Sack of Magdeburg
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| Sack of Magdeburg | |||||||
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| Part of Thirty Years' War | |||||||
 Engraving of the Sack of Magdeburg by Matthäus Merian |
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| Belligerents | |||||||
 Holy Roman Empire.svg){kind=small} Catholic League |
 Magdeburg |
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| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Gottfried Heinrich Graf zu Pappenheim Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly |
/  Dietrich von Falkenberg † Christian Wilhelm von Brandenburg |
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| Strength | |||||||
| 24,000 | 2,400 | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 300 killed 1,600 wounded[1] |
20,000 inhabitants[1] | ||||||
The Sack of Magdeburg (German: Magdeburgs Opfergang or German: Magdeburger Hochzeit) refers to the siege and subsequent plundering of the largely Protestant city of Magdeburg by the forces of the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic League during the Thirty Years' War. The siege lasted from November 1630 until 20 May 1631.
On the latter date, Imperial Field Marshal Gottfried Heinrich Graf zu Pappenheim, and Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly, attacked Magdeburg for 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 went out of control and started to massacre the inhabitants and set fire to the city. Of the 30,000 citizens, only 5,000 survived. For fourteen days, charred bodies were carried to the Elbe River to be dumped to prevent disease.
In a letter, Pappenheim wrote of the Sack:
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.[2]
At the time of the Peace of Westphalia ending the war in 1648, the city's population had further dropped so that only 450 people were still living in the city.
The devastation was so great that Magdeburgisieren (or "magdeburgization") became an oft-used term signifying total destruction, rape and pillaging for decades. The terms "Magdeburg justice", "Magdeburg mercy" and "Magdeburg quarter" also arose as a result of the Sack, used originally by Protestants when executing Catholics who begged for quarter.
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[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ a b Peter H. Wilson. The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2009. p. 471.
- ^ Hans Medick and Pamela Selwyn. Historical Event and Contemporary Experience: The Capture and Destruction of Magdeburg in 1631. History Workshop Journal, No. 52 (Autumn 2001), pp. 23-48. Oxford University Press, 2001.
[edit] Further reading
- Firoozi, Edith, and Ira N. Klein. Universal History of the World: The Age of Great Kings. Vol. 9. New York: Golden Press, 1966. pp. 738-739.
- von Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich. The History of the Thirty Years' War. 1791. pp. 177-190.
[edit] External links
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