Count Coloredo commanded on the left, Holk on the right,
Terzky in the centre.
As the Swedish army advanced beyond Chursitz the seven heavy pieces
of artillery on the side of the road opened upon them, doing much
execution, while their own lighter guns could not reply effectively.
The Swedes pressed forward to come to close quarters. The left
wing, led by Duke Bernhard, was the first to arrive upon the scene
of action. Gallantly led by the duke his men forced the ditches,
cleared the road, charged the deadly battery, killed or drove away
the gunners, and rushed with fury on the Imperialist right.
Holk, a resolute commander, tried in vain to stem the assault;
the ardour of the Swedes was irresistible, and they scattered, one
after the other, his three brigades. The battle seemed already lost
when Wallenstein himself took his place at the head of the fourth
brigade, and fell upon the Swedes, who were disordered by the
rapidity and ardour of their charge, while at the same moment he
launched three regiments of cavalry on their flanks.
The Swedes fought heroically but in vain; step by step they were
driven back, the battery was recaptured, and the guns, which in the
excitement of the advance the captors had omitted to spike, were
retaken by the Imperialists.
In the meantime on the right the king had also forced the road,
and had driven from the field the Croats and Poles opposed to him,
and he was on the point of wheeling his troops to fall on the flank
of the Imperialist centre when one of Duke Bernhard's aides-de-camp
dashed up with the news that the left wing had fallen back broken
and in disorder.
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