, the whole line continued to
advance, and the three infantry brigades of the centre took the
batteries on the other side of the highroad, but, not being supported in
time by their cavalry, who had been impeded by the wayside ditches, lost
them again and were compelled to fall back.

When the King knew that the first battery was taken, he uncovered his
head and thanked God, but soon after, learning that the centre had been
repulsed, he put himself at the head of the Smaland cavalry and charged
the Imperial cuirassiers, the "black lads," with whom he had just before
told Stalhaske to grapple. Piccolomini hastened to support the
cuirassiers; and the Swedes, being overmatched, retreated without
perceiving--the fog having again come over--that they had left the King
in the midst of the enemy. A pistol-ball now broke his arm; and as the
Duke of Lauenburg was supporting him out of the battle, an Imperial
cuirassier came behind him and shot him in the back. He then fell from
his horse; and, other cuirassiers coming up, one of them completed the
work of death.

It is added on the testimony of a young gentleman named Leubelfing, the
son of Colonel Leubelfing, of Nuremberg, and page to the Lord Marshal
Crailsham, that being near when the King fell, and seeing that his
charger, wounded in the neck, had galloped away, he dismounted and
offered him his own horse. Gustavus stretched out his hands to accept
the offer; and the page attempted to lift him from the ground, but was
unable. In the mean time some cuirassiers, attracted to the spot,
demanded who the wounded man was. Leubelfing evaded the question or
refused to answer; but the King himself exclaimed, "I am the King of
Sweden," when he received four gunshot wounds and two stabs, which
quickly released him from the agony of his broken arm, the bone of which
had pierced the flesh and protruded. The Imperialist soldiers about the
King, each anxious to possess some trophy, had stripped the body to the
shirt, and were about to carry it off when a body of Swedish cavalry,
charging toward the spot, dispersed them.

His death was immediately communicated, by one of the few who were about
his person when he fell, to the Swedish generals. His charger, galloping
loose and bloody about the field, announced to many more that some
disaster had befallen him. The whole extent of the calamity, however,
was not generally known; but a burning desire ran through the ranks to
rescue him, if livi