Battle of Lützen ( 1632 ) The Battle of Lützen ( 1632 ) was one of the most decisive battles of the Thirty Years ' War . It was a Protestant victory , but cost the life of one of the most important leaders of the Protestant alliance , Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden , which caused the Protestant campaign to lose direction . Prelude to the battle . Two days before the battle , on 14 November ( in the Gregorian calendar , 4th in the Julian calendar ) the Roman Catholic general Wallenstein decided to split his forces and withdraw his main headquarters back towards Leipzig . He expected no further move that year from the Protestant army , led by the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus , since unseasonably wintry weather was making it difficult to camp in the open countryside ; however , Gustavus Adolphus ' army marched out of camp towards Wallenstein ' s last - known position and attempted to catch him by surprise , but his trap was sprung prematurely on the afternoon of 15 November , by a small force left by Wallenstein at the Rippach stream , about 5 – 6 kilometres south of Lützen . A skirmish delayed the Swedish advance by two or three hours , thus when night fell the two armies were still separated by about 2 – 3 kilometres ( 1 – 2 miles ) . Wallenstein had learned of the Swedish approach on the afternoon of 15 November . Seeing the danger , he dispatched a note to General Pappenheim ordering him to return as quickly as possible with his army corps . Pappenheim received the note after midnight , and immediately set off to rejoin Wallenstein with most of his troops . During the night , Wallenstein deployed his army in a defensive position along the main Lützen - Leipzig road , which he reinforced with trenches . He anchored his right flank on a low hill , on which he placed his main artillery battery . The day of battle . Morning mist delayed the Swedish army ' s advance , but by 9 am the rival armies were in sight of each other . Because of a complex network of waterways and further misty weather , it took until 11 am before the Protestant force was deployed and ready to launch its attack . Pappenheim ' s death . Initially , the battle went well for the Protestants , who managed to outflank Wallenstein ' s weak left wing . After a while , Pappenheim arrived with 2 , 000 – 3 , 000 cavalry and halted the Swedish assault . This made Wallenstein exclaim , " Thus I know my Pappenheim ! " . However , during the charge , Pappenheim was fatally wounded by a small - calibre Swedish cannonball . At the same time , Pappenheim ' s counterattack collapsed . He died later in the day while being evacuated from the field in a coach . Gustavus ' Adolphus ' disappearance and death . The cavalry action on the open Imperial left wing continued , with both sides deploying reserves in an attempt to gain the upper hand . Soon afterwards , towards 1 : 00 pm , Gustavus Adolphus was himself killed while leading a cavalry charge on this wing . In the thick mix of gun smoke and fog covering the field , he was separated from his fellow riders and killed by several shots . His fate remained unknown for some time . However , when the gunnery paused and the smoke cleared , his horse was spotted between the two lines , Gustavus himself not on it and nowhere to be seen . His disappearance stopped the initiative of the hitherto successful Swedish right wing , while a search was conducted . His partly stripped body was found an hour or two later , and was secretly evacuated from the field in a Swedish artillery wagon . Meanwhile , the veteran infantry of the Swedish center had continued to follow orders and tried to assault the strongly entrenched Imperial center and right wing . Their attack was a catastrophic failure — they were first decimated by Imperial artillery and infantry fire and then ridden over by Imperial cavalry charging from behind the cover of their own infantry . Two of the oldest and most experienced infantry units of the Swedish army , the ' Old Blue ' Regiment and the Yellow or ' Court ' Regiment were effectively wiped out in these assaults ; remnants from them streamed to the rear . Soon most of the Swedish front line was in chaotic retreat . The royal preacher , Jakob Fabricius , rallied a few Swedish officers around him and started to sing a psalm . This act had many of the soldiers halt in hundreds . The foresight of Swedish third - in - command ' Generalmajor ' Dodo zu Innhausen und Knyphausen also helped staunch the rout : he had kept the Swedish second or reserve line well out of range of Imperial gunfire , and this allowed the broken Swedish front line to rally . Bernhard of Saxe - Weimar . By about 3 PM , the Protestant second - in - command Bernhard of Saxe - Weimar , having learned of the king ' s death , returned from the left wing and assumed command over the entire army . He vowed to win the battle in retribution for Gustavus or die trying , but contrary to popular legend tried to keep the king ' s fate secret from the army as a whole . ( Although rumours were circulating much earlier , it was only the following day that Bernhard collected his surviving officers together and told them the truth . ) The result was a grim struggle , with terrible casualties on both sides . Finally , with dusk falling , the Swedes captured the linchpin of Wallenstein ' s position , the main Imperial artillery battery . The Imperial forces retired back out of its range , leaving the field to the Swedes . At about 6 pm , Pappenheim ' s infantry , about 3 , 000 – 4 , 000 strong , after marching all day towards the gunfire , arrived on the battlefield . Although night had fallen , they wished to counterattack the Swedes . Wallenstein , however , believed the situation hopeless and instead ordered his army to withdraw to Leipzig under cover of the fresh infantry . Aftermath . Strategically and tactically speaking , the Battle of Lützen was a Protestant victory . Having been forced to assault an entrenched position , Sweden lost about 6 , 000 men including badly wounded and deserters , many of whom may have drifted back to the ranks in the following weeks . The Imperial army probably lost slightly fewer men than the Swedes on the field , but because of the loss of the battlefield and general theatre of operations to the Swedes , fewer of the wounded and stragglers were able to rejoin the ranks . The Swedish army achieved the main goals of its campaign . The Imperial onslaught on Saxony was halted , Wallenstein chose to withdraw from Saxony into Bohemia for the winter , and Saxony continued in its alliance with the Swedes . A more long - lasting consequence of the battle was the death of the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus , leader of the Protestant forces . Without him to unify the German Protestants , their war effort lost direction . As a result the Catholic Habsburgs were able to restore their balance and subsequently regain some of the losses Gustavus Adolphus had inflicted on them . Crucially , Gustavus Adolphus ' s death enabled the French to gain much firmer control of the anti - Habsburg alliance . Sweden ' s new regency was forced to accept a far less dominant role than they had held before the battle . The war was eventually concluded at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 . Near the spot where Gustavus Adolphus fell , a granite boulder was placed in position on the day after the battle . A canopy of cast iron was erected over this “ Swedes ' stone ” ( ) in 1832 , and close by , a chapel , built by Oskar Ekman , a citizen of Gothenburg ( d . 1907 ) , was dedicated on 6 November 1907 . Date . At this time , the Catholic Holy Roman Empire used the Gregorian calendar , but Protestant Sweden still used the Julian calendar . Hence the Battle of Lützen occurred on 16 November for the Catholics but on 6 November for the Swedes . In Sweden , the death of Gustavus Adolphus has a long tradition of being commemorated on 6 November , despite the country ' s adoption of the Gregorian calendar in the 18th century .