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Both steps bespeak his desire to have ample space at his back before circling round his prey. On October 6th the corps of Soult and Lannes, helped by Murat's powerful cavalry, cut the Austrian lines on the Danube at Donauwörth, and gained a firm footing on the right bank.
So he left the Dutch to defend themselves against Villeroy, rapidly ascended the Rhine, before any of the enemy dreamed of his designs. From Mentz, he proceeded with forty thousand men to Heidelberg, and from Heidelberg to Donauworth, on the Danube, where his troops, which had effected a junction with the Austrians and Prussians, successfully engaged the Bavarians.
It was held by the Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg with two thousand five hundred men. The country round Donauworth is fertile and hilly, and Gustavus at once seized a height which commanded the place. The Bavarians were at work upon entrenchments here as the Swedes advanced, but were forced to fall back into the town. From the foot of the hill a suburb extended to the gates of the city.
The semaphore telegraph then in use had flashed from station to station its signals of the declaration of war and of the enemy's advance over the Inn, until the news reached Napoleon in Paris on the twelfth. On the sixteenth, after four days' almost unbroken travel, he reached Donauwörth.
The plan being approved, Hepburn drew off his brigade with its artillery, and marching five miles up the Danube crossed the river at the bridge of Hassfurt, and descended the opposite bank until he faced Donauworth.
"Should the Austrians attack before April tenth," were the orders given on March twenty-eighth, "the army shall be collected behind the Lech, the right occupying Augsburg, the left resting on the right bank of the Danube at Donauwörth." Then followed the most minute instructions to Berthier, explaining every move, and setting forth the reasons why Ratisbon had been chosen as headquarters.
On the 26th of March Gustavus arrived before the important town and fortress of Donauworth, being joined on the same day by the Laird of Foulis with his two regiments of horse and foot. Donauworth is the key to Swabia; it stands on the Danube, and was a strongly fortified place, its defences being further covered by fortifications upon a lofty eminence close by, named the Schellemberg.
There was but one place to cross to get at him, and right there he stood. The king seized Donauworth and Ulm, and under cover of the fire of seventy guns threw a bridge across the Lech. Three hundred Finns carrying picks and spades ran across the shaky planks upon which the fire of Tilly's whole artillery park was concentrated.
A ravelin is an outwork of a fortified building. p. 86, l. 16. It was the attempt in 1607 to force Catholicism on the Protestants of the free city of Donauwörth which led to the formation of the Protestant Union in 1608. p. 87, l. 9. The Duringer Wald. Thuringia Wald. p. 97, l. 29. p. 98, l. 4. p. 99, l. 7. Gustavus Adolphus had entered Nuremberg March 1631.
Denmark, which had promised its assistance to the Protestants, was persuaded to remain quiet. Sweden was engaged in a war with the Poles. "The Protestant army was assembled at Ulm; the army of the League, under the order of Maximilian of Bavaria, was at Donauworth.
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