The approach of the Swedish hero was as greatly dreaded in the camp of Tilly, as it was longed for in the city of Magdeburg. A march of three days, it was known, would bring him before the walls, and then the imperialists would be between two fires; they would have the Swedes, flushed with victory, in their rear, and the besieged, armed with despair, in their front. Tilly often directed anxious eyes into the distance, fearing to discover the Swedish banners on the horizon. He assembled a council of war, to debate whether he should raise the siege, or attempt carrying Magdeburg by storm. It was resolved to storm the city before Gustavus should arrive. No breach had yet been made in the walls, and the besiegers must add stratagem to force, would they take the place. It was resolved to follow the precedent of the siege of Maestricht, where a sudden cessation of the cannonading had done more to open the gates than all the fire of the artillery. On the 9th of May, at noon, the cannon of Tilly ceased firing, and the besiegers removed a few of the guns. "Ah!" said the citizens of Magdeburg, joyfully, "we are saved; the Swedish hero is approaching, and the hosts of Tilly are about to flee." All that night the cannon of the besiegers remained silent. This confirmed the impression of the citizens that the siege was about to be raised. The danger which had so long hung above them and inflicted so fearful a strain on their energies being gone, as they believed, the weariness and exhaustion that now overpowered them were in proportion to the former tension. The stillness seemed deep after the nights of fire and tempest through which they had passed. The silver of morning appeared in the east; still all was calm. The sun of a May day beamed forth, and showed the imperial encampment apparently reposing. One-half of the garrison, by order of Falkenberg, had been withdrawn from the walls, the wearied citizens were drowned in sleep, and the few who were awake were about to repair to the churches to offer thanks for their deliverance, when, at seven of the morning, sudden as the awakening of a quiescent volcano, a terrific storm broke over the city.

The roar of cannon, the ringing of the tocsin, the shouts of assailants, blending in one frightful thunder-burst, awoke the citizens. Stunned and terrified, they seized their arms and rushed into the street, only to find the enemy pouring into the town over the ramparts and through two of the gates, of which they had already gained possession. Falkenberg, as he was hurrying from post to post, was cut down at the commencement of the assault. His fall was fatal to the defence, for the attack

not having been foreseen, no plan of resistance had been arranged; and though the citizens, knowing the horrors that were entering with the soldiers, fought with a desperate bravery, they were unable -without a leader, and without a plan-to stem the torrent of armed men who were every minute pouring into their city. It was easy scaling the walls, when defended by only a handful of men; it was equally easy forcing the gates, when the guards had been withdrawn to fight on the ramparts. Every moment the odds against the citizens were becoming more overwhelming, and by twelve o'clock. all resistance was at an end, and Magdeburg was in the hands of the enemy.

Tilly now entered with the army. He took possession of the principal streets with his troops, and pointing his shotted cannon upon the masses of the citizens, compelled them to retire into their houses, there to await their fate. Regiment after regiment poured into Magdeburg. There entered, besides the German troops, the pitiless Walloons, followed by the yet more terrible Croats. What a horde of ruffianism! Although an army of wolves or tigers had been collected into Magdeburg, the danger would not have been half so terrible as that which now hung over the city from this assemblage of men, inflamed by every brutal passion, who stood waiting the signal to spring upon their prey.

Silence was signal enough: even Tilly dared not have withstood these men in their dreadful purpose. "And now began a scene of carnage," says Schiller, "which history has no language, poetry no pencil, to portray.

Neither the innocence of childhood nor the helplessness of old age, neither youth, sex, rank, nor beauty could disarm the fury of the conquerors. Wives were dishonoured in the arms of their husbands, and daughters at the feet of their parents." Infants were murdered at the breast, or tossed from pike to pike of the Croats, and then flung into the fire. Fifty-three women were found in a single church, their hands tied and their throats cut. Some ladies of wealth and beauty were tied to the stirrups of the soldiers' horses, and led away captive. It were a wickedness even to write all the shameful and horrible things that were done: how much greater a wickedness was it to do them! Some of the officers of the League, shocked at the awful sights, ventured to approach Tilly, and beg him to put a stop to the carnage. "Come back in an hour," was his answer,

