A TOWN less known may, however, be remembered in this short story. It is worthy of remembrance, and, in some respects, of honour.
The old town of Lawenberg lay in a fruitful valley at the foot of the Riesengebirge, on the river Bober, containing in the year 1617 at least 6500 inhabitants. Between the meadows and the wooded hills arose the strong walls and watchtowers of this ancient city.
Let us transport ourselves to the great marketplace, just as it was 260 years ago. Around it stand the townhall and various buildings for purposes of justice and of trade, with high gabled roofs, and four or five stories high, as were most of the houses within the walls.
Covered ways, like those now seen in some ancient towns, run along under the projecting upper stories.
In the lower part of the house are the rooms where the family sleep. The upper part is the storeroom. On the first floor is the best room, carved and panelled ; and on the floors above are sleeping-rooms, and chambers where household articles, or corn or wool, are stored away.
For Lowenberg carries on a busy trade in cloth, which has a great sale in Austria and Bohemia and Poland. Thus it has become a rich city, and has a seal of pure gold wherewith to attest its deeds and charters. This is the Lowenberg of 1617.
Twelve years later the storm had broken. For some time the emperor's troops had been quartered in the neighbouring towns. Their swords and pistols were the weapons of conversion used by the Jesuit " Salvation Army." And next the citizens of Lowenberg were ordered to send 'away their Protestant pastors, who for years had laboured amongst them, and who were now to go into perpetual exile. It was a mournful sight to see the old pastors pass out of the city gates. Their houses had been crowded that last morning by their loving people, who came to bring them parting gifts, and to say a last farewell with many tears. A crowd of weeping men, women, and children followed them out of the gates, to take a last leave when they had walked with them as far as they were able.
All that night an owl sat screeching on the great church tower, and the melancholy sound seemed to the sorrowful people an omen of darker days to come.
Next day came the Jesuits. They preached every day, promising to all those who would return to the true church rewards and privileges in the name of the emperor. For those who refused to return there were penalties and punishments. The citizens feared man, if they feared not God. They compelled the mayor to come to terms with the Jesuits ; and most of the men of Lowenbcrg consented to receive the wafer, without the wine, according to the forms of the Roman Church. The few who refused to do so were driven from the city.
The Jesuits had gained the day. They went on to conquer other towns for Rome.
As soon as they were gone the citizens betook themselves to the Protestant services in the neighbouring villages, The Catholic priest looked down from his pulpit at Lowenberg upon an empty church. More threats and more violence followed. The burgomaster, who was staunch and honest, was consigned to a dungeon. The council took heart, and declared that they would die Lutherans, Riots were raised in the streets, and again the emperor's " Salvation Army "—" Seligmacher," as they were called—rode in through the city gates.
Most of the citizens fled with wives and children, and hid themselves in the villages round. They were dragged back and imprisoned, till they should make confession to a Roman priest. Some, however, succeeded in reaching distant countries.
A new council was appointed, chosen from a set of disreputable men, who were always at hand to furnish to the Jesuits tools for any of their purposes.
The deserted houses were plundered, and waggonloads of household articles bought up by the Catholics from the soldiers who had been plundering. The imperial magistrate and the new council maltreated all whom they regarded as Protestants. The magistrate himself, an old inhabitant of Lowenberg, was one of the Jesuits' converts,
Two hundred and fifty citizens had gone with their families into banishment. One side of the great market-place became entirely uninhabited. Long grass was soon growing in it, and cattle feeding there. In the winter cold and hunger drove back a few of the women and children who had been living in the woods and hamlets around the town.
The chief member of the new council was a monk, who wore golden bracelets. The new priest of the great church was the son of a Protestant pastor.
Thus had the Jesuits conquered Lowenberg. So they believed ; but from a quarter they least expected the defiance came.
Let us return to the old chronicle, written by an eye-witness of the scenes which astonished the monk with his golden bracelets, and the imperial magistrate, on the morning of the 9th of April, 1631.
On that morning there assembled in the council chamber adjoining the town hall the priest, the magistrate, and four members of the council, namely, George Mumer, a clothworker, with another of his trade (each of these gentlemen are spoken of as "his wool-worship"), Herr Melchior, a disreputable baker ; Daniel Seiler, a cabinet-maker ; and the town clerk, Peter Beier. The burgomaster, who seems to have been released from his dungeon, was lying ill of gout.
The wives of these worthies, with other ladies of the town, had received notice the evening before, that on the morning of the 9th they were to present themselves in the town-hall.
The priest opened the meeting by a short speech.
He said that as his dearly beloved children of the true church in Lowenberg were about to send a deputation to the emperor to inform him of their submission, he and the magistrate had agreed together that it would be advisable before so doing to compel all the women to declare themselves of the Catholic faith. His imperial majesty's confessor would see to it, that if they could thus prove their orthodoxy, they should not fail of receiving a special reward. " And if the ladies prove refractory," added the priest, "you have towers and dungeons enough to bring them to a right mind."
