The
fighting armies left a trail of black desolation where they passed.
"They are not made up of birds that feed on air," sneered Tilly.
Peaceful husbandmen were murdered, the young women dragged away to
worse than slavery, and helpless children spitted upon the lances
of the wild landsknechts and tossed with a laugh into the blazing
ruins of their homes. But no such foul blot cleaves to the memory of
Gustav Adolf. While he lived his men were soldiers, not demons. In
his tent the work of Hugo Grotius on the rights of the nations in
war and peace lay beside the Bible and he knew them both by heart.
When he was gone, the fame of some of his greatest generals was
smirched by as vile orgies as Tilly's worst days had witnessed. It
is told of John Baner, one of the most brilliant of them, that he
demanded ransom of the city of Prix, past which his way led. The
city fathers permitted themselves an untimely jest: "Prix giebt
nichts--Prix gives nothing," they said. Baner was as brief: "Prix
wird zu nichts--Prix comes to nothing," and his army wiped it out.
Grief and anger almost choked the King when he heard of Magdeburg's
fate. "I will avenge that on the Old Corporal (Tilly's nickname),"
he cried, "if it costs my life." Without further ado he forced the
two Electors to terms and joined the Saxon army to his own.
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