Not only terror, but a spirit of defiance and wild despair possessed all souls. A moral recklessness prevailed fearfully among the country people. Wives abandoned their husbands, children their parents; the customs, vices, and maladies of the passing armies left lasting traces, even when the pillagers had quitted the desolated and half-ruined villages. The brandy drinking, which had been introduced among the people since the Peasant war, became a general vice; respect for the property of others disappeared. In the beginning of the war the neighbouring villages were disposed to help one another; if the soldiers had driven away the cattle from one village, and disposed of them again at their next night-quarters, the buyers often returned their new purchase to the former proprietors at the purchase price. This was done in Franconia, by both Catholic and Protestant communities, out of pure kindness. Gradually, however, the country people began to rob and plunder like the soldiers; armed bands combined together, passed the frontiers into other villages, and carried off whatever they needed. They waylaid the stragglers of the regiments in dense woods or mountain passes, and often after a severe struggle took a bloody revenge on the vanquished; indeed, they far surpassed the skill of the soldiers in the contrivance of barbarities; and there were wooded hills, in whose shades the most horrible crimes were now committed by those who had formerly frequented them as peaceful wood-cutters and stone-breakers, singing their simple songs. There arose gradually a terrible hatred betwixt the soldiery and peasantry, which lasted till the end of the war, and caused more than anything else the ruin of the villages of Germany. There were feuds also between the provinces and individual towns; that which is related here was only a harmless one of that gloomy time.