By my calculations, Mansfeld’s army was two or three days from Rosslau. Similarly, Wallenstein’s vanguard was one or two days from neighbouring Dessau, but his main fighting force would take a third or even a fourth day to arrive, depending on how long Wallenstein waited to collect troops from the furthest regions of Germany. He had been building his army during the months I had been in his employ, and during that time Wallenstein had increased his fighting numbers from 16,000 to nearly 20,000. Wallenstein’s scouts and spies and our Danish captive had estimated Mansfeld’s army at 12,000 or 13,000, but the bridge was only likely to receive Catholic 6,000 soldiers from Magdeburg before Mansfeld’s arrival.
That was why I was building a palisade. A wall of timber would provide protection for our own gunmen, increasing their effectiveness and thus reducing the strength of the enemy’s numerical advantage. There were plenty of trees around, and we made stumps of them. Then we trimmed their branches and smoothed their curves and planted them in the ground to the right of the bridge. There wasn’t enough time for them to sink in heavily and some would fall when struck by cannonballs, but they would shelter our arquebusiers from those of the enemy. The Elbe curved near Rosslau and so it ran both laterally north of the fort and longitudinally to the west of the fort, and I wanted the palisade to force any Danes who made it across the bridge to be trapped in the right angle created by the river’s curvature by fortifying the eastern exit from the bridge.
At least, it made sense in my head. Most likely the fort would be little more than a glorified shield for Wallenstein’s artillery and gunmen, to protect them from long ranged arquebusiers. Yet I hoped for more from the fort: I wanted it to scare Mansfeld. My job was to delay Mansfeld until Wallenstein’s army could arrive and crush him, and if the fort caused Mansfeld to delay his approach by even an hour it would be worthwhile.
We worked several hours into the night by the light of a fire we lit on the banks of the Elbe. I made one of my men stand watch on the bridge after nightfall and when it was finally time to rest, we had constructed the first short stretch of what I hoped would eventually form a fearsome deterrent.
I let the farmers return to their homes for the night, but my soldiers slept under the trees so that we could rotate watch easily and be ready if a scouting party of Protestants did attempt to cross the bridge. I told the farmers that if they did not return they would be punished and would not receive any payment for the work they had already done, and the next morning nearly all of the farmers returned. They brought with them another twenty or thirty men from the city, and we were joined by the first mounted troops from Magdeburg. They were led by Johann, and I put all of the newcomers to work cutting trees to shape. We did not sharpen their tips as that would have taken time, and I didn’t expect the fort to be scaled. It seemed more likely that it would be surpassed or toppled before any Dane would need to climb the walls.
Soon we began construction of the second, perpendicular wall of the fort, and before nightfall on the second day we had even laid the foundations of the third and final wall. As Mansfeld’s army was likely nearing our location I left more men on watch that night, but they were not needed as the night passed without incident.
The next day, the remaining men from Magdeburg and its surrounds arrived. They were led by a man named Johann von Aldringen who had allegience to Count Collalto. He was a spineless diplomat who talked more than he acted, though I could not fault him for his intelligence. Thankfully he approved of my shallow palisade, perhaps because it gave him something to shelter behind. He had brought artillery with him and we set it up covering the bridge from both sides, far enough from the banks of the river that they wouldn’t entrench themselves in mud or sand. At night we billeted most of the men in Dessau, as Aldringen had the authority to find lawful accommodation and promise reimbursement to the property owners. Christian Wilhelm, the city’s Archbishop and ruler, had apparently fled the city weeks earlier to join the Protestants, which was unsurprising as the city was mostly Lutheran. He intended to reclaim his city with an army of Danes.
The third day after my arrival at the Dessau Bridge was when I expected Mansfeld to strike, and I could see Danes entering Rosslau. However, even as our numbers increased to 6,000 men, they were reluctant to attack. Perhaps this was just a vanguard, as we had experienced at Zerst, though I would have expected the vanguard to have arrived the previous day or earlier. Or perhaps Mansfeld had seen our fearsome artillery pointed at the bridge and he was considering his options. He must have known that the longer he waited the more men he would face, and certainly if I had been in his place I would have given the order to attack.
For whatever reason he did not attack, and Aldringen and I used the opportunity to reinforce the forward facing wall of the palisade with diagonal ground-mounted logs that would strengthen the vertical wall against horizontal force. We also carried several crates of ammunition into the fort and cut holes into some of the logs for gunmen to shoot through.
In the dying light of the evening Mansfeld sent some men forward to test our defences, but it was clear from the outset that he was not attacking in force. None of his men tried to cross the bridge and Aldringen ordered our men not to return fire. The Protestant gunmen were too far back for our fire to be effective, and we didn’t want to give them any information about our numbers or positions.
I was wary of a surprise attack during the darkness and left the fort fully manned and stocked with enough firewood to provide a light over the bridge for the entire night, but again my fears did not come to realisation. That night I prayed for God’s protection, as I knew the battle must come the next day and that my message would have reached Godke. We would seek each other out in the fury of battle, and the more skilled and more penitent man would have victory. I only hoped that my training with Johann and my repentance at Magdeburg had prepared me sufficiently to exact vengeance from my former mentor.
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Johann found me in the morning, when it was still dark, and said, ‘I think today is the day.’
