The Imperialists were in momentary fear that Gustavus would arrive, so that they filled every hour of three days and nights in robbery, rape and murder, unequaled in all the annals of history. Babes were speared at their mothers' breasts. One miscreant boasted that he had burned twenty infants. Fifty-three women were beheaded at one time, while at prayers. Probably forty thousand perished in this holocaust. In this manner the ban of the Holy Roman Empire was executed on a German city for defending the gospel.
Tilly wrote his Emperor: "Not since Troy and Jerusalem has there been such a victory." On Falkenberg's house a tablet was placed, "Remember May 10th, 1631," and all Protestants who know history from that day to this do, with bitterness of heart, remember that dreadful day.
Tilly was born in Brabant in 1559. He had been educated in a college of Jesuits and well represented their principles. He had distinguished himself in the Turkish war, and in the war of the Netherlands, under the Duke of Alva, whom he took for his model. In his private life he was moral, and like Paul before his conversion, he really thought to kill heretics was doing God's service. But Magdeburg ruined his reputation, he became tormented with remorse; the hatred later shown to him and his retreating forces embittered his later years, and, possibly, may have caused that remorse.
But where was Gustavus Adolphus during this woeful time? He was held back by Duke John George of Saxony, and by his own brother-in-law, Duke George William of Brandenburg. The latter was a weak creature, perfectly under the influence of his minister, Schwarzenberg, an employé of the Emperor of Austria.
Neither of these princes dreamed that Magdeburg would be destroyed, they only expected it to change hands. There was something of hatred among the princes against the Hanseatic towns, which was a factor in their detention of Gustavus Adolphus.
The Jesuits circulated the report that the king of Sweden had voluntarily left Magdeburg to perish. They hoped by that means to alienate the other Protestants from Gustavus. It was not difficult for him to clear himself of this charge, and most histories now agree that the destruction of Magdeburg was due to the prejudices, envies, jealousies and mistrust of the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg. Gustavus had written the Elector of Saxony, when Magdeburg was threatened: "I see myself obliged to lower my pretensions and not to advance further. To post myself between two wavering powers, or to abandon the rivers by which all my convoys arrive, would be contrary to all rules of military science. However, I wish to show Magdeburg how much solicitude I feel for her, and should I sacrifice my life, I shall do all I can to deliver her. May God sustain me by His grace, and make my perseverance triumphant. Before God and before men I declare that I am innocent of all the blood that will be shed, and of all the misfortunes that will happen."
