MAGDEBURG TAKEN; FIRE AND SLAUGHTER LAY WASTE THE CITY

MAGDEBURG, 24 May 1631 (New Style), 1631-05-24. — Magdeburg has fallen to the Emperor’s army, and a great part of the city has been consumed by fire. Four days after the assault of 20 May, the conquerors hold a place in which military victory can scarcely be distinguished from general destruction. Houses, shops and streets have burned; inhabitants have been slain amid the fighting and plunder; and those who escaped the sword have faced the flames or sought whatever shelter remained. The Imperial commanders have secured the stronghold, but no certain reckoning of its dead can yet be made. The number claimed by one of the victors is above twenty thousand souls.

The assault was delivered by the forces of Count Tilly and Count Pappenheim after a siege which had brought the city into increasing distress. Magdeburg’s defenders could not withstand the entry of the Imperial soldiers at several points. Dietrich von Falkenberg, the officer sent into the city in the Swedish interest, was killed during the attack. With his death and the breaking of the defences, resistance lost its direction. Fighting continued within the streets, but the distinction between the taking of a fortified place and the destruction of its inhabitants was soon overwhelmed by killing, pillage and the spreading fire.

Pappenheim’s own account gives a terrible measure of what has occurred, though it must be read as the report of a victorious commander rather than an enumeration of bodies. Writing to Maximilian of Bavaria, he declares, in translation, “I believe that over twenty thousand souls were lost.” He compares the calamity with the destruction of Jerusalem and adds: “All our soldiers became rich. God with us.” These words join an enormous claim of mortality to an open acknowledgment of the soldiers’ enrichment. They establish the temper of the victory more securely than they establish the precise number of persons who have perished.

The fire has made any immediate account still more doubtful. Men and women were caught in burning buildings, while others fled from the soldiers into places from which there was afterwards no escape. Neither every missing householder nor every body beneath the ruins can presently be counted. It would therefore be rash to divide the losses exactly between inhabitants and defenders, or between those killed by weapons and those overcome by smoke and flame. What is beyond dispute is that the calamity has extended far beyond the armed men upon the walls. The ordinary population has borne a dreadful part of the city’s overthrow.

The cathedral has survived, and many persons found refuge within it. Tilly has now entered the conquered city, and the principal church has been used for Catholic thanksgiving. The preservation of this great building, however, gives no true picture of the surrounding streets. A sanctuary standing amid ruins cannot restore the dwellings, goods or households that have disappeared. Nor does the survival of those admitted to shelter warrant any conclusion that the inhabitants generally were spared. The contrast is stark: the victors may perform their solemn observances, while those left alive must search for kindred and for the means of continuing their lives.

Magdeburg’s danger arose from more than its walls or its command of a passage upon the Elbe. This Protestant city had resisted Imperial authority and become attached to the cause of Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, whose army entered Germany last year. Falkenberg’s presence represented that connexion, but a Swedish relieving army did not reach the city before the assault. Its magistrates and defenders were thus required to make their decisions under the expectation of assistance which had not arrived. Their enemies, meanwhile, regarded the place not merely as a military obstacle but as a conspicuous seat of opposition to the Emperor’s power.

Behind the siege lies the wider dispute over religion and obedience in the Empire. Ferdinand’s Edict of Restitution, issued two years ago, demands the restoration of ecclesiastical possessions claimed for the Catholic Church and has sharpened the fears of Protestant rulers and communities. Magdeburg’s resistance belongs to that quarrel as well as to the present Swedish war. Yet the quarrel does not explain away what has happened to its people. The assertion of a prince’s rights, the recovery of church property and the punishment of resistance are matters proclaimed by governments; the burning of households is their consequence here upon the ground.

For merchants, the destruction reaches beyond the goods carried off by soldiers. Magdeburg is a trading city upon a great river, and its commerce depends upon warehouses, workshops, credit, lodging and the accustomed dealings of one household with another. Much of that fabric has now been broken. No trustworthy schedule of commercial losses can yet be supplied, and any exact quotation for the city’s ruined trade would pretend to an order which does not exist. The immediate necessities are simpler and more urgent: food, shelter, safe passage and the recovery of whatever property has escaped both plunder and fire.

The political gain to the Imperial party is plain in one respect: a hostile stronghold has been taken, and the Swedish connexion has failed to preserve it. Beyond that, the account remains unsettled. Other Protestant towns and princes must consider both the strength displayed by Tilly’s army and the fate attending resistance at Magdeburg. Whether fear will incline them towards submission, or the spectacle towards stronger opposition, cannot yet be known. Nor is it certain how the Swedish king will answer the loss of a city committed to his cause. Possession of these ruins does not by itself determine the next course of the war.

There must also remain a distinction between what is visible and what is alleged. The city was stormed; extensive burning followed; soldiers plundered; and inhabitants died in very great numbers. Responsibility for the first fires, the exact course by which they spread, and the full number of the dead cannot be settled by a commander’s triumphant letter. Those questions require testimony which the confusion of conquest has not yet yielded in orderly form. For the present, Magdeburg stands as a victory announced by its captors and a calamity endured by its surviving people, with the fate of many households still unknown.