Grasping Salvation Lyrics

In the height of May was besieged

The Emperor's ancient pride

Ramparts captured in the Neustadt

No crossbar shot

Nor barricade

Would save the defenders

There was blood to spill

Imperial soldiers plundered every home

When there was nothing left to give, true misery began

Twenty thousand innocents wretchedly executed in manifold ways

No words can describe, nor tears bemoan

What befell this majestic city

Turned to embers in a single day

Those who survived were defiled and disgraced

Corpses swelled the banks of the Elbe

Their arms outstretched towards salvation

A salvation that would never come

Thirty seasons of woe

No tilling of land

No rearing of cattle

No life but the war

Dying wretches

Mouths stuffed with grass

Villages aflame

Children frozen in the bitter cold

From Rhine to Danube

Elbe and Weser

The land a mass grave

Famine rode ever forth

Gallow corpses

Were stripped of flesh

Still more horrible

Were the torments

Of they who lived on

Roaming bands of deserters and ghouls

Set thumbs to screws

Tied ropes around the neck

Forcing blood from the eyes

Serving a slurry of filth to make them vomit forth all of their worldly possessions

Others were burned alive

Priests disemboweled

Many hanged and cured in the smoke of burning homes

Until these raiders too were slain for plunder

As one wolf devours another