GARDELEGEN  , a

town of Germany, in Prussian Saxony, on the right bank of the Milde, 20 M . W. from Stendal, on the main line of railway Berlin-Hanover . Pop . (1905) 8193 . It has a Roman Catholic and three Evangelical churches, a hospital, founded in 1285, and a high-grade school . There are considerable manufactures, notably agricultural machinery and buttons, and its beer has a great repute . Gardelegen was founded in the loth, century, and was for a long time the seat of a line of counts . It suffered considerably in the Thirty Years' War, and in 1775 was burned by the French . On the neighbouring heath Margrave Louis I. of Brandenburg gained, in 1343, a victory over Otto the Mild of Brunswick .