"You plunder your own brothers in the faith. Had I known that you had been a people so wanting in natural affection for your country, I would never have saddled a horse for your sakes, much less imperilled my life and my crown and my brave Swedes and Finns. It is your inhumanity towards your mother-country that has tarnished the glory of my victorious subjects. My heart is filled with gall when I see anyone of you behaving thus villainously. For you cause men to say openly, 'The King, our friend, does us more harm than our enemies.' If you were real Christians you would consider what I am doing for you, how I am spending my life in your service. I came but to restore every man to his own, but this most accursed and devilish robbing of yours doth much abate my purpose. I have given up the treasures of my crown for your sake, and have not enriched myself so much as by one pair of boots since my coming to Germany, though I have had forty tons of gold passing through my hands. "Enter into your hearts, and think how sad you are making me, so that the tears stand in my eyes. You treat me ill with your evil discipline; I do not say with your evil fighting: for in that you have behaved like honourable gentlemen, and for that I am much obliged to you. Take my warning to heart, and we will soon show our enemies that we are honest men and honourable gentlemen." Again when informed that a soldier had stolen a cow, he turned a deaf ear to him as he pleaded for his life, for "My son," he said, "it is better that thou shouldst expiate thy offence by the sacrifice of life than that thy crime should draw down the vengeance of the Almighty upon me and thy gallant comrades; for though I consider every soldier in the light of a child, yet I am destined to perform the duties of a judge, no less than those of a parent."