e king broke up his camp on
the 5th of September, leaving in Nuremberg a sufficient garrison. He
advanced in full order of battle before the enemy, who remained
motionless and did not attempt in the least to harass his retreat. His
route lay by the Aisch and Windsheim toward Neustadt, where he halted
five days to refresh his troops, and also to be near to Nuremberg in
case the enemy should make an attempt upon the town. But Wallenstein,
as exhausted as himself, had only awaited the retreat of the Swedes to
commence his own. Five days afterward he broke up his camp at Zirndorf
and set it on fire. A hundred columns of smoke, rising from all the
burning villages in the neighborhood, announced his retreat and showed
the city the fate it had escaped. His march, which was directed on
Forchheim, was marked by the most frightful ravages; but he was too
far advanced to be overtaken by the king. The latter now divided his
army, which the exhausted country was unable to support, and leaving
one division to protect Franconia, with the other he prosecuted in
person his conquests in Bavaria. In the mean time, the imperial
Bavarian army had marched into the Bishopric of Bamberg, where the
Duke of Friedland a second time mustered his troops. He found this
force, which so lately had amounted to 60,000 men, diminished by the
sword, desertion, and disease, to about 24,000, and of these a fourth
were Bavarians. Thus had the encampments before Nuremberg weakened
both parties more than two great battles would have done, apparently
without advancing the termination of the war, or satisfying, by any
decisive result, the expectations of Europe. The king's conquests in
Bavaria, were, it is true, checked for a time by this diversion before
Nuremberg, and Austria itself secured against the danger of immediate
invasion; but by the retreat of the king from that city, he was again
left at full liberty to make Bavaria the seat of war. Indifferent
toward the fate of that country, and weary of the restraint which his
union with the Elector imposed upon him, the Duke of Friedland eagerly
seized the opportunity of separating from this burdensome associate,
and prosecuting, with renewed earnestness, his favorite plans. Still
adhering to his purpose of detaching Saxony from its Swedish
alliance, he selected that country for his winter quarters, hoping by
his destructive presence to force the Elector the more readily into
his views.

No conjuncture could be