gem through
the beleaguering Croats, and kept up the spirits of his men by daily
reviews and by the cheerful countenance which he always wore.

The Swedish columns were gradually closing in towards Nuremberg. One was
led by the chancellor Oxenstiern, to whom had been committed the care of
the Middle Rhine and the Lower Palatinate, where he had been confronted
by the Spanish troops under Don Philip de Sylva.

On the 11th July, leaving Horn with a small force to oppose the
Spaniards, the chancellor set out to join his master. On the way he
effected a junction with the forces of the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel.
This general had been opposed in Westphalia by Pappenheim, but he seized
the opportunity when the latter had marched to relieve Maestricht, which
was besieged by Frederic of Nassau, to march away and join Oxenstiern.

The Scotch officers Ballandine and Alexander Hamilton were with their
regiment in the Duchy of Magdeburg. When the news of the king's danger
reached them without waiting for instructions they marched to Halle and
joining a portion of the division of the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, to which
they were attached, pushed on to Zeitz, and were there joined by the
duke himself, who had hurried on from the Lake of Constance, attended
only by his guards, but, picking up five Saxon regiments in Franconia.
Together they passed on to Wurtzburg, where they joined Oxenstiern and
the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel. General Banner, with the fourth corps,
was at Augsburg, opposed to Cratz, who was at the head of the remains of
Tilly's old army.

Slipping away from his foes he marched to Windsheim, and was there
joined by a body of troops under Bernhard of Weimar. The force from
Wurtzburg soon afterwards came up, and the whole of the detached corps,
amounting to 49,000 men, being now collected, they marched to Bruck,
ten miles north of Nuremberg. Three days later, on the 16th of August,
Gustavus rode into their camp, and on the 21st marched at their head
into Nuremberg, unhindered by the Imperialists.

Gustavus probably calculated that the Imperialists would now move down
and offer battle; but Wallenstein, who had detached 10,000 men to bring
up supplies, could not place in the field a number equal to those of the
reinforcements, and preferred to await an attack in the position which
he had prepared with such care. He knew the straits to which Nuremberg
and its defenders were reduced, and the impossibility there would be of
feed