Whose worth and services I know and honor.
See, see, my friend!
There might we place at once before our eyes
The sum of war's whole trade and mystery —
[To QUESTENBERG, presenting BUTLER and ISOLANI at the same time
to him.
These two the total sum – strength and despatch.
And lo! betwixt them both, experienced prudence!
The Chamberlain and War-Commissioner Questenberg.
The bearer of the emperor's behests, —
The long-tried friend and patron of all soldiers,
We honor in this noble visitor.
[Universal silence.
'Tis not the first time, noble minister,
You've shown our camp this honor.
Once before
I stood beside these colors.
Perchance too you remember where that was;
It was at Znaeim 4 in Moravia, where
You did present yourself upon the part
Of the emperor to supplicate our duke
That he would straight assume the chief command.
To supplicate? Nay, bold general!
So far extended neither my commission
(At least to my own knowledge) nor my zeal.
Well, well, then – to compel him, if you choose,
I can remember me right well, Count Tilly
Had suffered total rout upon the Lech.
Bavaria lay all open to the enemy,
Whom there was nothing to delay from pressing
Onwards into the very heart of Austria.
At that time you and Werdenberg appeared
Before our general, storming him with prayers,
And menacing the emperor's displeasure,
Unless he took compassion on this wretchedness.
Yes, yes, 'tis comprehensible enough,
Wherefore with your commission of to-day,
You were not all too willing to remember
Your former one.
Why not, Count Isolani?
No contradiction sure exists between them.
It was the urgent business of that time
To snatch Bavaria from her enemy's hand;
And my commission of to-day instructs me
To free her from her good friends and protectors.
A worthy office! After with our blood
We have wrested this Bohemia from the Saxon,
To be swept out of it is all our thanks,
The sole reward of all our hard-won victories.
Unless that wretched land be doomed to suffer
Only a change of evils, it must be
Freed from the scourge alike of friend or foe.
What? 'Twas a favorable year; the boors
Can answer fresh demands already.
Nay,
If you discourse of herds and meadow-grounds —
The war maintains the war. Are the boors ruined
The emperor gains so many more new soldiers.
And is the poorer by even so many subjects.
Poh! we are all his subjects.
Yet with a difference, general! The one fill
With profitable industry the purse,
The others are well skilled to empty it.
The sword has made the emperor poor; the plough
Must reinvigorate his resources.
Sure!
Times are not yet so bad. Methinks I see
[Examining with his eye the dress and ornaments of QUESTENBERG.
Good store of gold that still remains uncoined.
Thank Heaven! that means have been found out to hide
Some little from the fingers of the Croats.
There! The Stawata and the Martinitz,
On whom the emperor heaps his gifts and graces,
To the heart-burning of all good Bohemians —
Those minions of court favor, those court harpies,
Who fatten on the wrecks of citizens
Driven from their house and home – who reap no harvests
Save in the general calamity —
Who now, with kingly pomp, insult and mock
The desolation of their country – these,
Let these, and such as these, support the war,
The fatal war, which they alone enkindled!
And those state-parasites, who have their feet
So constantly beneath the emperor's table,
Who cannot let a benefice fall, but they
Snap at it with dogs' hunger – they, forsooth,
Would pare the soldiers bread and cross his reckoning!
My life long will it anger me to think,
How when I went to court seven years ago,
To see about new horses for our regiment,
How from one antechamber to another
They dragged me on and left me by the hour