Denmark, a sadder and wiser man. It was left to Gustav Adolf, after
all, to teach the German generals the lesson they needed.
In the years of peace before that unhappy war, Danish trade and
Danish culture had blossomed exceedingly, thanks to the wisdom, the
clever management, and untiring industry of the King. He built
factories, cloth-mills, silk-mills, paper-mills, dammed the North
Sea out from the rich marshlands with great dikes, taught the
farmers profitable ways of tilling their fields; for he was a
wondrous manager for whom nothing was too little and nothing too
big.
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