"and I shall see what can be done. The soldier must have some recompense for his danger and toils." The tempest of shrieks, and wailings, and shoutings, of murder and rapine, the rattling of musketry and the clashing of swords, continued to

rage, while the general stood by, a calm spectator of the woes and crimes that were passing around him. The city had been set fire to in several places, and a strong wind springing up, the conflagration raged with a fury which no one sought to control. The roar of the flames was now added to the other sounds of terror that rose from the doomed spot. The fire ran along the city with great rapidity, and swept houses, churches, and whole streets before it; but amid the smoke, the falling buildings, and the streets flowing with blood, the plunderer continued to prowl, and the murderer to pursue his victim, till the glowing and almost burning air drove the miscreants back to their camp. Magdeburg had ceased to exist; this fair, populous, and wealthy city, one of the finest in Germany, was now a field of blackened ruins. Every edifice had fallen a prey to the flames, with the exception of a church and a convent, which the soldiers assisted the monks to save, and 150 fishermen's huts which stood on the banks of the Elbe. "The thing is so horrible," says a contemporary writer, "that I am afraid to mention it further. According to the general belief here, above 40,000 of all conditions have ended their days in the streets and houses by fire and sword."1

The same German party who had declined, with an air of offended dignity, the help of Gustavus Adolphus, now blamed him for not having extended his assistance to Magdeburg. This made it necessary for the Swedish monarch to explain publicly why he had not raised the siege. He showed conclusively that he could not have done so without risking the whole success of his expedition, and this he did not feel justified in doing for the sake of a single city. He had resolved, he said, the moment he heard of the danger of Magdeburg, to march to its relief: but first the Elector of Saxony refused a passage for his troops through his dominions; and, secondly, the Elector of Brandenburg was equally unwilling to guarantee an open retreat for his army through his territory in case of defeat. The fate of Magdeburg was thus mainly owing to the vacillating and cowardly policy of these two Electors, who had, up to that moment, not made it plain to Gustavus whether they were his friends or his enemies, and whether they were to abide with the League or join their arms with his in defence of Protestantism.

But the fall of Magdeburg was helpful to the Protestant cause. It sent a thrill of horror through

Sir Robert Anstruther, German Correspondence, May, 1631. Lotichius, vol. i., p. 876. Chemnitz, vol. i., p. 132. Chapman, pp. 240-243. Schiller, vol. i., pp. 240-250.

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Germany, and it alarmed the wavering Electors of Brandenburg and Saxony, who began to see that the end of that neutrality which they thought so dexterous would be that they would be the last to be devoured by the imperial arms. Accordingly, first the Landgrave of Hesse made a firm compact with Gustavus Adolphus, and ever after continued his staunchest friend. A raid which Tilly made into his territories after leaving Magdeburg helped powerfully to this alliance with the Swedish king. The next to become the ally of Gustavus was the Elector of Brandenburg-not, however, till the Swedes had marched to Berlin, and Gustavus, pointing his cannon at the palace, demanded of the Elector that he should say whether he was for him or against him. Last of all, the Elector of Saxony, who had endured such distress and irresolution of mind, and who now received a visit from Tilly and his marauders—their track marked, as usual, by frightful devastation-came at length to a decision, and joined his arms with those of Gustavus. This opened the way for the crowning victory of the campaign, which established the fortunes of Gustavus, and broke in pieces the army of the emperor.

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Strengthened by these alliances, Gustavus crossed the Elbe. The next day his forces were joined by the Saxon army, 35,000 strong. At a council of war which was held here, it was debated whether the confederated host was strong enough to risk a battle, or whether the war should be protracted. "If we decide upon a battle," said Gustavus, a crown and two electorates are at stake." The die was cast in favour of fighting. Gustavus put his army in motion to meet Tilly, who lay encamped in a strong and advantageous position near Leipsic. On the evening of the 6th September, 1631, Gustavus learned that he was within half a dozen miles of the imperialists. That night he dreamed that he had caught Tilly by the hair of his head, but that all his exertions could not secure his prisoner before he had succeeded in biting him on the left arm.2 Next morning the two hostile armies were in sight of each other. Gustavus had seen the dawn of this day with deep anxiety. For the first time he was in presence of the whole imperial host, under its hitherto unconquered leader, and the issue of this day's battle would decide whether the object for which he had crossed the Baltic was to be attained, and Germany set free from her chains, or whether defeat lowered over himself, and political and religious bondage over the Fatherland. Christendom waited with anxiety the issue of the event.

