At length the fog rose and the sun broke out, and both sides made ready for the struggle.  Wallenstein, though suffering from a severe attack of his persistent enemy, the gout, mounted his horse and prepared his troops for the assault.  His infantry were drawn up in squares, with the cavalry on their flanks, in front a ditch defended by artillery.  His purpose was defensive, that of Gustavus offensive.  The Swedish king mounted in his turn, placed himself at the head of his right wing, and, brandishing his sword, exclaimed, “Now, onward!  May our God direct us!  Lord!  Lord! help me this day to fight for the glory of Thy name!” Then, throwing aside his cuirass, which annoyed him on account of a slight wound he had recently received, he cried, “God is my shield!” and led his men in a furious charge upon the cannon-guarded ditch.

The guns belched forth their deadly thunders, many fell, but the remainder broke irresistibly over the defences and seized the battery, driving the imperialists back in disorder.  The cavalry, which had charged the black cuirassiers of Wallenstein, was less successful.  They were repulsed, and the cuirassiers fiercely charged the Swedish infantry in flank, driving it back beyond the trenches.

This repulse brought on the great disaster of the day.  Gustavus, seeing his infantry driven back, hastened to their aid with a troop of horse, and through the disorder of the field became separated from his men, only a few of whom accompanied him, among them Francis, Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg.  His short-sightedness, or the foggy condition of the atmosphere, unluckily brought him too near a party of the black cuirassiers, and in an instant a shot struck him, breaking his left arm.

“I am wounded; take me off the field,” he said to the Duke of Lauenburg, and turned his horse to retire from the perilous vicinity.

As he did so a second ball struck him in the back.  “My God!  My God!” he exclaimed, falling from the saddle, while his horse, which had been wounded in the neck, dashed away, dragging the king, whose foot was entangled in the stirrup, for some distance.

The duke fled, but Luchau, the master of the royal horse, shot the officer who had wounded the king.  The cuirassiers advanced, while Leubelfing, the king’s page, a boy of eighteen, who had alone remained with him, was endeavoring to raise him up.

“Who is he?” they asked.

The boy refused to tell, and was shot and mortally wounded.

“I am the King of Sweden!” Gustavus is said to have exclaimed to his foes, who had surrounded and were stripping him.

On hearing this they sought to carry him off, but a charge of the Swedish cavalry at that moment drove them from their prey.  As they retired they discharged their weapons at the helpless king, one of the cuirassiers shooting him through the head as he rushed past his prostrate form.

The sight of the king’s charger, covered with blood, and galloping with empty saddle past their ranks, told the Swedes the story of the disastrous event.  The news spread rapidly from rank to rank, carrying alarm wherever it came.  Some of the generals wished to retreat, but Duke Bernhard of Weimar put himself at the head of a regiment, ran its colonel through for refusing to obey him, and called on them to follow him to revenge their king.