After that, the councillors sent me to the castle of Gaspard Pflug, to whom the States of the country had entrusted the command of the troops.[[40]] He was very reserved. "What are we to do?" he said, looking perplexed. "The Elector of Saxony is our ally, our co-religionist; we cannot leave him to his fate. On the other hand, Ferdinand is our king. Are we to jeopardize our liberties?" Gaspard Pflug, having taken refuge at Magdeburg after the capture of the elector, built himself opposite the cathedral an elegant dwelling, where he ended his days, the king having confiscated his property.
While the elector encamped before Leipzig, the emperor overran the Algau and Swabia, imposing heavy fines and big garrisons to the towns forced to capitulate. The Spaniards committed every excess, and above all, in Wurtemberg.[[41]]
On April 23 and 25 the sun assumed so sombre an aspect that everybody rushed to the threshold of his house; both experts and scientific men foretold strange events.
One day I was strolling alone outside Lertmeritz around the walls (for the time hung heavily on my hands), when an individual, his eyes blazing with anger, assailed me without warning, vilifying me and trying to fling me into the moat. He was evidently under the impression of having come upon a spy. I endeavoured to convince him to the contrary; the difficulty was to understand each other. Finally, with hands clasped together as if they were bound, I gave him to understand with a sign of the head that I was ready to enter the town with him. Thanks to heaven, he consented to this, although he did not cease his imprecations. Before I had fairly entered our hostelry two members of the council came to ask our deputies to forbid their people to leave the city and the promenading on the walls. "We know very well that we have nothing to fear from you," they said, "but our citizens are quick to take umbrage, and just now one of your folk narrowly escaped coming to grief."
On April 16 the news came to Lertmeritz that two days previously the Elector of Saxony had been made a prisoner. Immediately leaving Bohemia we started in the direction of Torgau, but to get to the camp at Wittemberg the perils were endless, for the Spanish troops, whose lines we had to cross, shrank from no misdeeds.[[42]] Hence it was resolved that I should go to Wittenberg to get a safe-conduct--a decision against which I protested. "How am I to pass without the smallest bit of parchment?" "Never mind," exclaimed Damitz; "the Lord is the best safeguard." "In that case," I retorted, "are you not yourselves under the Divine protection?" My argument was, however, in vain; my life weighed less in the balance than that of my superiors.
In my capacity of a member of the missions to Bohemia and to the camp of the elector, I wore a yellow gorget which was the insignia of the Protestants. I was obliged to hide it in my breast and to replace it with the one bought for me, the red gorget of the Imperialists. And thus I started. If they had caught me with the double insignia upon me, my account would soon have been settled. I should have been slung up on the nearest tree.
I crossed Mühlberg, where the elector, wounded in the cheek, had been made a prisoner on the very spot where his passion for the chase caused so much damage to his unfortunate subjects. Wherever the eye turned there were signs of the recent battle; broken lances, shattered muskets, and torn-up harnesses littered the ground, and all along the road soldiers dying of their wounds and from want of sustenance. Around Wittenberg itself all the villages were deserted; the inhabitants had taken flight without leaving anything behind them. Here, the corpse of a peasant, a group of dogs fighting for the entrails; there, a landsknecht with just a breath of life left to him, but the body putrefying, his arms stretched out at their widest, and his legs far enough apart to put a bar between them.
At the end of my journey and within sight of the Spanish troops I passed a Spaniard, who said to me: "My good and handsome horseman, your service with the emperor is but of recent date." I rode a few steps further; then, undoing my gorget, I rubbed it against my boot to make it appear less new. At last, I reached the camp, where I lost several days in fruitless endeavours.
Every now and again there was firing from Wittenberg. Some Pomeranian horse-troopers with whom I had made acquaintance warned me not to keep to the high road if I should venture in that direction, but to go at random in order to avoid becoming a butt. A couple of steps in front of me a ball whizzed so closely past an individual's head that the shock or the fright felled him to the ground, where he was picked up for dead. From that moment I suspended my strolls.