Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/164

150 Tilly, apprehensive of the approach of Gustavus, adopted a stratagem to surprise the city. On the 19th of May, 1631, he ceased firing in the afternoon, and drew away his cannon. The inhabitants felt certain that this was from Gustavus being at hand, which obliged him to turn and defend himself, or raise the siege. Having thus thrown them off their guard, he approached the walls at night with scaling-ladders. and towards morning, the sentinels hearing no enemy, and going off their posts, there was a sudden attack made, the walls scaled, and a wild cry of horror told that the enemy was in the city.



The horrors committed there have no parallel in history except the Sepoy outrages in India. The people were massacred and insulted without mercy; the city set on fire, and men, women, and children subjected to unheard-of horrors. Fifty-three women were found in one church with their heads cut off. Some of the officers themselves, petrified at the monstrous cruelties practised, urged Tilly to put a stop to them, but he coolly replied, "Give the soldiers another hour or two, and then come again!" Five days afterwards he made a triumphal entry into the remains of the burnt city, for so long did it require to clear a way for him through the ruinous streets. Upwards of six thousand four hundred corpses were thrown into the Elbe in this clearance, and the number of inhabitants destroyed is said to have amounted to thirty thousand. The savage fanatic wrote to the emperor an exulting despatch, saying, "Never since the destruction of Troy and Jerusalem, had there, in his opinion, been such a victory!" Except the implacable bigot of an emperor, Ferdinand II., who never ceased till he had thoroughly extirpated protestantism out of Bohemia, and was fast reducing Germany to the same condition, all Christendom was horrified at the news.

The Austrian army evacuated the desolated neighbourhood of Magdeburg, laden with enormous booty, for the city was one of the richest Hanse Towns. But some of the German princes now began to join Gustavus, and on the 17th of September the Swedish king gave battle to Tilly and Pappenheim before Leipsic, and routed them with great slaughter. This turned the scale of war: the cowed German princes once more raised their heads and entered into league with Gustavus, who soon drove the Austrians from the greater part of the country, took Hanau and Frankfort-on-the-Mainc, when Frederick the palsgrave joined him, hoping to be established by Gustavus in his patrimony. But the brave Swedish king, who was highly incensed against Charles, for not joining at his earnest entreaty in this enterprise, in which he himself was hazarding life, crown, and everything, of putting down the catholic