Slipping away from his foes he marched to Windsheim, and was there joined by a body of troops under Bernhard of Weimar.  The force from Wurtzburg soon afterwards came up, and the whole of the detached corps, amounting to 49,000 men, being now collected, they marched to Bruck, ten miles north of Nuremberg.  Three days later, on the 16th of August, Gustavus rode into their camp, and on the 21st marched at their head into Nuremberg, unhindered by the Imperialists.

Gustavus probably calculated that the Imperialists would now move down and offer battle; but Wallenstein, who had detached 10,000 men to bring up supplies, could not place in the field a number equal to those of the reinforcements, and preferred to await an attack in the position which he had prepared with such care.  He knew the straits to which Nuremberg and its defenders were reduced, and the impossibility there would be of feeding the new arrivals.

The country round for a vast distance had been long since stripped of provisions, and Gustavus had no course open to him but to march away with his army and leave the city to its fate, or to attack the Imperialists in their stronghold.

On the day after his arrival, the 21st of August, Gustavus marched out and opened a cannonade upon the Imperialists’ position, in order to induce Wallenstein to come down and give battle.  Wallenstein was not, however, to be tempted, but kept his whole army busy with the spade and axe further intrenching his position.  The next day the king brought his guns nearer to the enemy’s camp, and for twenty-four hours kept up a heavy fire.  The only result, however, was that Wallenstein fell back a few hundred yards on to two ridges, on one of which was the ruined castle called the Alte Veste; the other was known as the Altenburg.  The ascent to these was steep and craggy, and they were covered by a thick forest.  Here Wallenstein formed in front of his position a threefold barrier of felled trees woven and interlaced with each other, each barrier rising in a semicircle one above the other.  Before the Swedish cannon ceased to fire the new position of the Imperialists had been made impregnable.

Unfortunately for Gustavus he had at this moment lost the services of the best officer in his army, Sir John Hepburn, whom he had always regarded as his right hand.  The quarrel had arisen from some trifling circumstance, and Gustavus in the heat of the moment made some disparaging allusion to the religion of Hepburn, who was a Catholic and also to that officer’s love of dress and finery.  The indignant Hepburn at once resigned his commission and swore never again to draw his sword in the service of the king —­ a resolution to which he adhered, although Gustavus, when his anger cooled, endeavoured in every way to appease the angry soldier.