But this was not all; over wide territories raged a plague of quite another kind,--religious persecution,--which was practised by the Imperial party wherever it established itself. The army was followed everywhere by crowds of proselytizers, Jesuits, and mendicant monks on foot. These performed their office by the help of the soldiers. Wherever the Roman Catholics had a footing, the leaders of the Protestant party, and above all the shepherds of souls, were swept away, more especially in the provinces which were the Emperor's own domains. Much had been done there before the war, but still in the beginning of the war in upper Austria, Moravia, Bohemia, and Silesia, the active intelligence of the country and the greater part of the community were evangelical. Their general character was improved. Whoever, after imprisonment and torture, would not give up his faith was obliged to abandon the country, and many, many thousands did so. The citizens and country people were driven in troops by the soldiers to confession. It was considered a favour when the fugitives were allowed a short insufficient delay for the sale of their movable goods. The fate of a small town in one of these provinces, the only one which was restored at a later period to the spiritual life of Germany, is here given, not on account of the monotony of misery, but because other characteristic points of the old burgher life are displayed. Where the Riesengebirge descend into the Silesian plain, in a fruitful valley on the shores of the Bober, lies the old town of Löwenberg, one of the first places in Silesia which was brought under the regulations of the German law; it had already in the middle ages become a powerful community, and numbered in 1617, in the city and suburbs, 738 houses and at least 6500 inhabitants.[37] It rose stately, with its strong walls, moats, and gate-towers, amidst woods and meadows; it had in its centre, like almost all the German cities in Silesia, a large market-place, called the 'Ring,' which included the council-house and fourteen privileged inns and licensed houses of traffic; the houses within the town were of stone, high gables projected over the streets, and they were from four to five stories high. Originally the under story had been built with trellised porches; these covered passages, however, had been removed sixty years before; on the under floor the houses had a large hall, and a strong vault, behind these a spacious room, in which was the baking oven, and over this a wooden gallery which occupied the back portion of the room, a staircase led up to it; the fore-part of the room was the sleeping-room of the family, and the gallery was the eating-room. On the floor above was a good apartment wainscoted with wood work, all the rest were chambers and lofts for wares, superabundant furniture, corn and wool. For Löwenberg was a celebrated cloth-manufacturing town; in the year 1617, three hundred cloth