True Description of the Great and Bloody Battle near the Town of Lützen (broadsheet)
A single-sheet print issued after the battle of Lützen in November 1632, with an engraved plan and a narrative of the fighting and of the death of Gustavus Adolphus. It tells the story from the Swedish and Protestant side.
The sheet is anonymous. Its title dates the battle between the king of Sweden and the imperial general Wallenstein to 6 November 1632, by the old calendar then used in Protestant Germany; in the new calendar that is 16 November. It gives the watchwords of the two armies, “God with us” for the Swedes and “Jesus Maria” for the imperial side.
It reports a council of war in which the king says that if he falls he dies for the honour of God, for God’s word and for German liberty, his speeches to his Swedish, Finnish and German troops, and how he rode too far in among the enemy with his cavalry, was mortally wounded, and was found a quarter of an hour later with five shots and several wounds. The speeches are what his own side printed after his death and cannot be checked. The sheet is cited in the Thirty Years’ War and the Peace of Westphalia for the date and manner of his death and for how his cause was presented.
Cited in
- 1618 to 1648, firm date