ABSTRACT
In the winter of 1550, the eyes of Germany, and indeed of Europe, were on the city of Magdeburg. The heavily fortified and strategically well-placed city on the banks of the Elbe was under siege. Masses of troops, under the command of Maurice of Saxony, were encamped before its gates. Inside the city, the townsmen were prepared for a long contest. According to their leaders, this war was a salvation-historical event. Their city represented the last bastion of the true faith to hold fast against the Antichrist’s final onslaught, and thus their Protestant faith demanded that they stand firm against their enemies to the point of death. To surrender the city would be to betray Christ. The town’s inhabitants had been storing up provisions and weapons for the previous few years, and their preachers had exhorted them ceaselessly to prepare for the Antichrist’s inevitable attack. One English diplomat wrote admiringly to a friend that Magdeburg’s resistance was now the only thing keeping ‘Cerberus of Rome and Geryon of Spain, the two three-headed ones’ from total domination over European political and ecclesiastical life.
