Not the Bartholomew's Day Massacre, but another

I didn't post anything about the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre this year, but I thought I would post other massacre's of protestants by Romanists. Perhaps they were inspired by the French, after all the Pope struck a medal for that event.

This is the Magdeburg Massacre or sometimes called the Sack of Magdeburg. This was during the 30 Years' War. Magdeburg was a primarily Protestant city and the Count Tilly brought his army against it and laid siege. The city bravely held out for 7 months, but this was during the part of the war where Protestant resistance was almost non-existent. The Danish had for the most part been handled and it was before Gustavous brought in Sweeden. So no relief ever came for the Protestants of Magdeburg.

The trouble was not the siege, but what happened after. The city of Magdeburg was either 24,000 or 25,000 depending on where you read the stats. The Romanists went through the city and looted it. After it had been thoroughly looted the army wiped out everyone else. Now some of the city was already burning from the attack, but the Romanist then went about destroying what was left. Women, children, men, it did not matter. They killed them all. 20,000 people were killed leaving only 4 or 5,000 people. The city was in ruins and the surrounding area had been pillaged during the siege. The people of Magdeburg continued to die long after the troops left. Apparently it dipped as low as 450 people. It took the Roman army 14 days to haul all the bodies into the river.

Some say that this massacre helped bring Gustavus into the war, but that probably is a bit of an over reach on how religious Gustavus really was. Still, the massacre was immense and today barely makes the history books.