Gustavus was
advancing to relieve it. But unexpectedly it was assaulted in the most
daring and desperate manner, and all was lost. On a Sabbath morning, the
sudden toll of alarm bells, the roar of artillery, the roll of drums
beating to quarter, and the piercing cries of women and children,
mingled with the shouts and execrations of brutal and victorious
soldiers, announced the fate of Magdeburg. Forty thousand people--men,
women, and children--were inhumanly butchered, without necessity,
quarter, compassion, or remorse. So cold and hard is war! This was the
saddest massacre in the history of Germany, and one of the greatest
crimes that a successful general ever committed. History has no
language, and painting no colors to depict the horrors of that dreadful
scene; and the interval of more than two hundred years has not weakened
the impression of its horrors. The sack of Magdeburg stands out in the
annals of war like the siege of Tyre and the fall of Jerusalem.

But it roused the Protestants as from a trance. It united them, as the
massacre of St. Bartholomew united the Huguenots. They marched under the
standard of Gustavus with the same enthusiasm that the Huguenots showed
under Henry IV. at the battle of Ivry. There was now no limit to the
successes of the heroic Swede. The decisive battle of Leipsic, the
passage of the Lech, the defence of Nuremberg, and the great final
victory at Lutzen raised the military fame of Gustavus to a height
unknown since Hannibal led his armies over the Alps, or Caesar
encountered the patrician hosts at the battle of Pharsalia. No victories
were ever more brilliant than his; and they not only gave him a
deathless fame, but broke forever the Austrian fetters. His reputation
as a general was fairly earned. He ranks with Conde, Henry IV., Frederic
the Great, Marlborough, and Wellington; not, perhaps, with Alexander,
Caesar, and Napoleon,--those phenomena of military genius, the exalted
trio who shine amid the glories of the battlefield, as Homer, Dante, and
Shakspeare loom up in fame above other immortal poets.

In two years from the landing of Gustavus Adolphus on the island of
Ruden, near the southern extremity of the Baltic, he expelled a
triumphant enemy from Pomerania, traversed the banks of the Oder,
overran the Duchy of Mecklenburg, ascended the Elbe, delivered Saxony
from the armies of Tilly, crossed the Thuringian forest, entered
Frankfort in triumph, restored the Palatinate to it