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Albert, the brother of the Elector of Brandenburg, and cousin of the Grand-Master of the Teutonic Order in Prussia, stood in 1517, though only twenty-seven years old, already at the head of those two great ecclesiastical provinces of Germany; Wittenberg also belonged to his Magdeburg diocese. Raised to such an eminence and so rapidly by good fortune, he was filled with ambitious thoughts.

The decrees of the Confederation of Leipzig were annulled by a proclamation, the Convention itself suppressed by an imperial decree, and all the refractory states threatened with the fate of Magdeburg. As the executor of this imperial mandate, Tilly immediately ordered troops to march against the Bishop of Bremen, who was a member of the Confederacy, and had himself enlisted soldiers.

Eager to get the start of his competitor, the King of Denmark hastened to take the field. Appointed generalissimo of the circle of Lower Saxony, he soon had an army of 60,000 men in motion; the administrator of Magdeburg, and the Dukes of Brunswick and Mecklenburgh, entered into an alliance with him.

As soon as I heard of this, accompanied by Mr. Charles H. Russell, Jr., of my staff, I went to Magdeburg, using my ordinary pass for the visiting of prisoners. The German authorities told me afterwards that if they had known I was going to make this visit they would not have permitted it, but on this occasion the corps commander system worked for me.

In 1235, at the age of twenty-three, Mechthild not without many a heart-pang, and prompted to this determination by a troubled conscience, a determination doubtless brought about by the preaching of the Dominican friars, who were stirring all classes by their impassioned zeal left her home and went to Magdeburg, where she entered a settlement of beguines.

Magdeburg surrendered without making any attempt at resistance; Spandau did the same; Stettin opened its gates to a division of cavalry, and the governor of Custrin sent boats across the Oder to fetch the French troops; who without this help would not have been able to take the place without several months of siege.

An oblong quadrangular district, measuring about 400 miles from east to west, and 200 from north to south, and lying eastward of the Netherlands, contains a net-work of railways which contrast remarkably with those of east, south, and central Germany; it includes Hamburg, Berlin, Leipsic, Dresden, Magdeburg, Brunswick, Hanover, Bremen, and a busy knot of other important towns.

The king had now two routes to Magdeburg; one westward led through an exhausted country, and filled with the enemy's troops, who might dispute with him the passage of the Elbe; the other more to the southward, by Dessau and Wittenberg, where bridges were to be found for crossing the Elbe, and where supplies could easily be drawn from Saxony.

On the strength of this assurance it was decided that Minna should go on to Konigsberg and pave the way for my arrival there. Ere these plans could be carried out, we had still to spend a time of dreadful and acute anxiety, which I shall never forget, within the walls of Magdeburg.

As the passes in Upper Pomerania were well guarded, and the king's camp near Schwedt defied attack, Tilly abandoned his offensive plan of operations, and retreated towards the Elbe to besiege Magdeburg. The capture of Demmin opened to the king a free passage into Mecklenburg; but a more important enterprise drew his arms into another quarter.