The emperor sent to ask the mercenaries what they wanted. "Money or blood," replied the arquebusiers, their weapons reposing on the left arm, the lighted match in their right hands, and dangerously near the vent-hole. His Imperial Majesty promised them their arrears within twenty-four hours, but before dispersing they claimed impunity for what they had done, which demand the emperor granted. Next day they received their pay and were disbanded at the same time.
Now for the end of the adventure. Secret orders were given to accompany the ringleaders on their road, and at the first offensive remark on their part with regard to the emperor to call in armed assistance, and to bring them back to Augsburg. As a consequence, at the end of two or three days, some of the firebrands, having their wallets well-lined and sitting round frequently re-filled flagons at the inn, began to hold forth without more reserve than if they were on the territory of Prester John. The last thought in their minds was about informers being among them. "We'll give him soldiers for nothing--this Charles of Ghent![[48]] May the quartan fever get hold of him. We'll teach him how to behave. May the lightning blast him," and so forth. Not for long though. The words had scarcely left their lips than they were seized, taken to Augsburg, and hanged in front of the town hall, each with a little flag fluttering from the tab of their small clothes.
Two Spaniards, probably guilty of robbery, as was their custom, were strung up at the same gibbet. Towards night the hangman came with his cart, cut the ropes and took the bodies of the seditious men outside the town. After which there appeared a gang of Spaniards who, with more ceremony, detached their countrymen, and placed them in a bier covered with a kind of white linen. Then they spread the funeral cloth over them, and the procession started. Young scholars dressed in white cloaks marched at its head, intoning psalms; the rest, in handsome dresses and carrying lighted tapers, followed two by two. They proceeded in that manner to the church given up to the Spaniards for their worship, where the two bodies were buried. It is difficult to withhold solemn funerals from thieves when you yourself are an incorrigible thief.
The Italian and Spanish troops were distributed in the towns of the Algau and Swabia. Memmingen and Kempten compounded their liability to quarter them respectively for thirty thousand and twenty thousand florins. Thereupon a certain Imperial commissioner hit upon the idea of presenting himself in various towns as having been instructed to quarter a couple of hundred Spaniards for the winter. The terror-stricken burghers implored him to spare them such a scourge, and considered themselves only too happy to present the commissioner with a little gratification of two, three, and four hundred crowns, paid on the nail. Thanks to that ingenious system, the commissioner managed to pocket some important sums. But the rumour of the thing having reached the emperor's ears, the cheat was arrested, sentenced to death, and executed in front of the town hall at Augsburg. The work of the hangman began by strangulation. The patient (?) was placed on a wooden seat against the rail of the scaffold, his forehead tightly bound in case of convulsions, his arms bound behind his back, and fastened to the balustrade. The hangman, after having flung a rather short rope round his neck, slipped a thick stick down his nape, and began to twist it round in the manner they press bales of wares. When the wretch was strangled, he was undressed except his shirt, laid out on a board, the hangman lifted the shirt, cut away the sexual parts, ripped open the body from bottom to top, removed the intestines, and threw them into a pail under the board, and finally cut the body into four quarters.
George von Wedel stayed at my hotel. He invited the Duke of Brunswick and his steward to dinner, and chose me as the third guest. The repast consisted of six courses; the first was soup with a capon in it. I know that our landlady paid a crown for the bird, and that she charged Wedel a crown per head. I did not forget to mention to my host and my fellow guests that at Rome I had seen the hanging of the Spaniard, his servants, and the two Jews. The duke was delighted at my recollecting this, and he himself reminded us that the banquet had been given in his honour. His account of the story was, however, much longer than mine.
While awaiting the arrival of the Pomeranian delegates, I borrowed two hundred crowns of the captive Elector of Saxony, for my functions at the Diet necessitated a decent appearance, considering that I was called upon to confer with grand personages, such as the Vice-Chancellor Seld, the Bishop of Arras and Dr. Johannes Marquardt, Imperial counsellor. Besides, everything was horribly dear at Augsburg; there was no possibility of getting along without money. Our ambassadors arrived on St. Matthew's Day (September 21). I immediately refunded the two hundred crowns.
Since we left Wittenberg I had never missed an opportunity of speaking to the Imperial counsellors and advisers, sometimes to one, then to another. More than once, for instance, I happened to be riding by the side of the Bishop of Arras, intimus consiliarius imperatoris. I solicited his intervention for a safe-conduct for our princes, in order that they might come and plead their cause in person, or be represented by some high dignitaries. The kindly tone of his answers afforded me much hope, although he abstained from all positive promises.
One evening between Nuremberg and Augsburg chance made me alight at the hostelry where Lazarus von Schwendi was putting up.[[49]] At that time he was a beardless young man. We supped together, and he declared quite spontaneously that, having been sent by the emperor to the Brandenburg march as far as the Pomeranian frontiers to get information about the attitude of the dukes during the late war, he had not been able to find the slightest charge against them. He further stated that he had written to that effect to the emperor, and he announced his intention of repeating it to him by word of mouth.
In spite of this evidence, when I saw the Bishop of Arras, his father, Messire de Granvelle, the most trusty adviser of his Imperial Majesty, Dr. Seld and Dr. Marquardt at Augsburg, they seemed to vie with each other at looking askance at me, and at formulating a refusal in hard, haughty terms and entirely unexpected by me; such as: "Bannus decernetur contra principes tuos."[[50]]