A Governor, not too IMperfect, would have recognized this Gustavus, what his purposes and likelihoods were; the feeling would have been, checked by due circumspectness: "Up, my men, let us follow this man; let us live and die in the Cause this man goes for! Live otherwise with honor, or die otherwise with honor, we cannot, in the pass things have come to!"-- And thus, at the very worst, Brandenburg would have had only one class of enemies to ravage it; and might have escaped with, arithmetically speaking, HALF the harrying it got in that long Business.
But Protestant Germany--sad shame to it, which proved lasting sorrow as well--was all alike torpid; Brandenburg not an exceptional case.
No Prince stood up as beseemed: or only one, and he not a great one; Landgraf Wilhelm of Hessen, who, and his brave Widow after him, seemed always to know what hour it was.

Wilhelm of Hessen all along;--and a few wild hands, Christian of Brunswick, Christian of Anhalt, Johann George of Jagerndorf, who stormed out tumultuously at first, but were soon blown away by the Tilly-Wallenstein TRADE-WINDS and regulated armaments:--the rest sat still, and tried all they could to keep out of harm's way.

The "Evangelical Union" did a great deal of manifestoing, pathetic, indignant and other; held solemn Meetings at Heilbronn, old Sir Henry Wotton going as Ambassador to them; but never got any redress.
Had the Evangelical Union shut up its inkhorns sooner; girt on its fighting-tools when the time came, and done some little execution with them then, instead of none at all,--we may fancy the Evangelical Union would have better discharged its function.

It might have saved immense wretchedness to Germany.

But its course went not that way.
In fact, had there been no better Protestantism than that of Germany, all was over with Protestantism; and Max of Bavaria, with fanatical Ferdinand II.