The daily quarrels gave rise amongst the common soldiers also to the cartel, or duels regulated by many points of honour. Duels were strictly forbidden; Gustavus Adolphus punished them with death even among the higher officers; but no law could suppress them. The duellists fought alone, or with two or three seconds, or an umpire was selected: before the combat the seconds vowed to one another and gave their hands upon it, not to help the combatants, either before, in, or after the encounter, nor to revenge them; the duellists shook hands and exchanged forgiveness beforehand, in case of the death of either. They fought on horseback or on foot, with carbines, pistols, or swords; in the fight, a throw in wrestling or unhorsing was sufficient; stabbing was considered un-German, above all a thrust in the back was of doubtful propriety.[[23]]
As it was so usual to change parties, a corporation feeling was formed amongst the soldiers which also embraced the enemy. The armies had a tolerably accurate knowledge of each other, and not only the character of the upper officers, but of old soldiers was known; any day an old comrade might be seen in the enemy's ranks, or installed as a tent companion to a former adversary. Indeed, quarter was often proffered: but any one who fought against the customs of war, or was suspected of using devilish acts, was to be killed even if he sued for pardon. Cartels were concluded between the courteous conquerors and the vanquished, the conquerors promised to protect, and the prisoners not to escape; the weapons, scarfs, and plumes were taken away from the vanquished; all that he concealed in his clothes belonged to the conqueror, but he who got Dutch quarter, kept what was enclosed in his girdle; a courteous prisoner himself presented what he had in his pockets. If a desperate man did not stand by his conditions of quarter, he was killed, if he did not rapidly escape. During the transport they were coupled by the arm, and the string taken from their hose, so that they were obliged to hold their small-clothes with the hand that was free. The prisoners could be ransomed, and this ransom was fixed by tariff in each army. Towards the conclusion of the war, when soldiers became scarce, the common prisoners were summarily placed in the regiments without giving them a choice. Such soldiers were naturally not to be depended on; they gladly took the first opportunity to desert to their former colours, where they had left their women, children, booty, and arrears of pay. Distinguished prisoners were sometimes bought from the common soldiers by the colonels of their regiments; they were treated with great consideration in the enemy's quarters, and almost every one found there either an acquaintance or a relative.
Booty was the uncertain gain for which the soldier staked his life, and the hope of it kept him steadfast in the most desperate situations. The pay was moderate, the payment insecure; plunder promised them wine, play, a smart mistress, a gold-laced dress with a plume of feathers, one or two horses, and the prospect of greater importance in the company and of advancement. Vanity, love of pleasure, and ambition, developed this longing to a dangerous extent in the army.
The success of a battle was more than once defeated, by the soldiers too soon abandoning themselves to plundering. It often happened that individuals made great booty, but it was almost always dissipated in wild revelry; according to the soldier's adage: "What is won with the drum will be lost with the fifes." The fame of such lucky hits spread through all armies. Sometimes these great gains brought evil results on the fortunate finders.[[24]] A common soldier of Tilly's army had won great booty at the capture of Magdeburg, it was said to be thirty thousand ducats, and was immediately lost in gambling. Tilly caused him to be hanged after thus accosting him: "With this money you might have lived all your life like a gentleman, but as you have not understood how to make use of it, I cannot see of what use you can be to my Emperor." At the end of the war a man in Königsmark's troop had obtained a similar sum in the suburbs of Prague, and played it away at one sitting. Königsmark wished in like manner to despatch him, but the soldier saved himself by this undaunted answer: "It would be unfair for your Excellence to hang me on account of this loss, as I have hopes of acquiring still greater booty in the city itself." This answer was considered a good omen. In the Bavarian army a soldier in the Holtz infantry was famed for a similar lucky hit. He had been for a long time musketeer, but shortly before the peace had sunk to be a pikeman, and was ill-clad; his shirt hung behind and before out of his hose. This fellow had obtained at the taking of Herbsthausen a barrel filled with French doubloons, so large that he could hardly carry it off. He thereupon absconded secretly from the regiment, dressed himself up like a prince, bought a coach and six beautiful horses, kept many coachmen, lackeys, pages, and valets de chambre in fine liveries, and called himself with dull humour Colonel Lumpus.[[25]] Then he travelled to Munich, and lived in an inn there splendidly. General Holtz accidentally put up at the same inn, heard much from the landlord of the opulence and qualities of Colonel Lumpus, and could not remember ever having heard this name among the cavaliers of the Roman empire, or among the soldiers of fortune. He therefore commissioned the landlord to invite the stranger to supper. Colonel Lumpus accepted the invitation, and caused to be served up at dessert, in a dish, five hundred new French pistoles and a chain worth a hundred ducats, and said at the same time to the General: "May your Excellence be content with this entertainment and think thereby favourably of me." The General made some resistance, but the liberal colonel pressed it upon him with these words: "The time will soon come when your Excellence will acknowledge that I am wise in making this gift. The donation is not ill applied, for I hope then to receive from your Excellence a favour which will not cost a penny." On this, Holtz, according to the custom of that time, accepted the chain and money with courteous promises to repay it under such circumstances. The General departed, and the fictitious colonel lived on there; when he passed by the guard, and the soldiers presented arms to do him honour, he threw to them a dozen thalers. Six weeks after, his money came to an end. Then he sold his coaches and horses, afterwards his clothes and linen, and spent all in drinking. His servants ran away from him, and at last nothing remained to him but a bad dress and a few pence. Then the landlord, who had made much by him, presented him with fifty thalers for travelling, but the colonel tarried till he had spent it all; again the host gave him ten thalers for travelling expenses, but the persevering reveller answered that if it was money to be spent, he would rather spend it with him than another. When that also was dissipated, the landlord offered him another five thalers, but forbade his servants to let the spendthrift have anything. At last he quitted the inn and went to the next one, where he spent his five thalers in beer. After that he wandered away to his regiment at Heilbronn. There he was immediately confined in irons, and threatened with the gallows, because he had been away so many weeks. He insisted on being taken before his General, presented himself to him, and reminded him of the evening at the inn. To the sharp rebuke of the General he answered that he had all his life wished for nothing so much as to know what were the feelings of a great lord, and for that he had used his booty.
