When the Swedish troops reached Sedlcany and moved through Kosova Hora towards Olbramovice, the Imperial army set off quickly from Tabor, where the forces left wagons with provisions and camp followers for the sake of speed. The army reached as far as Ratmerice during the night of 4 to 5 March 1645. The troops took their positions along the line Odlochovice – Ratmerice – Skrysov, determined to wage the decisive battle the Emperor so eagerly desired.
Meantime, the Swedish army marched through Utrzenec and Jankovska Lhota to Jankov, and took up positions along the line Jankovska Lhota – the Chrastisov Hill near Jankov – Otradovice.
The Swedish army was under the command of a forty-two old Field Marshal Lennart Torstensson, artillery expert and by now a seasoned commander. His subordinate commanders were a forty-year-old general major Robert Souhlas, an Englishman, a general major Carl Gustav, later to become the King of Sweden. The army consisted of more than 6,000 infantrymen (pikemen and musketeers), approximately 8,500 cavalrymen, 500 artillerymen, 900 officers and staff, i.e. total of 16,000 men. As was usual at the time, most of the men were irregulars, mercenaries from various nations. Only two regiments had a uniform, other troops wore common, mostly largely derelict clothes. In order to be able to tell one another from the enemy, they wore blue sashes and ribbons. The armament of the Swedish army consisted of approximately sixty cannons, mostly three-pounders (70 mm bore) with a range of some 800 metres. There must have been some big twenty-four-pound pieces, as balls of such calibre were also unearthed at the Jankov battlefield.
The condition of the Imperial army was quite disconsolate. The army suffered a devastating defeat in 1642 near Leipzig and avoided larger encounters with the enemy for several years afterwards. However, with the move of the Swedish army, it became necessary to gather all the fighting-fit remnants, prop it up with allied reinforcements and create a battle-ready force. The Emperor Ferdinand III arrived in Prague at the beginning of 1645, to support with his weight the preparations for the engagement of the Swedish army. The Emperor appointed Field Marshal
Melchior von Hatzfeld, who was fifty-two then. The Imperial army comprised of regiments garrisoned in Poland and Hungary, reinforced with forces supplied by allies of the Habsburgs from Bavaria and Saxony. However, the Bavarian cavalry was “leased” for the winter months, when wars weren’t usually waged. By spring, the cavalry was to return to Bavaria, threatened by Catholic France. The Imperial army was approximately as strong as the Swedish enemy, i.e. about 16,000 men. It commanded about two thousand more cavalrymen, but had weaker artillery, with only some 26 pieces, mostly three-pounders.
Considerable numbers of people and horses concentrated within rather a small area. There were estimated 30 thousand soldiers and 20 thousand horses encamped around Jankov. Both armies had suffered long marches through snow, while all people and animals camped under the open sky. Because of the imminent battle, the troops were banned from dispersing through the surrounding villages. It was the evening of the first Sunday of Lent, 5 March 1645. The terrain around Jankov was not best suited to the warfare of the period: the landscape was too rugged and difficult to oversee; however, it was too late for either of the commanders to be too particular. Towards the east, the landscape was even less suitable.