ories torn from their
hands. In the following year Tilly had his thigh shattered by a
cannon-ball at the battle of the Lech, and died in excruciating agonies.

Such were the preludes to the scene we have described. The Lutheran
princes everywhere joined the victorious Gustavus; Austria itself was
threatened by his irresistible arms; and the emperor, in despair, called
Wallenstein again to the command, yielding to the most extreme demands
of this imperious chief.

The next scene was that we have described, in which the armies of
Gustavus and Wallenstein lay face to face at Nuremberg, each waiting
until starvation should force the other to fight or to retreat.

Gustavus had sent for reinforcements, and his army steadily grew. That
of Wallenstein dwindled away under the assaults of famine and
pestilence. A large convoy of provisions intended for Wallenstein was
seized by the Swedes. Soon afterwards Gustavus was so strongly
reinforced that his army grew to seventy thousand men. At his back lay
Nuremberg, his faithful ally, ready to aid him with thirty thousand
fighting men besides. As his force grew that of Wallenstein shrank,
until by the end of the siege pestilence and want had reduced his army
to twenty-four thousand men.

The Swedes were the first to yield in this game of starvation. As their
numbers grew their wants increased, and at length, furious with famine,
they made a desperate assault upon the imperial camp. They were driven
back, with heavy loss. Two weeks more Gustavus waited, and then,
despairing of drawing his opponent from his works, he broke camp and
marched with sounding trumpets past his adversary's camp, who quietly
let him go. The Swedes had lost twenty thousand men, and Nuremberg ten
thousand of her inhabitants, during this period of hunger and slaughter.

This was in September, 1632. In November of the same year the two armies
met again, on the plain of Luetzen, in Saxony, not far from the scene of
Tilly's defeat, a year before. Wallenstein, on the retreat of Gustavus,
had set fire to his own encampment and marched away, burning the
villages around Nuremberg and wasting the country as he advanced, with
Saxony as his goal. Gustavus, who had at first marched southward into
the Catholic states, hastened to the relief of his allies. On the 15th
of November the two great opponents came once more face to face,
prepared to stake the cause of religious freedom in Germany on the issue
of battle.

Early