soldier wits had before called "_sausänger_" and "_immenschneider_" (drones), were now denoted as "Merode-ing brothers." After a lost battle their numbers increased enormously. Horsemen who were slightly wounded, and had lost their horses, associated themselves with them, and it was impossible, from the then state of military discipline, to get rid of them. The most undisciplined, abandoned the route of the army, and lived as highwaymen, footpads, and poachers. Vain were the endeavours of the sovereigns, at the end of the war, to annihilate the great robber bands; they lasted, to a certain extent, up to the beginning of the present century. Such was the character of the war which raged in Germany for thirty years. An age of blood, murder, and fire, of utter destruction to all property which was movable, and ruin to that which was not; and an age of spiritual and material decay in the nation. The Generals imposed exorbitant contributions, and kept part in their own pockets. The colonels and captains levied charges on the cities and towns in which their troops were quartered, and merciless were the demands on all sides. The princes sent their plate and stud horses as presents to the Generals, and the cities sent sums of money and casks of wine to the captains, and the villages, riding horses and gold lace to the cornets and sergeant-majors, as long as such bribery was possible. When an army was encamped in a district, any landed proprietors of importance, monasteries, and villages, endeavoured to obtain the protection of a "_salva guardia_." They had to pay dear for this guard, yet had to bear with much unseemly conduct from them. If a place lay between two armies, both parties had to be asked for _salva guardia_, and both guards lived by agreement in peaceful intercourse at the expense of their host. But it was seldom that either individuals or communities were so fortunate as to be able to preserve even this unsatisfactory protection; for it was necessary for the army to live. When a troop of soldiers entered a village or country town, the soldiers rushed like devils into the houses; wherever the dung-heaps[28] were the largest, there the greatest wealth was to be expected. The object of the tortures to which the inhabitants were subjected, was generally to extort from them their hidden property; they were distinguished by especial names, as the "Swedish fleece," and the "wheel." The plunderers took the flints from the pistols and forced the peasants' thumbs in their place; they rubbed the soles of their feet with salt, and caused goats to lick them; they tied their hands behind their backs; they passed a bodkin threaded with horse-hair through their tongues, and moved it gently up and down; they bound a knotted cord round the forehead and twisted it together behind with a stick; they bound two fingers together, and rubbed a ramrod up and down till the skin and flesh were burnt to the bone; they forced the