Talk:Sack of Magdeburg

Imperial army
ummm which imperial army? the link to imperial army points to the one consisting of stormtroopers.. somehow i don't think vader and his troopers sacked magdeburg... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.170.83.190 (talk) 23:43, 18 January 2005‎
 * An Imperial army is the army controlled by an empire. This is not an invention of George Lucas. Jez 22:09, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This article is shorter than the section on the sack in Tilly's biography. Some mistake? PatGallacher (talk) 11:14, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * It refers to the army of the Holy Roman Empire. Magdeburg belonged to Saxony, at the time when it was sacked. Norum (talk) 12:36, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Use of chain shot
According to the article Chain-shot, one reason for the savageness of the sack was the defenders' use of chain shot. This was normally used in naval warfare against sails and rigging, but at Magdeburg was apparently used against soldiers. Hairy Dude (talk) 01:38, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

Efficiency of the Swedish army
There are two sentences praising Gustavus Adolphus' army in section 'Background'->'Alliance with the Swedish king'. Not pertinent to this article, in my opinion: That army was not present during the Sack. Will remove this shortly. 2.247.240.158 (talk) 11:20, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

stuff to do (on the way to Good Article)
Background: few to no sources

I'm sure most of the background history is correct, still it needs to be confirmed with citations by someone with access to a history source covering the respective time.

More to lose

It should be pointed out (more than is now the case in the article) that Magdeburg and Bremen were special cases: Their magnates stood to lose much more than those in other challenged towns and cities, as the last 80 years of legal history of many possessions would be voided upon surrender. (see Edict of Restitution)

More info on Christian William von Brandenburg and Dietrich von Falkenburg

Both were present before and during the sack. One got killed and one arrested. Both were sent by the Swedish court.

What we don't cover is how much influence they had on decisions within the besieged city, or how these decisions came to be at all. I remember reading about their quarrels with the clergy and the city council concerning a possible tribute and defenses.

Researching about this has long been on my list (never on the top, sadly). I'd appreciate any help.

Quotes from decision makers

Right now we have some quotes from a (later famous) city councillor, the Catholic-Imperial second in command, the Catholic League president, the Pope and some self-justifying statement from Gustav II Adolf.

Much more correspondence and otherwise documented statements by prominent decision-makers are sure to have been preserved. I'd like to include at least something from the emperor, one or two prominent Protestant German princes, and perhaps a few contemporary "celebrities". (Did Cromwell or Richelieu comment on this event?)

Reaction in "the media"

For this time this means mainly coverage in (sometimes anonymous) broadside pamphlets which was the major way of public news digestion in this age before newspapers.

The engraving we have had as a title image in this article for years is a good example for the host of apologetic pamphlets that were published in the months following the sack: It depicts the city's destruction as a divine punishment for disobedience for which the citizens themselves were to blame. Hundreds of this kind are preserved. What we don't have is the other side: One of the many publications concentrating on the unusual cruelty and savagery of the soldiers' conduct.

I'd like to have at least one from each side for contrast, and the section presenting them backed up by a source like Coupe, 1972 or Pass, 1996 (that concern themselves with broadside publications of the time), which are already part of the article.

The right to pillage

That is something else which I am vaguely aware of but don't have the sources availabe to prove: There was considered to exist an ancient law of siege warfare that went: "If you don't surrender promptly, you will be sacked."

It was a means of psychological warfare that made Alexander the Great crucify the surviving defenders of Tyre, for example.

Please comment and help working on the article. --ΟΥΤΙΣ (talk) 07:33, 6 July 2021 (UTC) Spiral of escalating violence

I think I remember reading in Wilson and Meumann & Niefanger that there was a stepwise build-up of extraordinary military violence by both sides in 1631, with the treatment of the defeated combatants at Frankfurt being the final step in this "retribution spiral", before Magdeburg also spread it to non-combatants on a massive scale. We should consider mentioning this in the article. --ΟΥΤΙΣ (talk) 10:22, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Pappenheim quote: Which "Sack of Jerusalem" did he mean?
The association and linking to different "Sack of Jerusalem" articles has gone this and that way over years now.

I decided to remove an article link from "Sack of Jerusalem" and instead add a short note explaining that it cannot be known for sure which one Pappenheim meant here. ΟΥΤΙΣ (talk) 11:26, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

It's "destruction of Jerusalem" of course, not "Sack". Sorry, my bad. The rest of my post is still valid, I think. ΟΥΤΙΣ (talk) 15:52, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Background information
I've just done some digging through what sources I could find and added what citations I could to this section. There are still a couple of things which I haven't been able to verify, and have tagged inline as needing citations:

Firstly, I haven't been able to find specific reference to self-styling administrators around this period. That being said, Christian Wilhelm is consistently referred to as Administrator of Magdeburg in the sources I've looked at, so I don't doubt that the information is correct.

More concerningly, I haven't been able to verify the claim that Magdeburg ever gained imperial immediacy, in 1180 or otherwise. As with much of the information in this section, it appears to have been directly lifted from the unsourced Archbishopric of Magdeburg article. All that I found in trying to verify this claim was this article, which actually claims that Magdeburg never achieved imperial immediacy. I don't feel qualified to say for certain that this part of the article is incorrect, but thought I'd flag this up for those with more knowledge than myself to have a look at. Iliad17 (talk) 14:24, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

Crimes against humanity category removal
Crimes against humanity is a specific legal concept. In order to be included in the category, the event (s) must have been prosecuted as a crime against humanity, or at a bare minimum be described as such by most reliable sources. Most of the articles that were formerly in this category did not mention crimes against humanity at all, and the inclusion of the category was purely original research. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:49, 14 February 2024 (UTC)