History of the Siege, Capture and Destruction of Magdeburg

The excerpt begins with the breach of the walls and describes the entry of the imperial army and the army of the Catholic League, the plundering, the fire that consumed the city within a day, and the clearing of the dead afterwards. Guericke attributes the soldiers’ violence partly to hatred of those who held the Augsburg Confession and partly to their losses during the assault.

On the number of dead he is careful. He says that it cannot be known with certainty, because so many died by fire and were found in cellars long afterwards, and then gives the figure generally reckoned, some 20,000. The figure is his report of a common estimate and is given as such in the Thirty Years’ War and the Peace of Westphalia. He wrote as a Protestant citizen of the ruined town.