Wallenstein believed the campaign was over for that year and the Swedes in winter quarters, and was taken completely by surprise.  Had the King given battle that night, he would have wiped the enemy out.  Two things, in themselves of little account, delayed him:  a small brook that crossed his path, and the freshly plowed fields.  His men were tired after the long march and he decided to let them rest.  It was Wallenstein’s chance.  Overnight he posted his army north of the highway that leads from Luetzen to Leipzig, dug deep the ditches that enclosed it, and made breastworks of the dirt.  Sunrise found sheltered behind them twenty-seven thousand seasoned veterans to whom Gustav Adolf could oppose but twenty thousand; but he had more guns and they were better served.

As the day broke the Swedish army, drawn up in battle array, intoned Luther’s hymn, “A mighty fortress is our God,” and cheered the King.  He wore a leathern doublet and a gray mantle.  To the pleadings of his officers that he put on armor he replied only, “God is my armor.”  “To-day,” he cried as he rode along the lines, “will end all our hardships.”  He himself took command of the right wing, the gallant Duke Bernhard of the left.  As at Breitenfeld, the rallying cry was, “God with us!”

The King hoped to crush his enemy utterly, and the whole line attacked at once with great fury.  From the start victory leaned toward the Swedish army.  Then suddenly in the wild tumult of battle a heavy fog settled upon the field.  What followed was all confusion.  No one knows the rights of it to this day.  The King led his famous yellow and blue regiments against the enemy’s left.  “The black fellows there,” he shouted, pointing to the Emperor’s cuirassiers in their black armor, “attack them!” Just then an adjutant reported that his infantry was hard pressed.  “Follow me,” he commanded, and, clapping spurs to his horse, set off at full speed for the threatened quarter.  In the fog he lost his way and ran into the cuirassiers.  His two attendants were shot down and a bullet crushed the King’s right arm.  He tried to hide the fact that he was wounded, but pain and loss of blood made him faint and he asked the Duke of Lauenburg who rode with him to help him out of the crush.  At that moment a fresh troop of horsemen bore down upon them and their leader, Moritz von Falkenberg, shot the King through the body with the exultant cry, “You I have long sought!” The words had hardly left his lips when he fell with a bullet through his head.

The King swayed in the saddle and lost the reins.  “Save yourself,” he whispered to the Duke, “I am done for.”  The Duke put his arm around him to support him, but the cuirassiers surged against them and tore them apart.  The King’s horse was shot in the neck and threw its rider.  Awhile he hung by the stirrup and was dragged over the trampled field.  Then the horse shook itself free and ran through the lines, spreading the tidings of the King’s fall afar.