The chronicler Oldecop describes how, at Hildesheim in 1548, the heads of the stone statues of St. Peter and St. Paul which stood at the door of the church of the Holy Rood were hewn off and replaced by the heads of two corpses from the mortuary; they were then stoned by the boys. The magistrates, indeed, fined the chief offender, but only because forced to do so.[778] Hildesheim had been protestantised in great part as early as 1524. At that time the mob plundered the churches and monasteries, rifled the coffins of the dead in search of treasure, destroyed the crucifixes and the images of the Saints, tore down the side altars in most of the churches and carried off chalices, monstrances and ornaments, and even the silver casket containing the bones of St. Bernward.[779] From St. Martin’s, a church belonging to the Franciscans, the magistrates, according to the inventory, removed the following: sixteen gilt chalices and patens, eleven silver chalices, one large monstrance with bells, one large gilt cross, three silver crosses with stands, a silver statue of Our Lady four feet in height, a silver censer, two silver ampullae, a silver-gilt St. Lawrence gridiron, a big Pacifical from the best cope, all the bangles from the chasubles, seventeen silver clasps from the copes, “the jewellery belonging to our dear ladies the Virgin Catherine and Mother Anne,” and, besides, ten altars and also a monument erected to Brother Conrad, who was revered as a Saint, were destroyed; the copper and lead from the tower was carried off together with a small bell.[780] When the Schmalkalden Leaguers began to take up arms for the Evangel the Evangelical captain Schärtlin von Burtenbach, commander-in-chief of the South-German towns, suddenly fell upon the town of Füssen on July 9, 1546, abolished the Catholic worship and threw the “idols” out of the churches. Before his departure he plundered all the churches and clergy, and “set the peasants on to massacre the idols in their churches”; the proceeds “from the chalices and silver plate he devoted to the common expenses of the Estates.” This was only the beginning of Schärtlin’s plundering. After joining hands with the Würtemberg troops his raiding expeditions were carried on on a still larger scale.[781] During the Schmalkalden campaign the soldiers of Saxony and Hesse on their retreat from the Oberland, acting at the behest of the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse, carried off as booty all the valuable plate belonging to the churches and monasteries. Chalices, monstrances, Mass vestments and costly images, none of them were spared. In Saxony similar outrages were perpetrated.