In the year 1619 began the terrible ‘Thirty Years’ War,’ from which all classes of men suffered heavily, and the Jews as much as any. During the celebrated siege of Prague they rendered great service to the Emperor. Rabbi Leo has written a history of the incidents of that eventful period; in which he praises highly the conduct of his countrymen, their zeal and courage throughout the siege, and especially their piety, in assembling in their synagogues to implore Heaven to grant their countrymen victory, and reciting a litany composed expressly for the occasion by one of their Rabbins. He is persuaded, indeed, that the preservation of the city was entirely owing to their intercession. If such was the case, it is to be feared that the Emperors Ferdinand II. and III. did not evince the gratitude which would be due from them. We learn that in 1630 the first-named took from them their privilege of farming the revenues of the Hungarian kingdom. His reason for doing so does not flatter them. He says it was because ‘they had neither conscience nor honesty, and were therefore unworthy to enjoy it.’ They must, however, have regained it, since we find that they were again deprived of it, in 1647, by his successors. In 1650 a great meeting of Jews, at which three hundred Rabbins were present, is said to have been held on the plain of Ageda, thirty miles from Buda, to determine a question which, it appeared, was agitating the minds of many—whether the Messiah had not already come. The sole authority for the occurrence appears to be one Samuel Brett, who published an account of it in London, A.D. 1655, five years after the supposed assembly. Most historians reject the story as a mere invention, designed partly to facilitate the conversion of the Jews, partly to throw obloquy on the Church of Rome. Among those who refuse it credit, is the celebrated Menasseh ben Israel, whose authority carries great weight. Further, in the narrative itself, the imputing by the Pharisees of the miracles of our Lord to the agency of magic, reads like a plagiarism from Matt. xii. 24; as also their objections to His mean origin, to a similar extract from Mark vi. 3.[181]