“They (the Jesuits) accompanied the armies in their march, they followed them to the battle-field; and after the victory, they disputed with the Croats the fate of the prisoners of the day.”[269] Such is the version of their historian. How far from the truth! It is unquestionable that they had formed the three champions, and worthy of their masters did they prove by their spirit of revenge and persecution. But it is an impudent falsehood that the Jesuits interposed (as their calling made it their duty) betwixt the executioner and the victim, betwixt the sacred laws of humanity and the barbarous laws of war. No. On the contrary, they preached the extermination of the Protestants, and gave out that no work was so meritorious in the eyes of God as to kill those accursed heretics. They did not calm, but rather excited, the ferocious passions of their pupils the generals, and, above all, of Tilly, over whom they possessed a very great influence. Once, after the battle of Strato, in Munster, I believe the voice of the Jesuits was added to that of the citizens in imploring mercy for some hundreds of unfortunate prisoners on the point of being mercilessly put to the sword; and this single and exceptional instance, whether the act of some human and compassionate persons, or of cunning rogues eager to win for the Order an unmerited reputation for clemency, is reported by the Jesuits as a general practice: while the many acts of brutal Vandalism and revenge perpetrated under their very eyes, and at their instigation, when they cannot be denied, are laid to the account of others. This is a historical truth. Nor were they disinterested persecutors. They fought here, as elsewhere, not for their faith or their Church, but for their idol—the Order. Let them speak for themselves:—“Corvin Gosiewsky, Palatine of Smolensk, met Gustavus Adolphus near the Dunamunde, defeated him, and, to consecrate the remembrance of this day, he founded a Jesuit house in the town he had delivered. Every victory of that Palatine was for the Jesuits a new mission,”[270] which means the erection of a new house or college. The greatest part of the properties of which the Protestants were iniquitously divested went to enrich the covetous and insatiable disciples of Loyola. The Pope, usurping the right of disposing of those properties, only because they had once belonged to the clergy, by a decree, ordered “that a part of the property which had been recovered be employed in erecting seminaries, boarding-schools, and colleges, as well for the Jesuits who have been the principal authors of the imperial proclamation,[271] as for other religious orders;”[272] which last clause was of course rendered illusory, the Jesuits possessing themselves of whatever portion of those properties was set apart for the aforesaid purpose of building houses and colleges.