END OF THE “SWEDISH PHASE”
© 1992 Donald A. Hollway
After Breitenfeld Gustavus could have advanced on Vienna itself. Instead
he pursued wounded Tilly, south into the heart of Germany. While the he holed up in Bavaria, Pappenheim and Ferdinand both implored Wallenstein to
reassume command of the Imperial armies. Though he’d raised 20,000 men himself,
Wallenstein sent only a token force in reply. And in April 1632 Gustavus caught
up to Tilly, at the River Lech.
The rushing torrent, and Tilly’s entrenchments on the other bank, impeded
attack. Burning damp straw to create a smoke screen, Gustavus put 300 picked
Finns across the river. They held a bridgehead until the rest of the army could
follow and drive the Catholics from their position. Old Tilly was shot in the
leg; though Gustavus sent him a surgeon, he died within the week.
Now Wallenstein could dictate to Ferdinand the terms for his return. That
fall, with his terms met, he crossed the Bohemian border into Gustavus’ rear,
retook Leipzig, and set up winter camp at nearby Lützen.
And so, little more than a year after
his victory at Breitenfeld, Gustavus found himself almost back where he’d
started, facing a larger Imperial army a few miles from Leipzig.
With the field obscured by a thick fog
and smoke from Lützen, to which Wallenstein had set fire, accounts of the
battle are necessarily confused. It seems clear that after an initial cannonade
Gustavus, as usual wearing his red sash but no armor, led his cavalry against
the Imperialist left flank. The arrival, with reinforcements, of Pappenheim
repulsed the Swedes; Gustavus was hit in the arm. Pappenheim was carried off
the field with a mortal wound, but before he died he would have the satisfaction of knowing of his
old nemesis’ end.
The Swedes had in fact advanced all
along the line, but the mist covered an Imperialist counterattack. Hearing that
his center had broken, Gustavus rashly cut across the fog-enshrouded no‑man’s-land
between the lines with just three attendants—straight into a detachment of
Imperial cavalry.
In the flurry of pistol shots which
followed the king was hit and, as his horse bolted in panic, hit again, in the
back. Fallen from the saddle, face down in the dirt, he was administered the coup
de grace: a bullet to the head.
The sight of his horse returning alone
to the Swedish lines covered with blood caused a panic, and then a rush of
vengeful anger among his troops. They checked the imperialists’
counterattack and captured their artillery, but without Gustavus’ leadership
could not finish off the enemy. With dusk falling, the battle drawn and the
Saxon army approaching, Wallenstein elected to withdraw.
Within two years he was also dead—assassinated, too powerful, as a
traitor at Ferdinand’s command. In 1634 the Swedes suffered a defeat at
Nördlingen. They withdrew from the war, and the French entered
it. But for Germany, deprived of her savior and become the battleground of Hapsburg
and Bourbon, there remained only 16 more years of starvation, desolation and
war.
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