Pappenheim died the next day of his wounds at Leipzig; an irreparable loss to the imperial army, which this brave warrior had so often led on to victory.  The battle of Prague, where together with Wallenstein, he was present as colonel, was the beginning of his heroic career.  Dangerously wounded, with a few troops, he made an impetuous attack on a regiment of the enemy, and lay for several hours mixed with the dead upon the field, beneath the weight of his horse, till he was discovered by some of his own men in plundering.  With a small force he defeated, in three different engagements, the rebels in Upper Austria, though 40,000 strong.  At the battle of Leipzic, he for a long time delayed the defeat of Tilly by his bravery, and led the arms of the Emperor on the Elbe and the Weser to victory.  The wild impetuous fire of his temperament, which no danger, however apparent, could cool, or impossibilities check, made him the most powerful arm of the imperial force, but unfitted him for acting at its head.  The battle of Leipzic, if Tilly may be believed, was lost through his rash ardor.  At the destruction of Magdeburg, his hands were deeply steeped in blood; war rendered savage and ferocious his disposition, which had been cultivated by youthful studies and various travels.  On his forehead, two red streaks, like swords, were perceptible, with which nature had marked him at his very birth.  Even in his later years these became visible, as often as his blood was stirred by passion; and superstition easily persuaded itself that the future destiny of the man was thus impressed upon the forehead of the child.  As a faithful servant of the House of Austria, he had the strongest claims on the gratitude of both its lines, but he did not survive to enjoy the most brilliant proof of their regard.  A messenger was already on his way from Madrid, bearing to him the order of the Golden Fleece, when death overtook him at Leipzic.

Though Te Deum, in all Spanish and Austrian lands, was sung in honor of a victory, Wallenstein himself, by the haste with which he quitted Leipzic and, soon after, all Saxony, and by renouncing his original design of fixing there his winter-quarters, openly confessed his defeat.  It is true he made one more feeble attempt to dispute, even in his flight, the honor of victory, by sending out his Croats next morning to the field; but the sight of the Swedish army drawn up in order of battle, immediately dispersed these flying bands, and Duke Bernard, by keeping possession of the field, and soon after by the capture of Leipzic, maintained indisputably his claim to the title of victor.