_ront

not one rank, not one file, not one man.
Torstensson splattered their entrails across the land. No matter. Those men had marched through entrails before. Torstensson painted the soil with their blood. No matter. Those men had bled before. Torstensson savaged them like no artillery in their grim experience. No matter. Tilly had never failed them before.
Murderers many of them were. Thieves and rapists too. Cowards, never.
The broken Swedish angle was in front of them now. Like a bear trailing gore, the tercios were about to mangle their prey.
At last!
“Father Tilly!” they bellowed. “Jesu-Maria!”

But the angle was not broken. Not any longer. Horn—trusted Horn, trustworthy Horn—had reformed the line even before his king’s orders arrived. The Swedish left now formed a solid corner for the battlefield. The imperial heavy cavalry had already broken against that Baltic rock. The tercios lumbered up and did no better.
Pike against pike, the Catholics were easily the equal of their foe. But the Swedish king was a believer in firepower more than cold steel. He had studied the methods of the Dutch, and tested them in Poland and Russia.
At Breitenfeld, the Swedes had a higher arquebus-to-pike ratio than their enemies. More important, Gustav Adolf had trained them to fight in shallow formations, following the Dutch example. Tilly’s arquebusiers were arrayed thirty ranks deep. Most of those arquebuses could not be brought to bear. Gustav’s, not more than six—just enough to allow time to reload while the s