2 Khevenhiller, vol. xi., p. 1875-apud Chapman, p. 257.

The army of Tilly was drawn up in a single farextending line on a rising ground on the plain of Breitenfeld, within a mile of Leipsic. The cannon were planted on the heights which rose behind the army, so as to sweep the plain, but making it impossible for the imperial troops to advance without coming within the range of their own fire. The infantry was placed in the centre, where Tilly himself commanded; the cavalry formed the wings, with Fürstenberg on the right, and Pappenheim on the left. The Swedish army was arranged into centre and wings, each two columns in depth. Teuffel commanded in the centre, Horn led the left wing, and the king himself the right, fronting Pappenheim. The Saxon troops, under the Elector, were stationed a little in the rear, on the left, at some distance from the Swedish main body, the king deeming it prudent to separate Saxon from Swedish valour; and the event justified his forethought.

The battle was joined at noon. It began with a cannonading, which lasted two hours. At two o'clock Pappenheim began the attack by throwing his cavalry upon the right wing of the Swedes, which was commanded by the king. The wind was blowing from the west, and the dust from the newploughed land was driven in clouds in the face of the Swedes. To avoid the annoyance the king wheeled rapidly to the north, and the troops of Pappenheim, rushing in at the void which the king's movement had left between the right wing and the centre, were met in front by the second column of the wing, and assailed in the rear by the first column, led by the king, and after a desperate and prolonged conflict they were nearly all cut in pieces. Pappenheim was driven from the field, with the loss of his ordnance. While this struggle was proceeding between the two confronting wings, Tilly descended from the heights, and attacked the left wing of the Swedish army. To avoid the severe fire with which the Swedes received him, he turned off to attack the Saxons, who, mostly raw recruits, gave way and fled, carrying the Elector with them, who stopped only when he had reached Eilenburg. Only one division under Arnim remained on the field, and saved the Saxon honour.

1

Deeming the victory won, the imperialists raised the cry of pursuit. Some 8,000 or 9,000 left the field on the track of the flying Saxons, numbers of

The king's letter to Oxenstierna, apud Geijer, vol. iii., p. 217. Chapman, p. 261.

NOTE.-With reference to the illustrations on pp. 282, 283, we give the following particulars:-During the Thirty Years' War, Augsburg, which had, as we have already

whom were overtaken and slaughtered. Gustavus seized the moment to fall upon the flank of the imperial centre, and soon effectually routed it, with the exception of two regiments concealed by the smoke and dust.

The centre of the imperialists had been broken, and their left wing driven from the field, when the troops under Fürstenberg, who had returned from chasing the Saxons, assailed with desperate fury the left wing of the Swedes. The conflict had almost ceased on the other parts of the field, and the last and most terrible burst of the tempest was here to discharge itself, and the fate of the day to be decided. Foot and horse, cuirassier, pikeman, and musketeer were drawn hither, and mingled in fearful and bloody conflict. The sun was now sinking in the west, and his slanting beam fell on the quiet dead, scattered over the field, but still that heaving mass in the centre kept surging and boiling; cuirass and helmet, pike-head and uplifted sword, darting back the rays of the sun, which was descending lower and lower in the horizon. The mass was growing perceptibly smaller, as soldier and horse fell beneath sabre or bullet, and were trampled into the bloody mire. Tilly and his imperialists were fighting for the renown of a hundred battles, which was fast vanishing. The most obstinate valour could not long hold out against the overwhelming odds of the Swedish warriors; and a remnant of the imperialists, favoured by the dusk of evening, and the cloud and dust that veiled the battle-field, escaped from the conflict-the remnant of those terrible battalions which had inflicted such devastation on Germany."

When Gustavus Adolphus rode out of the field, all was changed. He was no longer "the little Gothic king;" he was now the powerful conqueror, the terror of the Popish and the hope of the Protestant princes of Germany. The butchers of Magdeburg had been trampled into the bloody dust of Breitenfeld. The imperialist army had been annihilated; their leader, whom some called the first captain of the age, had left his glory on the field from which he was fleeing; the road into the centre of Germany was open to the conqueror ; the mighty projects of the Jesuits were menaced with overthrow; and the throne of the emperor was beginning to totter.