r
their home and country, regular military schools were established, which
educated a race of excellent warriors, by which means the army might in
a manner recruit itself in the course of a long campaign. No wonder,
then, if these wandering nations exhausted every territory in which they
encamped, and by their immense consumption raised the necessaries of
life to an exorbitant price. All the mills of Nuremberg were
insufficient to grind the corn required for each day; and 15,000 pounds
of bread, which were daily delivered, by the town into the Swedish camp,
excited, without allaying, the hunger of the soldiers. The laudable
exertions of the magistrates of Nuremberg could not prevent the greater
part of the horses from dying for want of forage, while the increasing
mortality in the camp consigned more than a hundred men daily to the
grave.

To put an end to these distresses, Gustavus Adolphus, relying on his
numerical superiority, left his lines on the 25th day, forming before
the enemy in order of battle, while he cannonaded the duke's camp from
three batteries erected on the side of the Rednitz. But the duke
remained immoveable in his entrenchments, and contented himself with
answering this challenge by a distant fire of cannon and musketry. His
plan was to wear out the king by his inactivity, and by the force of
famine to overcome his resolute determination; and neither the
remonstrances of Maximilian, and the impatience of his army, nor the
ridicule of his opponent, could shake his purpose. Gustavus, deceived
in his hope of forcing a battle, and compelled by his increasing
necessities, now attempted impossibilities, and resolved to storm a
position which art and nature had combined to render impregnable.

Intrusting his own camp to the militia of Nuremberg, on the fifty-eighth
day of his encampment, (the festival of St. Bartholomew,) he advanced
in full order of battle, and passing the Rednitz at Furth, easily drove
the enemy's outposts before him. The main army of the Imperialists was
posted on the steep heights between the Biber and the Rednitz, called
the Old Fortress and Altenberg; while the camp itself, commanded by
these eminences, spread out immeasurably along the plain. On these
heights, the whole of the artillery was placed. Deep trenches
surrounded inaccessible redoubts, while thick barricadoes, with pointed
palisades, defended the approaches to the heights, from the summits of
which, Wallenstein calmly a