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 The Thirty Years' War 2 1 1 You must undertake to transmit this commission faith- fully to his Excellency, for I have no one whom I can spare to send to him. . . . Gustavus lingered in northern Germany for some months, until finally the Protestant princes were induced to join him by the fall of Magdeburg and the fearful massacre of its inhabitants by the imperial troops under Pappenheim and Tilly. This event is thus described by a writer of the period : So then General Pappenheim collected a number of his 299. The people on the ramparts by the New Town, and brought destruction i r i -i r, • ,t ^ , i ofMagde- them from there into the streets of the city. Von Falcken- burg (May, berg * was shot, and fires were kindled in different quarters ; 1631). then indeed it was all over with the city, and further resist- ance was useless. Nevertheless some of the soldiers and citizens did try to make a stand here and there, but the imperial troops kept bringing on more and more forces — cavalry, too — to help them, and finally they got the Krockenthor open and let in the whole imperial army and the forces of the Catholic League, — Hungarians, Croats, Poles, Walloons, Italians, Spaniards, French, North and South Germans. Thus it came about that the city and all its inhabitants fell into the hands of the enemy, whose violence and cruelty were due in part to their common hatred of the adherents of the Augsburg Confession, and in part to their being im- bittered by the chain shot which had been fired at them and by the derision and insults that the Magdeburgers had heaped upon them from the ramparts. Then was there naught but beating and burning, plunder- ing, torture, and murder. Most especially was every one of the enemy bent on securing much booty. When a maraud- ing party entered a house, if its master had anything to 1 The ambassador of Gustavus Adolphus, who had brought some aid to the beleaguered city.