The “Magdeburg Wedding”

The largest massacre of the 30 Years’ War takes place in Magdeburg

During the Thirty Years’ War, the Swedish King Gustav Adolphus landed an army on the German stretch of the Baltic coast in 1630 in support of the beleaguered Protestant cause. Sending an officer to coordinate the defence of the Protestant city of Magdeburg against an advancing Catholic army, the Protestant king impressed upon his representative the importance of the town as a staging post on his intended march southwards. Besieged by an army of almost 30,000 men under the command of General Tilly since April 1631, the city came under heavy fire on 20 May of the same year. The council considered surrendering, but Gustav Adolphus’ representative lied by promising imminent relief from an advancing Swedish army.

Whilst the decision as to whether to continue with the defence was being debated in council, news suddenly broke that the enemy had breached the city wall. The Catholic besiegers flooding into Magdeburg unleashed an orgy of robbery, plunder, murder and rape. Whilst two-thirds of the city populace were killed and further people died in the ensuing epidemics, multiple fires rendered the settlement uninhabitable. Any survivors fled the sacked and ruined city and the population fell from 35,000 to 450. Shocked at a level of brutality that was extraordinary even for its time, contemporary observers named the worst massacre of the Thirty Years’ War the “Magdeburg Wedding”. Referencing the figure of a virgin on Magdeburg’s coat of arms, cynics thus characterized the capture of the town as a forced “marriage”. The events of this “wedding” were so devastating that the town did not recover its previous size and significance until the 19th century.