Among the most instructive of the biographical accounts of Protestant pastors, is that of the Franconian pastor, Martin Bötzinger. We see with horror, both the village life in the time of the war, and the demoralization of the inhabitants, distinctly portrayed in his narrative. Bötzinger was not a man of great character, and the lamentable lot he had to bear did not strengthen it; indeed, we can hardly deny him the predicate of a right miserable devil. Nevertheless he possessed two qualities which render him estimable to us, an indestructible energy with which there was not the slightest frivolity united; and that determined German contentment which takes the brightest view of the most desolate situations. He was a poet. His German verses are thoroughly pitiful, as may be seen by the specimen heading this chapter, but they served him as elegant begging letters by which, in the worst times, he endeavoured to procure sympathy. He celebrated all the officials and receivers of the parish of Heldburg in an epic poem, as also the melancholy condition of Coburg, where he tarried for a certain time as a fugitive. Of the career which he noted down, the beginning and the last portion were already torn out when Krauss, in 1730, incorporated it in his history of the Hildburghaus church, school, and province. The following is faithfully transcribed from this fragment; only the series of events which are intermingled in his autobiography are here arranged according to years. Bötzinger was a collegian at Coburg and a student at Jena, during the _Kipper_ time;[30] and in 1626, he became pastor at Poppenhausen. In the spring of 1627, the young pastor entertained the idea of marrying the only daughter of Michael Böhme, burgher and counsellor at Heldburg, whose name was Ursula.