In May 1631 the city of Magdeburg was destroyed and its people slaughtered by a mercenary army in the pay of the Hapsburg Emperor. The city's garrison of Swedish soldiers, sent to support protestant states in against the Empire, was put to the sword. Even in an age accustomed to atrocity, the wholesale massacre of a city's population stunned Europe. It transformed the dynastic and political conflicts then dividing central Europe into a ferocious, religious war that makes today's struggle between the Shia and Sunni branches of Islam look like a skirmish. 'Magdeburg Quarter' shouted Protestant soldiers in later battles as they executed Catholic prisoners in cold blooded revenge, just as British troops would later 'Remember Cawnpore'. For another sixteen years, armies campaigned across Germany, and what is now the Czech Republic. The population of central Europe fell by 30 per cent; in Sweden it was referred to as the time of 'the Great Wrath'. The massacre at Magdeburg is a genuine 'tipping point'. Robert Edwards has tracked down the eyewitness accounts in the University of Magdeburg and in Stockholm.The author of WHITE DEATH (The Russo-Finnish War), he brings his expertise in military history and mastery of sources in Swedish, German and Latin to recreate one of the darkest episodes in western history.
- ISBN10 0297852019
- ISBN13 9780297852018
- Publish Date 1 January 2009
- Publish Status Cancelled
- Out of Print 19 March 2008
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Orion Publishing Co
- Imprint Weidenfeld & Nicolson
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 320
- Language English