,WE can scarcely picture to ourselves this wholesale destruction, when we remember that such was the history, not only of one town, but of towns, cities, and villages through the breadth and length of Germany.
Seven years before the Peace the inhabitants of Würtemberg were reduced from 400,000 to 48,000—in Frankenthal, out of i8,000 but 324 remained—and so might we continue the terrible list, including many places where but two families, or even one family remained, and many also where none were left to tell the tale of horrors.
Nor must we forget that war was not the only scourge which devastated the land. Whilst immense tracts remained uncultivated, or were ravaged by thousands of hungry soldiers, it was inevitable that famine should add to the misery and death of the unhappy people.
Nor famine alone but the consequences of famine, where men and women and little children were driven forth to feed upon roots and berries, even, in some places, upon the dead bodies which lay around them. We even hear of men and women who were hunted down for food by those who were maddened with hunger.
Therefore, on the heels of famine followed terrible and deadly pestilence ; and in some places—in Dresden, for example—at the end of three years of this plague scarcely one in fifteen was left alive.
Haggard creatures, more like phantoms than like men, wandered wildly over the country "black in the face," says the Chronicle, "tottering and stumbling like people in a dream." Their thought was only to flee—flee anywhere, before the band of wild soldiers, urged on by the merciless Jesuits. They left their dead unburied to the starving dogs and cats, and to the wolves, who increased rapidly as human life diminished. Many killed themselves in hopeless despair. Many sank into melancholy madness, and roamed about, imagining themselves possessed, or hunted by evil fiends.
And the voices that might have spoken comfort to them—the voices of their pastors and preachers, the sound of their old hymns and psalms—all alike were almost everywhere silenced and banished. The churches lay in heaps. Many of the pastors had been massacred, many had fled. Villages and towns remained for long years without preachers or public worship, without schools, without law. Whole generations grew up with no education, no habits of order or morality ; but, on the contrary, learning every vice and every evil practice from the lawless soldiers who carried a curse over the land.
Nor could the nation gain in patriotism and courage, the only gain which sometimes in a small measure, counterbalances the evil effects of war.
For this war was one of Germans against Germans, a war which served only to stir up the bitterest feelings of religious hatred. The desolated country, the burning towns, the piles of the dead and dying, were a triumph to the Jesuits and their troops.
It was at first a crusade against light, and truth, and the gospel of Christ ; but in time the victims ceased to suffer for the truth's sake, and, maddened into revenge and hatred, fought, but under the bare name of Protestants, scarcely knowing the truths which were so rarely preached or taught, but burning only with rage and vengeance, ready to welcome Swedes, or French, or any who would but take up their cause ; though their defenders in their turn ravaged their country, and left a desert behind them.
Such were the people become, fifty years before so prosperous, so orderly, so peace-loving, and, in many cases, so God-fearing and enlightened.
Such were the people. But their princes, who had been ranged either for or against the cause of the gospel, what had they become when the days of peace returned ?
We read of George William of Prussia, who, whilst his subjects were starving, and many hundreds of his villages lay in piles of desolate ruins, "led a wild, heathen life of luxury, feasting and drinking himself drunk with shameless women and gamblers, given up to revels and races, masquerades and ballets and comedies." This prince died eight years before the end of the war.
And meanwhile a historian of the time describes the country round. "I-low sorrowful is the sight of your great towns ! Where of old there were thousands of streets, there are now not a hundred. The small towns and villages lie in ashes and ruins—houses without roofs or rafters, doors or windows. Where are the churches ? They have burnt them, and carried off the bells ; they are turned into stables or market-houses, or resorts of the vilest of the populace.
"And the villages-O God, how terrible is the sight ! I wander amongst them for ten (German) miles, and see not a human creature, not a beast, not a sparrow ; perhaps here and there a solitary old man or a child, or a couple of old women. In all the villages the houses are filled with dead bodies and carrion, the corpses of men, women, children, horses, pigs, cows, and oxen lying heaped together, the victims of hunger and pestilence, eaten by worms, by wolves, by dogs, and crows and ravens; for there were none to bury them, or to lament them, or weep over them.
" Remember, you rich townspeople, how multitudes died before your eyes on the bare ground ; for of your many beds you would not spare them one. And later on those beds were carried away, and your turn came at last. You know how the living among you hid in holes and in cellars, to murder one another, tear one another in pieces, and to devour one another ; that parents fed upon their children, and children on the dead bodies of their parents ; that many have begged at your doors for a cat or a dog to appease their hunger ; that many thronged to the knacker's yards to cut off pieces from the carcasses, already decayed and pestilential."
And this throughout the whole land, far and near, whilst the princes feasted and drank, and the nobles, as far as they had the means, followed their example.
They gave themselves up, we read, to expensive living, in their dresses of costly velvet and lace, glittering with pearls and jewels—much of this finery the plunder they had heaped up during the long years of war. Especially, we are told, did they spend recklessly at weddings and at christenings, when gluttony and drunkenness knew no bounds.
We are told also that the courts most noted for drunkenness were those of the prince bishops, being chiefly in the vine country along the Rhine and Maine, and being also without the refining influence of ladies, so that the sole pleasure of the bishops and their guests was, as one of their historians relates, not drinking, but tippling.
This writer records of himself that during a stay of more than eight days at one of these episcopal palaces, he was scarcely one hour sober.
But his visit to the Court of Heidelberg was more disastrous. Although at Heidelberg ladies were not wanting, they did but encourage the elector palatine in his laudable desire to make his visitor " drink himself to death."
He was taken to the renowned Heidelberg tun, and there forced to drink till he was speechless and insensible. He found, he says, on coming to his senses, that all the company were much in the same condition.
Thus Protestant princes and Catholic alike, bishops and nobles, were sunk beneath the level of beasts, whilst murdering and slaughtering with merciless fury, for the sake of religion.
Had nothing then remained of the great work of Reformation for which a hundred years before so many had suffered and died ?
Yes ; there were some few but glorious exceptions even amongst the princes—there were not a few, amongst the pastors and preachers who remained, who lifted up their voices against the vice and shamelessness of all classes.
One proof of this is the fact that towards the end of the century a large number of the Protestant princes went over to the Church of Rome, some, it is true, for the sake of worldly honours, but many because, as we are told, " all manner of concessions were made to them on the part of Rome, with regard to their morals and manners. The new faith itself offered many alluring enticements for tastes and feelings, which cold and severe Protestantism had kept down, or at least had not encouraged. The ceremonial, so gorgeous and dazzling to the senses, which the Church of Rome regards as a necessary part of the worship of Him who is a Spirit ; and the solemn pomp with which a bishop glittering with gold and jewels appeared amidst a flood of light, surrounded by hundreds of wax tapers, and accompanied by the entrancing sound of Italian music, was something in comparison with which Protestantism, with its unadorned services, seemed to their eyes dull and common, not to say vulgar. The countless church festivals and processions gave occasions for splendour and feasting, and furnished an excuse for the holiday-making which Protestants condemned, as interfering with duty and labour. The convenient morals of the Jesuits spared their converts all the perplexing conflicts which might disturb the consciences of those who had to listen to the exhortation of their Protestant pastors. 'The casuistry of the pupils of Loyola, which furnished justifying excuses for most things, found no difficulties not only in sparing the inclinations and desires of these favoured princes, but even in representing them as especially pleasing to heaven, on account of their extravagant luxury."