BLOODBATH AT MAGDEBURG DURING THE 30 YEARS' WAR, May 20, 1631

"I believe that over twenty thousand souls were lost. It is certain that no more terrible work and divine punishment has been seen since the Destruction of Jerusalem. All of our soldiers became rich. God with us." -Gottfried Heinrich Graf zu Pappenheim.

 

The Sack of Magdeburg of the largely Protestant city of Magdeburg on 20 May 1631 by the Imperial Army and the forces of the Catholic League is considered the worst massacre of the Thirty Years' War. Magdeburg, then one of the largest cities in Germany and about the size of Cologne or Hamburg, never recovered from the disaster, 25,000 inhabitants lost their lives.

In the early morning of May 20, the conquest began with heavy artillery fire. Soon after, Pappenheim and Tilly started marching against Magdeburg. The city's fortifications were breached and Imperial forces were able to overpower armed opposition and open the Kröcken Gate which allowed the entire army to enter the city, plundering its rich stores of goods. When the city was almost lost, the garrison mined various places and set others on fire.

 

After the city fell, the Imperial soldiers supposedly went out of control and started to massacre the inhabitants and set fire to the city. The invading soldiers had not received payment for their service and took the chance to loot everything in sight; they demanded valuables from every household that they encountered. Otto von Guericke, an inhabitant of Magdeburg, claimed that when civilians ran out of things to give the soldiers, "the misery really began. For then the soldiers began to beat, frighten, and threaten to shoot, skewer, hang, etc., the people."

 

It took only one day for all of this destruction and death to transpire. Of the 30,000 citizens, only 5,000 survived, most of them had fled into Magdeburg Cathedral. Tilly finally ordered an end to the looting on May 24, and a Catholic mass was celebrated at the Cathedral on the next day. For another fourteen days, charred bodies were carried to the Elbe River to be dumped to prevent disease.

 

I highly recommend the 4th episode ("Devastation") of the great TV documentary Die Eiserne Zeit - Europa im Dreißigjährigen Krieg (The Iron Age - Europe in the Thirty Years' War) that is centered on this dramatic event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coxgDQPyNUA