Gustavus, thus triumphant, dispatched a portion of his army, under the Elector of Saxony, to rescue Bohemia from the tyrant grasp of the emperor. Gustavus himself, with another portion, marched in various directions to cut off the resources of the enemy and to combine the scattered parts of the Protestant confederacy. His progress was like the tranquil march of a sovereign in his own dominions, greeted by the enthusiasm of his subjects. He descended the Maine to the Rhine, and then ascending the Rhine, took every fortress from Maine to Strasbourg. While Gustavus was thus extending his conquests through the very heart of Germany, the Elector of Saxony reclaimed all of Bohemia from the imperial arms. Prague itself capitulated to the Saxon troops. Count Thurn led the Saxon troops in triumph over the same bridge which he, but a few months before, had traversed a fugitive. He found, impaled upon the bridge, the shriveled heads of twelve of his companions, which he enveloped in black satin and buried with funeral honors. The Protestants of Bohemia rose enthusiastically to greet their deliverers. Their churches, schools and universities were reestablished. Their preachers resumed their functions. Many returned from exile and rejoiced in the restoration of their confiscated property. The Elector of Saxony retaliated upon the Catholics the cruel wrongs which they had inflicted upon the Protestants. Their castles were plundered, their nobles driven into exile, and the conquerors loaded themselves with the spoils of the vanquished. But Ferdinand, as firm and inexorable in adversity as in prosperity, bowed not before disaster. He roused the Catholics to a sense of their danger, organized new coalitions, raised new armies. Tilly, with recruited forces, was urged on to arrest the march of the conqueror. Burning under the sense of shame for his defeat at Leipsic, he placed himself at the head of his veterans, fell, struck by a musket-ball, and died, after a few days of intense suffering, at the age of seventy-three. The vast Austrian empire, composed of so many heterogeneous States, bound together only by the iron energy of Ferdinand, seemed now upon the eve of its dissolution. The Protestants, who composed in most of the States a majority, were cordially rallying beneath the banners of Gustavus. They had been in a state of despair. They now rose in exalted hope. Many of the minor princes who had been nominally Catholics, but whose Christian creeds were merely political dogmas, threw themselves into the arms of Gustavus. Even the Elector of Bavaria was so helpless in his isolation, that, champion as he had been of the Catholic party, there seemed to be no salvation for him but in abandoning the cause of Ferdinand. Gustavus was now, with a victorious army, in the heart of Germany. He was in possession of the whole western country from the Baltic to the frontiers of France, and apparently a majority of the population were in sympathy with him.