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The following year the Imperial army was again defeated on the Lach. Thereupon Gustavus occupied München, though he was subsequently compelled by Wallenstein to evacuate the city. The last great victory of Gustavus was at Lützen in 1632, at which battle the great leader met his death.
At the same moment Lutzen was seen in flames, having been set on fire by command of the duke, to prevent his being outflanked on that side. The charge was now sounded; the cavalry rushed upon the enemy, and the infantry advanced against the trenches.
He had found many things within to arrange on a more practical foundation, many without to correct: for the long locks of most of the pupils; the circumstance that three Lutzen Jagers, one of whom had delivered the oration at a students' political meeting, had established the school; that Barop had been persecuted as a demagogue on account of his connection with a students' political society; and, finally, Froebel's relations with Switzerland and the liberal educational methods of the school, had roused the suspicions of the Berlin demagogue-hunters, and therefore demagogic tendencies, from which in reality it had always held aloof, were attributed to the institute.
When the Baron, intent upon this errand, entered the chamber of the Lord High Chancellor, it so happened that Kohlhaas was just then present, having been summoned by a messenger of the court to give certain explanations of which they stood in need concerning the deposit in Lützen.
Behind these, again, was erected a battery of seven large pieces of cannon, to support the fire from the trenches; and at the windmills, close behind Lutzen, fourteen smaller field pieces were ranged on an eminence, from which they could sweep the greater part of the plain.
This was the famous "Thirty Years' War," the greatest and most ferocious religious war known in history. Into it Sweden was drawn and the hand of Gustavus was potent in saving the Protestant cause from destruction. The final event in his career, in which he fell covered with glory on the fatal field of Lutzen, is dealt with in the German "Historical Tales."
As the disconcerted Baron faced around toward him, Kohlhaas stepped up to the table of the Chancellor, and, after taking time to explain to him, with the help of the papers in his wallet, several matters concerning the deposit in Lützen, took his leave.
The Duke of Weimar, it appears, after the toils of this bloody day, allowed the Swedish army some repose, between Lutzen and Weissenfels, near enough to the field of battle to oppose any attempt the enemy might make to recover it. Of the two armies, more than 9,000 men lay dead; a still greater number were wounded, and among the Imperialists, scarcely a man escaped from the field uninjured.
The forward movement was successful, and the union with Eugène was effected on April twenty-eighth. Two whole days elapsed, however, before the enemy was found, and it was May first when the French van drove in the Russian outposts from Lützen, ever famous as the scene of Wallenstein's overthrow by Gustavus Adolphus a hundred and eighty-one years earlier.
The veterans of Austerlitz, of Jena, of Friedland, and of Wagram had been recklessly sacrificed on the plains of Russia. He was victorious at Lützen on May 2, was joined by the King of Saxony, entered Dresden, and thence pushed across the Elbe. On the 21st the victory of Bautzen enabled him to advance to the Oder and occupy Breslau.
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