IN the little town of Meurs, in the Rhine province of the German empire, a house is still shown, which during the latter part of the seventeenth century was inhabited by Henry Tersteegen, and Cornelia his wife.
Henry Tersteegen, a merchant, of the Reformed Church, has left behind him the simple record that he was "given to godliness."
Meurs was at that time the capital of the county of Meurs, a possession of the Princes of Orange, and included in the Netherlands. Later on, in 1701, it was included in the new kingdom of Prussia.
Two years afterwards, Henry Tersteegen died, leaving behind him his Cornelia and eight children, who continued to live in the town of Meurs. Cornelia did her best—which may not have been much—to bring up her six boys and her two girls, of whom her son Gerhardt was the youngest, born November 25th, 1697, and, therefore, not quite six years old at the time of his father's death, in September, 1703.
And at this point we must break off our history a while, not a short while either, for the story of Gerhardt Tersteegen is one which would be but dimly comprehensible, did we not know something of men and women who lived before him something of the times and the surroundings of good Father Henry, and even of times long before.
We have to travel back into the earlier years of the century, and look around us on pictures very dreary—very repulsive—and at first sight very uninteresting to most of us.
The history of Germany, sketched out through ten centuries, is riot unlike a voyage down the Rhine, could we perform that voyage from the mountains where the two Rhines meet, and follow the great stream to the flat shores of the German Ocean.
We leave behind us the mountains with their mist and snow—the brave, rough men who still have simple ways and thoughts — we pass on by the knightly castles, and the stately hills, and the wooded valleys, by the marvellous cloisters and churches of ancient times. We are leaving the beautiful Rhine valley at last behind us, and we pass on through the flat plains where no beauty remains—through the stretch of country where men are busy with commerce and trade, where factories take the place of the ancient castles, and we scarcely care to turn to see the banks of pollard willows, and of wide unbroken fields, and towns and villages of ugly sameness, and rows of windmills, and chimneys of factories.
And to this dead flat of German history have we arrived in the clays of Henry Tersteegen.
Yet in one respect this flat field of history forms a contrast to the quiet, rich lands that stretch from the banks of the Rhine to meet the sky in a level line, beyond distant village spires and windmills. Unbeautiful, ignoble as were those times, they were not peaceful, or quiet, or prosperous.
The Thirty Years' War, ending in 1648, had left behind it misery and desolation which at the end of two hundred years were not effaced.
It is calculated that ten millions of men were lost to the nation during those forty years. Villages that had been rich and populous lay still in ruins, and almost deserted, at the end of the century. Many towns had lost three quarters or more of their inhabitants. The ground lay uncultivated around the blackened ruins of farms and homesteads.
In Hesse alone, seventeen towns, forty-seven castles, and three hundred villages had been burnt to the ground. Parsonage houses and schools had disappeared. Sheep and cattle had been seized and slaughtered wherever they could be found. Corn had been burnt or carried off by the lawless soldiers who roamed the country. Women and children could only die ; the men kept themselves alive as best they could by working at any thing they could find to do, by begging or stealing.
Terribly sad are the old chronicles of the German towns and villages. Let us turn to some of them.
Village of Stelzen, once a place of pilgrimage ; a famous shrine and chapel of the Virgin had in ancient times brought crowds of nobles and knights, and a ceaseless stream of peasant folk, to worship there. But after the Reformation Protestant pastors had lived a quiet life there generation after generation, till in the year 1632 the village, with the exception of the old church, the school, and a farmhouse, was burnt to the ground.
Pastor Nicholas Schubert contributed his sad tale to the records of the times. "I have saved nothing but my eight little naked, hungry children. I live as I can in the very old and ruined schoolhouse, which is in danger of falling on our heads, and where there is no chimney. I am without food or clothes. Dated from my miserable village of Stelzen, 29 January, 1633."
In the year 1647 the old church was burnt also. Sadder still is the history of Pastor Botzinger, which gives us a picture of the times a general history could scarcely furnish.
Pastor Botzinger was a man devoid of heroism, and apparently of faith. He does not interest us, except as a specimen of a large and miserable class. A fragment of his mournful tale remains for our study. " In the year 1627," he tells us, "one Tuesday, 8000 Saxon soldiers arrived at the town of Heldburg, and made their camp in the newly-sown cornfields.
A week later neither a calf nor a lamb, neither beer or wine, were to be had for love or money. Yet the officers insisted on being well fed. All houses were plundered, and my parsonage at Poppenhausen amongst the rest. My linen and bedding, my very shirts, were carried off.
" Duke Casimir, the prince, at last rode over to Heldburg, gave them a great banquet, some fine horses, and Soon crowns, if only they would take their leave, which they did."
Strange to say, the fields which were left trampled down, and covered with the ashes of some thousand camp fires, and looked like a wilderness, produced that year a magnificent crop, in consequence of which unhoped for plenty, Pastor Botzinger married the daughter of a town councillor of Heldburg, Ursula Bohme. Five quiet years followed.
But meanwhile the neighbouring bishops were meditating plans for bringing back the people of the villages to "the orthodox faith," and Jesuits and monks were working secretly amongst them. And some who foresaw that a storm was coming, took refuge in Poppenhausen and the villages immediately round.
But they found ere long they needed to be defended from their friends. The Protestant troops of Gustavus Adolphus suddenly appeared on the wooded heights. It was now Michaelmas, 1631. The Swedes, it was true, began by robbing the Catholics ; and these poor people, whose horses, cows, pigs, and sheep had been seized and carried off, fled in their turn to the quiet village of Poppenhausen, where they were hospitably received and cared for by their Protestant neighbours.
