If a town was considered strong enough to resist the enemy's army, it was always filled with fugitives at the approach of the enemy, the number of whom was so great that the citizens could not think of providing for them. There came to Dresden, for example, in 1637, after the capture of Torgau in the course of three days, from the 7th to the 9th of May, twelve thousand waggons with fugitive country people. The enemy surrounded the over-filled place; round the walls the battle raged, and within, not less voracious, hunger, misery and sickness. All the fugitives who were capable of bearing arms were employed in severe siege service; the nobility also of the neighbourhood sometimes assisted. If the siege lingered long, the high prices were followed by shameless usury, the millers ground only for the rich, and the bakers made exorbitant demands. The pictures of famine, such as was then experienced in many towns, are too horrible to dwell upon. When at Nördlingen a fortified tower was taken by the besiegers, the citizens themselves burnt it down, hungry women fell upon the half-roasted bodies of the enemy and carried pieces home for their children. But if a town was taken by storm it experienced the fate of Magdeburg; the mowing down of masses, the dishonouring of women, horrible torments and mutilations; and, added to all this, pestilence. To what an extent pestilence then raged in the cities is scarcely credible; it frequently carried off more than half the inhabitants. In 1626 and the following years, it depopulated wide districts; from 1631 to 1634 it returned again, and still worse in 1636. At all events it gave to each town for years plenty of space, and proportionate peace; and the places--not very numerous--which were only once destroyed in the course of the war, were able to recover themselves. But the most fearful cases of all, were those where the same calamities were two, three, and four times repeated. Leipzig was besieged five times, and Magdeburg six, and most of the smaller towns were more frequently filled with foreign soldiers; thus both large and small towns were equally ruined.