[Author’s Note]
In this excerpt from his chronicle […], Volkmar Happe, who by this time was a high court official in Sondershausen, describes a raid on the city by Swedish troops. Sondershausen in Thuringia was a small residential city not well protected by walls. Its only fortification was the castle, the seat of government of the Count of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen. The kind of fighting that Happe describes from up close was typical of the small-scale, protracted warfare that especially characterized the Thirty Years’ War in its later years, all the more because Sondershausen was ostensibly Protestant, as were the raiding Swedish troops. Especially interesting here is Happe’s perspective as a victim of the destruction.
[Note: The following takes place in 1640.]
On the 30th [of May] between twelve noon and one o’clock more than a thousand Swedish horsemen arrived in front of the city of Sondershausen. Our guards pleaded with them not to use violence, but they [the horsemen] fired at them [the guards], chased them away from the gate, opened the gate by force, and in doing so gruesomely injured and even killed some poor women, children, and men. Thereupon we defended ourselves in the castle. However, they set the outlying part of the city near the main church on fire, and then the center of the city by the Stockheuser gate, too. Thereby over a hundred houses were burned down, including my own. Everything in my house was lamentably burned. Thereupon our troops moved down from the castle into the city and engaged them in heavy fighting. Six horsemen of the plunderers were taken prisoner, as well as nine horses, and they were chased from the city. On our side, thank God, no one was killed or injured, though the Swedes took losses: More than forty horsemen are said to have lain dead.
The godless people also violated many females. This skirmish lasted until five o’clock in the evening, and then they finally withdrew, after we gave them back the horses. The prisoners are mostly from Witzleben’s regiment.
Among others, I also had the additional misfortune that without my knowing, my daughter Anna Sabina and many females, out of sheer terror, fled from the castle toward the woods, and in the fields they fell into the hands of the horsemen. They undressed her and all the other females and let them run away in their underclothes, and thank God I got her back in the castle unharmed.
Now two parts of the city of Sondershausen lie in ashes, and only the third part is still standing, as long as God allows. This robbing, murdering, and burning horde was commanded by two captains, one named Senckel, the other named Paul.
Author’s Note:
Georg Melchior von Witzleben was the commander of a Swedish regiment.
Source:
Medick, Hans, and Benjamin Marschke. “Battle and Massacre: Experiences of Mass Violence and Death.” Experiencing the Thirty Years War: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2013. 131-32. Print.
Original Source Listed:
From Volkmar Happe, Chronicon Thuringiae (Thuringian Chronicle), ed. Hans Medick, Norbert Winnige, and Andreas Bähr (electronic publication: Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Jena, 2008), 2:317r-19r. Available as a digital facsimile at www.mdsz.thulb.uni-jena.de/happe/quelle.php.
Further Reading:
No comments, yet...