1632

Tilly saw, and grew pale. Near the front of his advancing tercios, he reined in his horse and stared back at the carnage.

'God in Heaven,' he muttered. Wallenstein had tried to warn him of the Swedish artillery. Wallenstein-that black-hearted Bohemian! Aye, he-and a dozen Polish officers in Tilly's service. But Tilly had not believed.

'God in Heaven,' he muttered again. For a moment, he thought of changing his attack. Wheeling, and driving down on those cursed guns.

Wheeling…

Tilly dismissed the notion instantly. His battles did not 'wheel.' Could not wheel. They were instruments of crushing victory, not clever maneuver.

'Victory,' he growled. Seventy-two years old he was, not a day less. Seventy-two years, not one of whose days had ever seen defeat.

'Onward!' he bellowed. The old general drew his sword and trotted toward the front. He waved the sword at the Swedish left.

'Onward!' he bellowed. 'Victory is there!'

The tercios obeyed, and obeyed, and obeyed-seventeen battles, down the line, slogged tenaciously forward. Not one of them faltered in their duty. Not one tercio, not one rank, not one file, not one man.

Torstensson splattered their entrails across the land. No matter. Those men had marched through entrails before. Torstensson painted the soil with their blood. No matter. Those men had bled before. Torstensson savaged them like no artillery in their grim experience. No matter. Tilly had never failed them before.

Murderers many of them were. Thieves and rapists too. Cowards, never.

The broken Swedish angle was in front of them now. Like a bear trailing gore, the tercios were about to mangle their prey.

At last!

'Father Tilly!' they bellowed. 'Jesu-Maria!'

***

But the angle was not broken. Not any longer. Horn-trusted Horn, trustworthy Horn-had reformed the line even before his king's orders arrived. The Swedish left now formed a solid corner for the battlefield. The imperial heavy cavalry had already broken against that Baltic rock. The tercios lumbered up and did no better.

Pike against pike, the Catholics were easily the equal of their foe. But the Swedish king was a believer in firepower more than cold steel. He had studied the methods of the Dutch, and tested them in Poland and Russia.

At Breitenfeld, the Swedes had a higher arquebus-to-pike ratio than their enemies. More important, Gustav Adolf had trained them to fight in shallow formations, following the Dutch example. Tilly's arquebusiers were arrayed thirty ranks deep. Most of those arquebuses could not be brought to bear. Gustav's, not more than six-just enough to allow time to reload while the front ranks fired.

The Swedish pikes held the tercios at bay long enough for the Swedish preponderance in firepower to bring down them down. Tilly's men never buckled. But they made no headway against the Swedish line. They simply died. And meanwhile, the king of Sweden prepared the death stroke.

Tilly and his tercios could not wheel, but Gustav Adolf could. Could, and did.

Chapter 36

The king himself led the charge up the slope, heading toward the imperial guns. 'Gott mit uns!' he bellowed, waving his cavalrymen forward with his saber.

Behind him, Anders Jцnsson rolled his eyes with exasperation. Gustav Adolf carried two wheel-lock pistols at his side, holstered to his saddle. But he never used them in battle. He claimed it was because the weapons were too inaccurate, but his bodyguard was skeptical. The king of Sweden was sensitive about his myopia. Jonsson thought his unwillingness to use pistols was simply because Gustav couldn't hit the proverbial broad side of a barn.

Anders spurred his horse alongside the king's. 'I'm supposed to be guarding you, Highness,' he snarled, 'not the other way around.'

Gustav grinned. 'Get a faster horse!' he bellowed. Again, he waved the saber. 'Gott mit uns!'

Behind them, the Smalanders and East Gothlanders echoed the words. From either side-the Finns were already curling around the slower Swedes-came the blood- curdling Finnish battle cry.

'Haakaa pддlle!'

***

Ahead of the cavalry charge, positioned almost at the crest of the shallow slope, were the imperial batteries. As slow as the tercios were, the big guns were slower still. Tilly's order for an oblique advance had caught the artillerymen by surprise. They were still hitching up the horses and oxen when Gustav started his charge.

The Catholic gunners stared at the thousands of Swedish and Finnish horsemen galloping toward them. They had no protection left beyond a small force of pikemen.

One of the gunners began hurriedly unhitching the lead horse from the trail of his six-pounder. 'What are you doing?' demanded his comrade.

'I'm getting out of here,' the gunner hissed. 'You'd better do the same, if you're smart. Those Finns are as savage as Croats.'

His partner blanched. The rammer had no experience with Finns, but he knew Croats. They formed a large part of the Habsburg dynasty's light cavalry, and were as famous for their cruelty as their horsemanship. Croats had no use for prisoners.

