your heads to see me die," he shouted to the soldiers. They
rallied: the king remounted his horse, bearing along with him a regiment
of Smalandaise cavalry. "You will behave like good fellows, all of you,"
he said to them, as he dashed over the two ditches, carrying, as he went,
two batteries of the enemy's cannon. "He took off his hat and rendered
thanks to God for the victory He was giving him."

Two regiments of Imperial cuirassiers rode up to meet him; the king
charged them at the head of his Swedes; he was in the thickest of the
fight; his horse received a ball through the neck; Gustavus had his arm
broken; the bone came through the sleeve of his coat; he wanted to have
it attended to, and begged the Duke of Saxe-Altenburg to assist him in
leaving the battle-field; at that very moment, Falkenberg, lieutenant-
colonel in the Imperial army, galloped his horse on to the king and shot
him, point-blank, in the back with a pistol. The king fell from his
horse; and Falkenberg took to flight, pursued by one of the king's
squires, who killed him. Gustavus Adolphus was left alone with a German
page, who tried to raise him; the king could no longer speak; three
Austrian cuirassiers surrounded him, asking the page the name of the
wounded man; the youngster would not say, and fell, riddled with wounds,
on his master's body; the Austrians sent one more pistol-shot into the
dying man's temple, and stripped him of his clothes, leaving him only his
shirt. The melley recommenced, and successive charges of cavalry passed
over the hero's corpse; there were counted nine open wounds and thirteen
scars on his body when it was recovered towards the evening.

[Illustration: Death of Gustavus and his Page----290]

One of the king's officers, who had been unable to quit the fight in
time to succor him, went and announced his fall to Duke Bernard of
Saxe-Weimar. To him a retreat was suggested; but, "We mustn't think of
that," said he, "but of death or victory." A lieutenant-colonel of a
cavalry regiment made some difficulty about resuming the attack: the duke
passed his sword through his body, and, putting himself at the head of
the troops, led them back upon the enemy's intrenchments which he carried
and lost three times. At last he succeeded in turning the cannon upon
the enemy, and "that gave the turn to the victory, which, nevertheless,
was disputed till night."

"It was one of the most horrible ever heard of," says Cardinal R