But the tables were turned when the Catholic troops, under Tilly and Wallenstein, appeared on the scene. The Catholic refugees then attacked their hosts, and robbed and plundered them. Pastor Botzinger fled to Heldburg, where his father-in-law was living, having sent his wife and children there some time before. He had changed his quarters, however, most fatally ; for the enemy seized the town of Heldburg, stabbed poor Herr Bohme in the presence of his daughter Ursula, tore off the shoes and clothes of Ursula and her mother, and plundered every house, dragging Herr Mime, who was still alive, from the bed upon which he was lying, and carrying off little Michael, the pastor's son.
Herr Bohme, seeing that his son-in-law was far too terrified to help his neighbours, advised him to escape from the town by any hole he could find in the town wall. The pastor was not ashamed thus to desert his wife and children and his dying father-in-law. He fled at once through the castle garden ; and we cannot be sorry to record further that he was pursued by Croats, who caught him, pulled off his shoes, stockings, and other articles of clothing, leaving him in his shirt and clerical cap. His purse, which was in his pocket, shared the fate of his clothes.
Then, remarking that he must be a parson, they proposed to kill him, and attacked him with their swords. This, however, their officer prevented.
At that moment a peasant was observed hidden in a bush. He was known to be rich, and the Croats left their first prize to pursue "the rich Caspar." A Swedish prisoner whom they left behind, advised the valiant pastor to take to his heels, which advice he followed, the rich Caspar meanwhile falling a victim to the Croats, who murdered him on the spot.
The pastor ran straight on for a whole hour without stopping, through a thick oak wood, but his course suddenly ended in a pond hidden in the brushwood. Having scrambled out, he relates that his heart beat so loud with terror, that he supposed it to be the galloping of a horseman in pursuit of him.
As soon as it was dark he proceeded on his way through the wood, and finally arrived in a village, which he believed to be still inhabited, as he heard the barking of dogs. But seeing no human creatures about, he wandered into a stable and went up to the loft, where he Made himself a bed on the hay.
It so fell out that the village people, who had been hiding all day in the bushes, assembled during the night behind the stable to consult as to the best plans for safety. The pastor now thought he had best join this party, and descended from his loft into the house adjoining the stable. In the cellar below he perceived a peasant with a candle, who was skimming the cream off some milk and drinking it greedily.
The pastor, standing on the cellar steps, called to the peasant, who turning round was alarmed at the sight of a bare-legged man, in a shirt, with a black cap. The pastor introduced himself as the parson of Poppenhausen, whereupon his kind host brought up some cream to share with his visitor. The pastor now ventured to ask for some addition to his wardrobe, and, whilst the peasant went to find him some clothes, he entirely finished the milk and cream. " No milk," he says, " was ever so good as that jug full!"
The peasant returned with a pair of leather breeches, a pair of clumsy shoes with straps, and two stockings, one white, and the other green. The pastor felt keenly how unclerical was this costume, but he accepted it thankfully. The shoes, however, were an impossibility—they were frozen hard. He therefore started in his stockings, which were in holes to begin with, and could scarcely be called stockings when he reached the town of Hildburghausen.
All around him, as he went, he saw in the distance, and near at hand, the burning villages, lighting up the sky with a terrible blood-red.
The appearance of the pastor caused an unwonted excitement, even terror, at Hildburghausen, for who might not such a wild nondescript be ? It was, therefore, his first care to find some means of providing himself with decent apparel.
His first appeal was to the burgomaster, Herr Paul Waltz. He was dismayed at his success. Herr Waltz presented him with an old hat about a yard high, which he says was even more unbecoming than the rest of his gear. He, however, thanked Herr Waltz, put it on, and proceeded to the house of a deacon.
Here a pair of knee breeches were provided him, also a pair of black stockings, and the sexton furnished a pair of shoes.
The pastor now felt quite presentable, were it not for the hat. Meanwhile a report reached him that the pastors, schoolmasters, and town councilors had secretly purposed to escape from the town at nine o'clock at night, with wives and children, leaving the townspeople to their fate. To arrange their plans they had assembled at the house of the town clerk.
To this house the pastor repaired, and found the gentlemen in question, assembled in a large room. All were too busy to notice the strange apparition. The pastor therefore retired to a seat in a dark corner, and there became aware of a nice and respectable hat hanging on a peg.
" Can it be," thought the pastor, " that they will be too busy with other matters to think of that hat ? What if they should leave it behind ?" And so it came to pass. " When they broke up," he writes, " there was such a leave-taking, and howling, and so many parting words, that the noise was deafening. I laid my head down on the table and pretended to be asleep. And when nearly all were gone, I clapped my old steeple hat on the peg, and putting on the other, walked out with the rest into the street. The plan had now come abroad, and a countless number of people were sitting on their packages and bundles waiting for the start. Many waggons and carts stood ready. As we passed out of the town, some were carrying lanterns, some torches, some lights made of straw and pitch. Some thousand people thus journeyed off sadly and sorrowfully in the dark night."
Others joined this band of homeless wanderers from other towns and villages, and each brought some fresh tidings of the terrible deeds of the Croats—murders, burning of churches and towns, pillage and tortures.
The pastor, however, was rejoicing that on this journey he had a fresh addition to his wardrobe, in the shape of a pair of gloves. Someone also gave him a knife in a sheath,
This melancholy party wandered on, finding, as they arrived at each town or village, that instead of obtaining food and lodging, their numbers were increased by the inhabitants who were themselves flying before the Croats. The news followed them of the pillage of their deserted towns, and the murder of any inhabitants who had not joined in the flight.
One fugitive after another arrived to join the band. " Our burgomaster has had his skull cleft in two," said one. "The Croats have hewn our carrier's horses to pieces," said another. " Our church has been pillaged," said a third, "and the organ-pipes lie all in a heap in the market-place." But by raising a large sum of money Hildburghausen had bought off the soldiers, otherwise the town would have been burnt to the ground.