Oxenstiern, an upright and conscientious man, was disgusted at
the greed of these princes and nobles who professed to be warring
solely in defence of their religious liberties, and he once
exclaimed that he would have it entered in the Swedish archives as
an everlasting memorial that a prince of the German empire made a
request for such and such territory from a Swedish nobleman, and
that the Swedish noble complied with the request by granting him
German lands. However, the negotiations were at last completed, the
Saxons marched towards Lusatia and Silesia to act in conjunction
with Count Thurn against the Austrians in that quarter, a part of
the Swedish army was led by the Duke of Weimar into Franconia, and
the other by George, Duke of Brunswick, into Westphalia and Lower
Saxony.
When Gustavus had marched south from Ingolstadt on the news of
Wallenstein's entry into Saxony he had left the Count Palatine of
Birkenfeld and General Banner to maintain the Swedish conquests in
Bavaria. These generals had in the first instance pressed their
conquests southward as far as Lake Constance; but towards the end
of the year the Bavarian General Altringer pressed them with so
powerful an army that Banner sent urgent requests to Horn to come
to his assistance from Alsace, where he had been carrying all before
him. Confiding his conquests to the Rhinegrave Otto Ludwig, Horn
marched at the head of seven thousand men towards Swabia.
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