From Leipsic Gustavus marched for the Main, where the Scots were as usual put forward for every desperate service, and held his winter court at Mainz. In the spring of the following year he marched down to the line of the Danube with forty thousand men, forced the passage of the Lech in the teeth of Tilly's army, entered Bavaria and by May was at Munich. Then hearing that the towns on the Danube in his rear were threatened he turned back to Donauwörth, whence he was called away by the movements of Wallenstein in Saxony to Nürnberg. Such marching had not been since the days of Zizca. He now turned Nürnberg, as he had turned Werben in the previous year, into a vast entrenched camp; for he had now but eighteen thousand men against Wallenstein's seventy thousand, and it behoved him to make the most of his position. Wallenstein, however, without risking an engagement, took the simpler course of making also an entrenched camp, cutting off Gustavus's supplies from the Rhine and Danube, and reducing him by starvation. Reinforcements came to the Swedes, which raised their army to five-and-thirty thousand men; Wallenstein allowed them to pass in unmolested to consume the provisions the quicker. The pinch of hunger began to make itself felt in the Swedish camp, pestilence raged among the unhappy troops, and at last Gustavus in desperation launched his army in a vain assault upon Wallenstein's entrenchments. For twelve hours his men swarmed up the rugged and broken hill with desperate courage, three times obtaining a momentary footing and as often beaten back. The cannonade was kept up all night, and it was not till ten o'clock on the following morning that the Swedes retreated, leaving four thousand dead behind them. The Scots Brigade suffered terribly. Monro, out of a detachment of five hundred men, lost two hundred killed alone, besides wounded and missing. His lieutenant-colonel who relieved him at night brought back but thirty men next morning. Other corps had lost hardly less heavily, and Gustavus, foiled for once, retreated to Neustadt, leaving one-third of his force dead around Nürnberg. [Sidenote: 1634, August 26.]