The magistrate seconded this proposal, and felt confident that if the chief ladies were locked up for awhile, all the rest would submit themselves. "We have brought the men to their right senses," concluded the magistrate, " and we can therefore manage these animals with ease."
Herr Mumer here remarked that he had been a widower for three months, and he well knew from sad experience what a heavy cross it was to a man to have a wife who was always hammering at his conscience, and therefore he was entirely of opinion that man and wife ought to have one Creed and one Paternoster. As to the Ten Commandments, that was not so urgent ; but he considered it would be more easily said than done. Could not his imperial majesty's commandant first get his own wife to give in ? "As for mine," said Herr Mumer in conclusion, 'I know I never should have tackled her."
Herr Franze, the other clothworker, who had also just lost his wife, said he knew but too well how a man suffered from the tongue of a woman who was averse to popery.
Herr Seiler, the cabinet-maker, and Herr Beier, the town clerk, were of one mind as to the necessity of taming their obstreperous wives ; "hut mine," said Herr Beier, "is an arrant shrew, and never could I undertake to tackle her. I advise that the ladies should be invited into the council chamber, and provided with seats. Then we can try first with fair words, and then with threats, to bring them to reason."
The priest and the magistrate said, " It were well so, but no time must be lost, as the proverb says, ' Eat, bird ! or die.'"
The magistrate then called a constable, and said, " Are the women come ?"
"No," he replied, "none are there."
Then said the magistrate, "Go and find them."
The constable found a few of the ladies, amongst them the magistrate's wife, assembled in the house of a friend, and said, " Ladies, my lord the priest, and his worship the magistrate, and the honourable council, wish you a very good morning, and invite you to the townhall."
The magistrate's wife replied, "Yes, yes, We wish them good morning in return, we will soon come."
Then came the ladies two and two, the magistrate's wife and the burgomaster's wife leading the procession. The other women of the town, who were doing their morning's shopping at the baker's, and at other houses near the market, now collected, and followed in a troop behind the procession.
Thus the whole party went up the steps in to the townhall.
When the constable came into the council to tell the gentlemen this, the imperial magistrate said, " Bring them in."
The constable replied, " Sir, there would not be room for them. I reckon there is a good half thousand of them. The townhall is crammed. They are sitting even on the pipers' seats."
" What have you done ?" exclaimed the priest in dismay. "I never asked for all the women of the town. I wanted only the wives of these honourable gentlemen, that they may set an example to be followed by the rest. Oh, and alas ! what have you done ? "
The constable replied, "When his lordship the imperial magistrate told me last night to summon all the women who were not converted, or who did not wish to be converted, beginning with his own wife, I just carried out his order. And as it was getting late I told most of the women I met in the street to tell their neighbours. And I said they were all to be sure to come under a heavy penalty."
The priest was filled with consternation. "Alas ! gentlemen," he said, "how are we to get rid of the women ? Cannot we send a part of them away ?"
" Do not let your reverence disturb himself," said the magistrate. " We will do as you desire, and only summon before us the chief ladies. When they see that we are in earnest, and that they must give in, or be locked up, the others will go away fast enough."
The constable was therefore commanded to go to the above-mentioned honourable ladies, and desire them to come in alone.
When he had delivered his message, the magistrate's wife replied, " Upon no account. We will not be separated, Where I go, my train must go also ; and where they stay, I stay."
This message did the constable bring back to the council,
Then was the imperial magistrate very wroth, and he said with great solemnity, " Go out again and tell the stubborn women that if they show themselves refractory and disobedient, they will have to learn by bitter experience what our purpose is concerning them,"
Then went the constable and reported this message solemnly. But the good women held fast to their first determination, and said they requested to know why they had been summoned. And in any case they would not be separated, and the fate of one should be the fate of all.
The gentlemen in the council chamber heard with dismay the loud murmur of their many voices.
When the constable returned with their answer the council were in great fear, and they wished the women were nobody knows where. Then did the thought strike them to send out the town clerk, to entreat with urgent but friendly words that the principal ladies would be so good as to come into the council-room, leaving the rest to return home, and to assure them that no evil should befall them. But all was in vain,
" We will not be separated," they repeated.
Then the chief magistrate's wife spoke up, and said to the town clerk, " Yes, indeed, dear sir. Do you suppose we are all idiots, and are not aware of the trick that is to he played upon us ? Do you think we have not found out that we poor women are to be forced against our consciences to change our faith ? It is not for nothing that my husband and the priest have been putting their heads together the last few days. Nearly all day and all night they have been glued the one to the other ; and as to the dainty dish they have been cooking, they may eat it up themselves. I shall not go into the council-room. And where I stay my train will stay also."
Then she turned round to the other women, and said, " Am I speaking your mind, ladies ?"
Then the women shouted all together, " Good, good, we are all one, and we keep together."