Together they passed
on to Wurtzburg, where they joined Oxenstiern and the Landgrave
of Hesse-Cassel. General Banner, with the fourth corps, was at
Augsburg, opposed to Cratz, who was at the head of the remains of
Tilly's old army.
Slipping away from his foes he marched to Windsheim, and was there
joined by a body of troops under Bernhard of Weimar. The force from
Wurtzburg soon afterwards came up, and the whole of the detached
corps, amounting to 49,000 men, being now collected, they marched
to Bruck, ten miles north of Nuremberg. Three days later, on the
16th of August, Gustavus rode into their camp, and on the 21st
marched at their head into Nuremberg, unhindered by the Imperialists.
Gustavus probably calculated that the Imperialists would now move
down and offer battle; but Wallenstein, who had detached 10,000 men
to bring up supplies, could not place in the field a number equal
to those of the reinforcements, and preferred to await an attack
in the position which he had prepared with such care. He knew the
straits to which Nuremberg and its defenders were reduced, and the
impossibility there would be of feeding the new arrivals.
The country round for a vast distance had been long since stripped
of provisions, and Gustavus had no course open to him but to march
away with his army and leave the city to its fate, or to attack
the Imperialists in their stronghold.
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