At Treuenbrietzen I made my report to Chancellor Citzewitz. As he was awaiting the arrival of the Pomeranian counsellors who were to accompany the emperor to Halle, he sent me to retain quarters and to give notice to the Brunswicker captain, Werner Hahn, to have twenty horsemen ready at Bitterfeld on June 12. On the morning of the 12th, in fact, the mission alighted at the general hostelry outside Bitterfeld. The captain of the husard-escort had, however, given the preference to an inn in the town. Seeing no sign of the Brunswickers, the counsellors put up their carriage, so that the captain at his return was under the impression that the mission was gone, and meeting with the horsemen, ordered them to face about, he being convinced that the deputies had taken another route.
Evening was drawing near; my business was finished, the quarters had been retained, the supper ordered, and the beds ready. I had taken advantage of the opportunity to renew my wardrobe, and, with my new clothes on, I took a stroll outside the gates through which the mission had to pass. Espying from the top of a mound a troop of advancing horsemen, I went back in hot haste afraid of a reprimand. At the same moment two Spanish bandits, half-naked, for their rags scarcely covered them, ran after me across the fields, the one on foot, the other on a kind of wretched farmer's cob--apparently stolen--and with a pistol at the saddle bow. Casting a careful look round to assure themselves that there were no witnesses to their contemplated deed, one had already raised his pistol when the Brunswicker horsemen arrived on the spot. "Sunt isti ex tuâ parte?" he asked. "Senior, si," I quickly answered. "Ah, landsknecht, landsknecht," he said, replacing his weapon, and followed by his companion, making off as fast as he could.
The adventures of that evening were, however, not at an end. I found the gates of the town shut, and a trumpeter galloping along the walls and blowing with all his might. I had not the faintest idea of what it all meant, when the captain of husards appeared upon the spot, recognizes, and hails me. "What are you doing here, and what has happened?" he asked. "Why are the gates shut, and why is the alarm being sounded?" While confessing my total ignorance, I began to ask about the ambassadors; thereupon great surprise of the captain at their being waited for. The matter seemed all the more strange to him in that he on the road fell in with some Spanish horsemen, who told him that they had been sent to meet a mission. What if our counsellors should have been attacked by these people, decoyed into the wood, and plundered? Of course, I felt very anxious to inform the Brunswicker captain, so that he might send a reconnoitring party in the direction of Bitterfeld. Finally, the noise ceased in the town, and the gates were reopened. I immediately reported matters to W. Hahn, who in the early morning sent out his horsemen. An hour afterwards there appeared upon the scene Abraham Gatzkow, the same gentleman from Lower Pomerania who had been instructed to keep a fresh horse for me for the last stage from Brandenburg-the-Old to the camp at Wittenberg. The envoys had sent him on in front, impatient to know why the escort had failed to appear at the appointed spot, a mishap which prejudiced them against me.
Odd to relate, neither Sleidan nor Beuter mentions the alarm to which I referred just now; hence, some further particulars will not be deemed superfluous. Nothing is more frequent in the army and less easy to prevent than the stealing of horses. If an animal takes your fancy, some scoundrel is ready to get it for you for a matter of six or eight crowns. If you keep it six or eight weeks elsewhere, so as to change its habits, and change its tail, its mane and other peculiarities, you may safely bring it back to the camp. A certain German gentleman proceeded in that way with the stallion of a Spaniard; he sent it away to his estates. When the affair had been forgotten the animal reappeared. It so happened that the German horsemen (eight squadrons at the lowest computation) encamped in the middle of a delightful plain, watered by the Saale, while the whole of the infantry of their nation was quartered in the town; a providential circumstance, for if the foot had come to the aid of the horse, there would have been nothing short of a massacre. The emperor, therefore, was well inspired in ordering at once the closing of all the gates.
The Spaniards occupied the height around the castle. At dusk, when taking the horses to be watered, a Spanish lad recognizes the stallion, cries out that it belongs to his master and wants to lead it away. The young German groom resists, and is supported by three or four of his countrymen. The Spaniard rallies a dozen, and the German immediately finds himself at the head of a score. The two parties increase every minute, and the first shots are fired. Posted on the heights, the Spaniards have the advantage of the position, their balls going through the walls of the tents, kill several gentlemen who are seated at table; the Germans give as good as they get. A Spanish lord issues from the town with words of peace from the emperor; he has magnificent golden chains round his neck and is riding a superb animal. At the sight of him there is a general cry: "Fire on the dog of a Spaniard." He advances, nevertheless, on the bridge, but a projectile brings down his mount, which rolls into the Saale, and is drowned there with his master, the wearer of the beautiful collar. Nine days before this, at Wittenberg, a rotten strap had, with the help of God, saved my life. The gentleman covered with gold and dressed in velvet, on the other hand, miserably perished.
The emperor, while all this was going on, sent the son of King Ferdinand, the Archduke Maximilian (afterwards emperor). He felt convinced that it would suffice to restore order, but the moment the archduke opened his lips the Germans repeated the cry: "Down with the Spaniard." The archduke was wounded in the right arm, which he wore during several weeks in a black sling. The emperor himself had to come forth. "Dear Germans," he said, "I know you to be without reproach. I therefore ask you to be calm. You shall be indemnified fully and in every respect, and on my Imperial word, to-morrow you shall see the Spaniards strung up on the highest gibbets." This promise had the effect of quieting the riot, and the gates were opened. The inquiry having shown that the loss of the Germans amounted to eighteen grooms or stablemen besides seven horses, and that of the opposing party to not less than seventy men, the emperor, though professing to be ready to make good the value of the horse and even to punish the Spaniards according to his promise, expressed the hope that the Germans would consider themselves sufficiently avenged, inasmuch as their adversaries had suffered four times more than they had.
During the evening of June 19, the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg made their entry into Halle with the Landgrave Philip of Hesse in their midst. At six in the afternoon of the next day the landgrave "made honourable amends" in the great hall of the Imperial quarters in the presence of the electors, princes, foreign potentates, ambassadors, counts, colonels, captains, and in one word, of everybody who could find room inside or catch a glimpse of the scene through the windows. But while his chancellor, on his knees, close against him, humbly craved pardon, Philip, ever inclined to raillery, smiled with an air of bravado, and to such a degree as to make the emperor exclaim, while threatening him with his outstretched index: "Go on; I'll teach you to laugh." Alas, he kept his word.
Our counsellors decided to leave me behind incognito at the Imperial camp with a gentleman of Lower Pomerania named George von Wedel, who having murdered his cousin and having been exiled by Duke Barnim, had entered the emperor's service with nine-and-twenty horse troopers. His goodwill towards our mission and my instances finally got him his pardon. That was how the horse on which I had left Wolgast was to carry me as far as Augsburg.
Having started from Halle on June 20, the emperor stopped three days at Naumberg. On the 24th, very early in the morning, he was at the general headquarters at some distance beyond the wall. He wore a violet cap and a black cloak trimmed with velvet several inches wide. Suddenly there was a shower, and immediately the emperor sent for a hat and a grey felt cloak to the town; but meanwhile he turned the cloak he wore and kept his headdress under it. Poor man, who spent untold gold on the war, and who stood bareheaded in the rain rather than spoil his clothes.
The Spanish escort of the landgrave preceded his Imperial Majesty by a day's march, and committed unheard-of excesses. Next morning the corpses were strewn where the emperor passed. Women and girls suffered the most terrible outrages; as for the men, after having suspended them by their genital parts, the barbarians tortured them to make them reveal the places where they had hidden their money, after which, with one stroke of their swords, flush with the abdomen, they detached the victim.