"In the year 1627, on the Tuesday after the Jubilate, all necessary preparations being made, on this very day, a body of eight thousand men, people from Saxe Lauenburg, together with the Prince himself, encamped before Heldburg; pitched their camp on the cropped ground, and in eight days ruined the city and land belonging to the corporation, so that neither calf nor lamb, beer nor wine, could any more be procured. Provisions were brought from all the neighbouring districts, and yet even the royal officers and officials could hardly be maintained. They were, on account of the cold, quartered some days in the city and villages. It was then, for the first time, I was plundered in the parsonage house at Poppenhausen, for not only had I not secured anything, but rather had I made preparation as if I had to lodge an honourable guest or officer; I lost my linen, bedding, shirts, and so forth, for I did not yet know that the soldiers were robbers, and took everything away with them. The prince of the country, Duke Casimir, was himself obliged to journey to Heldburg; he ordered for the Lauenburger a princely banquet; he presented him with fine horses and eight thousand thalers if he would only take himself away. After this misfortune, the blessing of God made itself miraculously visible everywhere. Owing to the thousands of huts, quarters and fires, which made the fields look like a wilderness, it was thought that the winter seed was lost in the ground. Nevertheless, there grew from these burnt huts and ditches so thick a crop, that in the same year, there was a superfluity of winter food. A miracle! Thus my wedding could take place on the Tuesday after the _Exaudi_, and was celebrated at the Town Hall. "For five years there was rest in the land till 1632, except that several Imperial corps, consisting of two, three, or more regiments, passed to and fro, who often took up their quarters in the township of Heldburg, and exhausted it. I wanted for nothing at Poppenhausen. I could wish that I was now as well off as I was before the war. As, however, the fury of war at last arrived, the neighbouring bishops began to reform vigorously; sent Jesuits and monks with diplomas into the country, and examined the ecclesiastical benefices and monasteries. The princes had their militia here and there, who now and then pilfered in the neighbouring Papal states, and stirred up the hornets there. Every intelligent person could discover that things would become worse. The noblemen also fled with their pastors, bailiffs, and all belonging to them, to our little towns and villages, hoping for greater security there than in their own places.