march, which was directed on Forchheim, was marked by
the most frightful ravages; but he was too far advanced to be overtaken
by the king. The latter now divided his army, which the exhausted
country was unable to support, and leaving one division to protect
Franconia, with the other he prosecuted in person his conquests in
Bavaria.

In the mean time, the imperial Bavarian army had marched into the
Bishopric of Bamberg, where the Duke of Friedland a second time mustered
his troops. He found this force, which so lately had amounted to 60,000
men, diminished by the sword, desertion, and disease, to about 24,000,
and of these a fourth were Bavarians. Thus had the encampments before
Nuremberg weakened both parties more than two great battles would have
done, apparently without advancing the termination of the war, or
satisfying, by any decisive result, the expectations of Europe. The
king's conquests in Bavaria, were, it is true, checked for a time by
this diversion before Nuremberg, and Austria itself secured against the
danger of immediate invasion; but by the retreat of the king from that
city, he was again left at full liberty to make Bavaria the seat of war.
Indifferent towards the fate of that country, and weary of the restraint
which his union with the Elector imposed upon him, the Duke of Friedland
eagerly seized the opportunity of separating from this burdensome
associate, and prosecuting, with renewed earnestness, his favourite
plans. Still adhering to his purpose of detaching Saxony from its
Swedish alliance, he selected that country for his winter quarters,
hoping by his destructive presence to force the Elector the more readily
into his views.

No conjuncture could be more favourable for his designs. The Saxons had
invaded Silesia, where, reinforced by troops from Brandenburgh and
Sweden, they had gained several advantages over the Emperor's troops.
Silesia would be saved by a diversion against the Elector in his own
territories, and the attempt was the more easy, as Saxony, left
undefended during the war in Silesia, lay open on every side to attack.
The pretext of rescuing from the enemy an hereditary dominion of
Austria, would silence the remonstrances of the Elector of Bavaria, and,
under the mask of a patriotic zeal for the Emperor's interests,
Maximilian might be sacrificed without much difficulty. By giving up
the rich country of Bavaria to the Swedes, he hoped to be left
unmolested by them in his ente