Battle of Lützen

On 16 November 1632 Gustavus Adolphus attacked Wallenstein's imperial army, which had taken up position along a road near Lützen. A thick morning fog delayed the start of the battle, and the fighting that followed was confused and fierce, with the road and its ditches at the centre. Gustavus led a cavalry charge on the right, and in the smoke he was separated from his men, shot and killed. The Swedes, angry rather than discouraged, took the battlefield. Wallenstein withdrew and the imperial army left Saxony, but the Swedish cause had lost its king and best commander.

Who won Lützen is debated: the Swedes held the field, but they had lost their king and the strategic result was uncertain. Accounts of Gustavus' death are muddled by fog and by the political interest of different sides in how he died, and a number of theories, including that he was shot by one of his own officers, have been put forward without proof. His body was found stripped and trampled, and the details of the identification are told in several versions. The battlefield was later marked by a memorial where he fell, and the exact position of the road and of the fighting has shifted slightly in later retellings.