For
the moment he succeeded, but he was too weak in numbers to bear
the assault he had thus provoked. John of Werth, who commanded
the Imperial cavalry, charged down upon the Swedish horsemen and
overthrew them so completely that these, forced back upon their
infantry, threw them also into complete disorder.
The instant Horn had given the orders to retreat, Colonel Munro,
seeing the danger of the force being surrounded, formed up the
little remnant of his regiment and set off at the double to rejoin
the force of the duke. It was well that he did so, for just when
he had passed over the intervening ground the Imperialist cavalry,
fresh from the defeat of the Swedes, swept across the ground,
completely cutting off Horn's division from that of the duke. A few
minutes later Marshal Horn, surrounded on all sides by the enemy,
and feeling the impossibility of further resistance with his weakened
and diminished force, was forced to surrender with all his command.
Duke Bernhard narrowly escaped the same fate; but in the end he
managed to rally some nine thousand men and retreated towards the
Maine. The defeat was a terrible one; ten thousand men were killed
and wounded, and four thousand under Horn taken prisoners; all the
guns, equipage, and baggage fell into the hands of the enemy.
Nordlingen was the most decisive battle of the war; its effect was
to change a war which had hitherto been really only a civil war --
a war of religion -- into one with a foreign enemy.
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