King's, on the contrary, moved in
smaller bodies, quickly thrown upon the point of danger, and his
artillery was so distributed among them as to make every shot tell
on the compact body of the enemy. Whichever way Pappenheim turned he
found a firm front, bristling with guns, opposing him. Seven times
he threw himself upon the living wall; each time his horsemen were
flung back, their lines thinned and broken. The field was strewn
with their dead. Tilly, anxiously watching, threw up his hands in
despair. "This man will lose me honor and fame, and the Emperor his
lands," he cried. The charge ended in wild flight, and Tilly saw
that he must himself attack, to turn the tide.

On the double-quick his columns of spearmen charged down the
heights, swept the Saxons from the field, and fell upon the Swedish
left. The shock was tremendous. General Gustav Horn gave back to let
his second line come up, and held the ground stubbornly against
fearful odds. Word was brought the King of his danger. With the
right wing that had crushed Pappenheim he hurried to the rescue. In
the heat of the fight the armies had changed position, and the
Swedes found themselves climbing the hill upon which Tilly's
artillery was posted. Seeing this, the King made one of the rapid
movements that more than once won him the day. Raising the cry,
"Remember Magdeburg!" he carried the position with his Finns by a
sudden overwhelming assault, and turned the guns upon the dense
masses of the enemy fighting below.

In vain they stormed the heights. Both wings and the centre closed
in upon them, and the day was lost. Tilly fled, wounded, and
narrowly escaped capture. A captain in the Swedish army, who was
called Long Fritz because of his great height, was at his heels
hammering him on the head with the butt of his pistol. A staff
officer shot him down in passing, and freed his chief. Twilight fell
upon a battle-field where seven thousand men lay dead, two-thirds of
them the flower of the Emperor's army. Blood-stained and
smoke-begrimed, Gustav Adolf and his men knelt on the field and
thanked God for the victory.

Had the King's friend and adviser, Axel Oxenstjerna, been with him
he might have marched upon Vienna then, leaving the Protestant
Estates to settle their own affairs, and very likely have ended the
war. Gustav Adolf thought of Tilly who would return with another
army. Oxenstjerna saw farther, weighing things upon the scales of
the diplomatist.

"How