Nuremberg had lost over ten thousand inhabitants, and Gustavus, during the siege and battle, had lost twenty thousand of his faithful soldiers. The air was putrid from the decaying flesh of men and animals dead under an August sun. On September 8th the king withdrew from Nuremberg, leaving a sufficient garrison under Oxenstiern, and four days after Wallenstein broke camp and left a trail of burning towns which for years marked the line of his retreat. He had lost fifty thousand men, and now moved northward to prey upon Saxony. Gustavus still had the desire to finish his work in Bavaria, but when he heard that Protestant Saxony was again under the enemy's heel, he prepared at once to move northward. CHAPTER XII. END OF A VALUABLE LIFE. Wallenstein's letters would not do to use as historic authority, yet his report of the Nuremberg affair to his emperor probably was a fair statement from his point of view. He said: "The king lay fourteen days at Furth, and now having lost nearly one-third of his army from hunger and discomfort, has to-day departed, whither I cannot learn. For military reasons I should imagine that he would betake himself to the Main. I mean, at all events, to follow him and again fix my camp close to him. I hear that Pappenheim is coming this way too, so that we shall probably enclose the king from both sides." ... Later, he says: "I did not follow him first, because my cavalry was too scattered to do so; secondly, because he is sure to guard all passes in his rear; thirdly, because I did not wish to risk the fruits I have won. For I believe the king's course is already downward, that he has completely lost credit, and that he will be utterly done for as soon as Pappenheim arrives." As soon as Gustavus got away from the vitiated air around Nuremberg out into the good atmosphere of the country on horseback he regained all lost enthusiasm, and was ready for the initiative, and he decided that only a division under Bernard should go to the assistance of John George of Saxony, and he would again try for the hereditary lands of both the emperor and Wallenstein. That would keep the Elector Maximilian with his little army of ten thousand from being with Wallenstein. Oxenstiern, who seems to have left Nuremberg soon after the enemy had broken camp and moved northward, strongly advised a division, one reason being subsistence. The king then left Bernard with eight thousand men in Franconia, with orders to move northward in a line nearly parallel with Wallenstein. One division of ten thousand he sent to garrisons, and with not more then ten thousand of his choice men he again crossed the Danube and Lech for the purpose of attacking Ingolstadt. Maximilian made a great cry to Wallenstein to come to his assistance, but the general laughed at him, saying, "Protect yourself."