‘Me too,’ I agreed, yawning. We were billeted in the same house, and after a brief meal we donned our cuirassier garb. No doubt by now whatever delay Mansfeld had encountered the previous day had been dealt with and he would march on us. If he didn’t attack today, he would have to know that he would be fighting Wallenstein’s full 20,000 men with his 12,000 men which would be suicide given our defensive advantage. I hoped that he’d left it too late already.
I paid the stablemaster and mounted Tencendur. We rode to the fort and in the morning’s early light I could see activity across the river. The Danes in Rosslau were running about at a frantic pace, and I sensed that they were preparing for battle. When the men in the fort were quiet I could hear a drumbeat.
‘Today is the day,’ I repeated.
Aldringen soon appeared nearby and I rode to him. ‘We need to get in formation. The Danes are coming,’ I said, and he nodded. We had discussed this the previous night, and had agreed that the pikemen and cavalry should remain out of range of Danish arquebusiers on the northern bank of the Elbe until the Protestants began to cross the river in earnest. In the meantime, only the artillery and gunmen – particularly those in the fort – would be in play. He had wanted to leave men in Dessau to act as a rearguard if we were forced to retreat that way, but I had convinced him that we would need every man we had to hold the bridge until Wallenstein arrived with his 14,000 reinforcements.
As the Danes began to line up out of range of our artillery on the other side of the river, our long ranged gunmen exchanged fire, and Johann and I trotted into position. Most of the cavalry was behind the fort on the eastern side of the bridge as there was limited room to the west near the curvature of the Elbe, where I hoped to trap any Danes who made it across the Dessau Bridge. Despite this, I took a company of 150 men to wait on the western bank of the Elbe. If the Danes crossed the river, they would be charged on both sides by 1,000 cavalrymen and 2,000 pikemen. We would be fighting on a choke point, which was to our advantage, but I had no doubt that the callous Mansfeld would fire his artillery into the melee as he had an advantage in manpower and required a swift victory. We would suffer massive casualties and our morale would break and we would suffer a grievous defeat unless Wallenstein arrived with reinforcements.
I wondered if Godke was one of the men firing ineffectually at us. I knew that he would be with the Danes in Rosslau, but I didn’t know what role he had in the Protestant army. He’d had a horse, so presumably he had become a cavalryman as I had, but he had been wearing a leather tunic so perhaps he was a dragoon. While I feared fighting him again, this time would be different. I was prepared for him, whereas in Leipzig I’d been half asleep and surprised by the encounter. I’d spent months learning how to fight wearing armour and my style had changed since Godke had last taught me.
As the war drums signalled the approach of mass slaughter, no one spoke a word. Men needed time to prepare themselves for the horrors of battle, and I gave them that time. We were 150 cuirassiers, standing in silence. It was the calm before the storm, the contemplation before the confrontation. As dark clouds circled overhead my mind wandered to other matters. Fleur was probably still in Metz, weaving baskets. She’d have spent most of the money I’d hidden in the wall compartment by now if she hadn’t received the coin I’d sent her. Most likely one of our letters had gotten lost in transit, and I hoped it was hers as a gulden was a lot of money to lose. It had been risky sending it by courier but he had been a military man and I knew I wasn’t going to be visiting Metz anytime soon. I prayed that nothing had happened to Fleur, and that it was a simple postal error that was preventing me from hearing from her.
I thought about the money Wallenstein had given me. I had talked the debt down to three gulden, and I reckoned I had that much in my coin purse that day, but I needed enough to live off so that I could leave the army. The reward from victory would suffice and after the battle was done I could sell much of my armour, but such thoughts only reminded me of the fight ahead and my mind wandered to Elisabeth.
She was a wonderful woman, intelligent and confident, witty and beautiful, but she was not my woman. She was with me out of circumstance, out of a need for protection, and though she had shared herself with me and I with her I knew our relationship would come to an end today, one way or another. It was unlikely that both Godke and I would survive this battle and Elisabeth would leave the army’s baggage train either way. I wasn’t sad that she’d leave, even if I bested Godke, as my thoughts had been with Fleur over the long months since Christmas. The longer I spent away from her the more I wished to be with her again. Her miscarriage had driven us apart, but I was twenty years old now and I was reaching the age where the last violent vestiges of boyhood die and manhood takes over, and I wanted her back. I wanted to put her pieces together, to frolick in the fields once more. I wanted to see her dance in those same fields in Lorraine when she was an old woman and I an old man, and it would only happen if we won today.
The Danish gunmen had advanced almost to the bank of the Elbe. The soldiers I had stationed in the fort were firing and their dedicated reloaders were ensuring that they could do so several times a minute. No doubt they were all choking on gunpowder smoke and becoming deaf from the cacophony of arquebus fire, but that was the price of battle. That, and countless lives.
The artillery roared into life with a deafening roar that made the arquebuses sound like farts in the night. First Aldringen set our artillery to fire, then Mansfeld responded from across the river with his. Most of our artillery complement was comprised of mortars and they were ranging, shooting early to ensure that they were correctly targeted, but the Danes had started to creep closer to the bridge and our other artillery was firing as a deterrent.
The battle was being joined in full, and if we had received word of Wallenstein’s location then Aldringen had not seen fit to tell me. We had to hold out or die.