18th of January the Danish army drew near, and seeing the
fortification began to storm it with their catapults. As they
approached, the Swedish cavalry, with Sture at their head, dashed out
along the shore to meet them. The regent was mounted on a fiery charger,
and carried into the very thickest of the fight. But scarcely had the
first shot been fired when a missile glancing along the ice struck
Sture's horse from under him, and in a moment horse and rider were
sprawling on the ice. So soon as Sture could be extricated, he was found
to have received an ugly wound upon the thigh. His followers bore him
bleeding from the field, and hastened with his lacerated body to the
north. But the battle was not yet over. Long and hot it raged about the
fortress on the ice. Twice the Danish troops made a mad assault, and
after heavy losses were repulsed. At last, however, their heavy
catapults began to tell. The sides of the bulwark weakened, and the
Danish army by a vigorous onslaught burst open a passage, and put the
Swedish infantry to the sword. This victory was followed by a night of
riot, the Swedes thus gaining time to collect the scattered remnants of
their army. With a single impulse, though without a leader, they fled
across the marshy meadows of Vestergoetland to the north. Their goal was
Tiveden, a dreary jungle of stunted pines and underbrush, through which
it was expected the enemy would have to pass. Here after two days' march
they gathered, and threw up a mighty barrier of felled trees and
brushwood, thinking in that way to impede the passage of the Danes. All
about them the land, though not mountainous, was rough and rugged in the
extreme, huge bowlders and fragments of rock lying about on every side.
In spots the undergrowth was wanting, but its place was generally filled
by little lakes and bogs, quite as difficult to traverse as the forest.
In this region the patriots collected, and with undaunted spirit once
more awaited the coming of the Danes. Again they were not disappointed.
The Danish army, recovering from its night of revelry, proceeded on the
track of the fugitives, stormed their barrier, and on the 1st of
February put them once more to flight. This done, the invaders pressed
forward, burning, robbing, murdering, and affixing bans to every church
door, till they arrived at Vesteras.[38]

Let us turn for a moment to another scene. Sture, who had been carried
bleeding from the field of battle, had been take