The gunner had unhitched the horse and was awkwardly climbing onto it. The horse had neither a saddle nor stirrups, and was guided by a simple halter. From a distance, his partner heard the faint sound of the Finnish battle cry. Haakaa pддlle? He didn't know the words.

'That means 'hack them down,' ' grunted the gunner. 'In case you were wondering.' He pounded his mount's flanks with spurless heels. The confused artillery horse broke into an awkward trot. Seconds later, inspired more by the fear and fury in his rider's voice than the naked boot heels, the horse lurched into a sudden gallop.

The gunner, riding bareback and without stirrups, was flung to the ground. He died soon thereafter. His broken neck was trampled by his partner's horse, as it made its own uncontrolled exit from the scene. Unlike the gunner, his comrade managed to stay on the horse's back by clutching the beast's mane. But it did him little good. The horse, unaccustomed to being ridden, was so terrified and confused that it galloped in a circle and brought the rammer into a knot of Finnish cavalrymen. Haakaa pддlle!

***

Most of the imperial artillerymen lacked the option of fleeing-or trying to-on horseback. There were few horse-drawn six-pounders in Tilly's army. Catholic armies favored twelve-pounders and huge twenty-four-pounders, drawn by oxen. The gunners simply escaped on foot-successfully, in all but a few instances. For all their savage reputation, the Finns were under Gustav's command and were accustomed to his discipline. The king had a short way with cavalrymen who went off on wild charges when there was royal work to be done.

'Take the cannons!' Gustav roared. Ignoring the imperial gunners and rammers scattering to the rear, the Finns stooped onto the guns like hawks. The few knots of artillerymen still trying to stand their ground were butchered within a minute or two. By the time Gustav Adolf and the slower Swedes galloped onto the scene, Tilly's entire artillery had been seized.

Gustav trotted back and forth on his charger. He had scabbarded his saber and was back to waving his hat. 'Turn them around!' he bellowed. His powerful voice, as always, carried well in a battle. 'I want those guns turned on Tilly! Now, d'you hear? Now! Move, move, move!'

The Finns ignored the command, knowing it was not intended for them. While they maintained a guard against enemy cavalry, hundreds of Smalanders and East Gothlanders dismounted. Hurriedly, they picked up the spikes discarded by the routed Catholic gunners and began levering the great weapons around. Even before the guns were repositioned, other cavalrymen were already beginning to load the pieces.

They were slower and less adept than Torstensson's men would have been, of course. But, unlike the cavalry of other armies, Gustav's men were cross-trained to serve as artillery or even, if need be, as infantry. Swedish cavalry, like the cavalry of other nations, was dominated by noblemen. But the Swedish aristocracy had little in the way of continental hauteur-and what little they began with was soon drummed out of them by their king's training and discipline.

Soon enough, the huge cannons were brought to bear on their target. Gustav did not wait to fire a coordinated volley, as Torstensson's artillery was trained to do. Each gun fired as soon as possible.

The fire was ragged, slow, and indifferently aimed. It mattered not at all. Tilly's army was now a crumpled and half-broken thing, distorted almost beyond recognition by the pressure of the battle. The rigid formations of the tercios had collapsed, compressed between Horn's unyielding line and the battering of Torstensson's artillery. Now, adding to their destruction, came the heavy fire of their own cannons. The huge mass of Catholic soldiers-not much more than a mob-was a target impossible to miss, even for the cavalrymen manning the captured guns. And the size of the cannonballs made up for their lack of accuracy. Unlike Torstensson's well-trained and experienced gunners, the cavalrymen failed more often than not in making the grazing shot. But against thousands of men packed so tightly they could barely move, the twelve- and twenty-four-pound balls which landed caused pure havoc.

For one of the rare times in his life, even Gustav was not tempted to launch another charge.

Well… Not much.

'Perhaps…' Jonsson heard him mutter. 'Perhaps…' The king was squinting at the distant enemy, raising himself up in his stirrups. His huge frame seemed like that of a brown bear, eyeing a crippled moose.

His bodyguard spoke hastily. 'It's a done thing, Your Majesty.' Jonsson pointed at the imperial forces with his saber. 'They're finished. It's over.'

The king took two or three deep breaths, and then eased himself back into the saddle. 'Yes.'

He heaved a sigh. 'They should surrender now. Their cavalry has all fled. No chance of making a sally. They're trapped.'

Jцnsson said nothing. There was no chance at all of their enemy surrendering. Not with Tilly in command.

'Poor Tilly,' mused Gustav. 'Pappenheim has ruined him twice. The butcher of Magdeburg. And now-forever-'