701 the second word soldiers, will this rebellious city elude your power? Can it be that we will spend our entire life besieging this city? Will the unpunished citizens of Magdeburg bargain with us? They, who have caused us so much aggravation, will save their homeland, their homes, and their gold. We, who exhaust ourselves with so many labors in this siege, will we leave without a prize? So it will be, soldiers. Behold, even now, they send back our trumpeter. They surrender to Tyllius on fair conditions, but we are defrauded of deserved spoil and plunder. Will we —with our spirits crestfallen — carry home our tattered clothes and wounded bodies? Why should we not rather acquire these two cubits of clay entrenchment, before they reach an agreement? Let us invade the helpless populace, paving our way with the sword! The only effort will be to ascend the rampart: The rest — the murder of the powerless, the laying waste of houses — is the consolation; jewels [and] wealth, with which the people of Magdeburg abound, will be our reward. Well, soldiers, onward! Follow my lead! Let us not suffer [such] treachery to be without punishment, our injuries to be without vengeance, nor our labors to be without reward” (Book 2).33 He finished speaking, and doing exactly what he had convinced them to do, he took out his sword. He entered the moat first, and having overcome its fortifications, encamped opposite the entrenchment. The soldiers, with equal alacrity, followed the leader and occupied the lower part of the entrenchment. They soon advanced to the higher part from which they toppled off the people of Magdeburg. When Falchenberg, who had resisted with greater success and had already begun to repel the imperial troops, fell dead from the lead armaments, they seized, plundered, and burned the city. I empathize with the fate of the people of Magdeburg. But I believe that there is no other way that we can conquer that heavenly City which has been shown to the Prophet of Revelation as 33 Burg(us) Petrus Baptista Genuensis, Mars Sveco-Germanicus, sive Rerum a Gustavo Adolpho Sueciae Rege gestarum, Libri Tres, quibus Belli Sueco-Germanici initium […] fidelissime referuntur. Coloniae Agrippinae 1641, pp. 153-154.
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