With Pappenheim, the good fortune of the Imperialists departed.  The cavalry of the left wing, already beaten, and only rallied by his exertions, no sooner missed their victorious leader than they gave up everything for lost and abandoned the field of battle in spiritless despair.  The right wing fell into the same confusion, with the exception of a few regiments which the bravery of their colonels Goetz, Terzky, Colloredo, and Piccolomini compelled to keep their ground.  The Swedish infantry, with prompt determination, profited by the enemy’s confusion.  To fill up the gaps which death had made in the front line, they formed both lines into one, and with it made the final and decisive charge.  A third time they crossed the trenches, and a third time they captured the battery.  The sun was setting when the two lines closed.  The strife grew hotter as it drew to an end; the last efforts of strength were mutually exerted, and skill and courage did their utmost to repair in these precious moments the fortune of the day.  It was in vain; despair endows every one with superhuman strength; no one can conquer, no one will give way.  The art of war seemed to exhaust its powers on one side, only to unfold some new and untried masterpiece of skill on the other.  Night and darkness at last put at end to the fight, before the fury of the combatants was exhausted; and the contest ceased only when no one could any longer find an antagonist.  Both armies separated, as if by tacit agreement; the trumpets sounded, and each party claiming the victory, quitted the field.

The artillery on both sides, as the horses could not be found, remained all night upon the field, at once the reward and the evidence of victory to him who should hold it.  Wallenstein, in his haste to leave Leipzic and Saxony, forgot to remove his part.  Not long after the battle was ended, Pappenheim’s infantry, who had been unable to follow the rapid movements of their general and who amounted to six regiments, marched on the field, but the work was done.  A few hours earlier, so considerable a reinforcement would perhaps have decided the day in favor of the Imperialists; and, even now, by remaining on the field, they might have saved the duke’s artillery and made a prize of that of the Swedes.  But they had received no orders to act; and, uncertain as to the issue of the battle, they retired to Leipzic, where they hoped to join the main body.

The Duke of Friedland had retreated thither, and was followed on the morrow by the scattered remains of his army, without artillery, without colors, and almost without arms.  The Duke of Weimar, it appears, after the toils of this bloody day, allowed the Swedish army some repose, between Luetzen and Weissenfels, near enough to the field of battle to oppose any attempt the enemy might make to recover it.  Of the two armies, more than 9,000 men lay dead; a still greater number were wounded, and, among the Imperialists, scarcely a man escaped from the field uninjured.  The entire plain from Luetzen to the Canal was strewed with the wounded, the dying, and the dead.  Many of the principal nobility had fallen on both sides.  Even the Abbot of Fulda, who had mingled in the combat as a spectator, paid for his curiosity and his ill-timed zeal with his life.  History says nothing of prisoners; a further proof of the animosity of the combatants, who neither gave nor took quarter.