In the Hungarian war it was made a law, that the booty should be equally distributed, but that soon ceased. Still those who were fortunate enough to make great gains, found it advisable to give a share to the officers of their company. This common interest in the booty, as well as the necessity of maintaining themselves by requisition, in remote countries, developed in great perfection partisan service. There were not only whole divisions of troops, which performed in the armies the service of marauding corps, as for example those of Holk and Isolani in the Imperial, but there were also individual leaders of companies, who selected the most expert people for this lucrative employment. A marauding party, departing on a secret expedition, must consist of an uneven number to bring good luck. These parties stole far into the country to plunder a rich man, to fall upon a small city, or intercept transports of goods or money, and to bring away with them cattle and provisions. There was often an agreement made with the enemy's garrisons in the neighbourhood, as to what was to be spared in the districts common to them. Every kind of cunning was practised in such expeditions; they knew now to imitate the report of heavy artillery, by firing a hand-gun, doubly loaded, through an empty barrel; they used shoes with reversed soles, and caused the horses to be shod in the same manner, the feet of stolen cattle were covered with shoes, and a sponge was put in the pigs' food to which a packthread was fastened. The soldiers disguised themselves as peasants or women, and paid spies amongst the citizens and country people of the neighbourhood. Their messengers ran hither and thither with despatches, and were called in camp language "feldtauben" (field doves); they carried these despatches in their ears rolled up as small balls, fastened them in the hair of shaggy dogs, enclosed them in a clod of earth, or sewed them with green silk between the leaves of a branch of oak, that they might be able to throw them away, without suspicion, in time of danger.[[26]] These despatches were written in gipsy language or gibberish, in foreign characters, and if there were runaway students in the companies, they were written perhaps in French with Greek letters; they employed, for these purpose, a simple kind of short-hand writing, displacing the letters of the words, or agreeing that only the middle letter of the words should have signification.[[27]] The transition from such partisan service to becoming dishonourable marauders and freebooters was easy. In the beginning of the war, the newly raised regiment of Count Merode was so reduced by long marches and bad nourishment, that it could hardly set its guard; it dissolved almost entirely, on the march, into stragglers, who lay under the hedges and in the byways, or sneaking about the army with defective weapons, and without order. After that time, the stragglers, whom the soldier wits had before called "sausänger" and "immenschneider" (drones), were now denoted as "Merode-ing brothers." After a lost battle their numbers increased enormously. Horsemen who were slightly wounded, and had lost their horses, associated themselves with them, and it was impossible, from the then state of military discipline, to get rid of them.
The most undisciplined, abandoned the route of the army, and lived as highwaymen, footpads, and poachers. Vain were the endeavours of the sovereigns, at the end of the war, to annihilate the great robber bands; they lasted, to a certain extent, up to the beginning of the present century.
Such was the character of the war which raged in Germany for thirty years. An age of blood, murder, and fire, of utter destruction to all property which was movable, and ruin to that which was not; and an age of spiritual and material decay in the nation. The Generals imposed exorbitant contributions, and kept part in their own pockets. The colonels and captains levied charges on the cities and towns in which their troops were quartered, and merciless were the demands on all sides. The princes sent their plate and stud horses as presents to the Generals, and the cities sent sums of money and casks of wine to the captains, and the villages, riding horses and gold lace to the cornets and sergeant-majors, as long as such bribery was possible. When an army was encamped in a district, any landed proprietors of importance, monasteries, and villages, endeavoured to obtain the protection of a "salva guardia." They had to pay dear for this guard, yet had to bear with much unseemly conduct from them. If a place lay between two armies, both parties had to be asked for salva guardia, and both guards lived by agreement in peaceful intercourse at the expense of their host. But it was seldom that either individuals or communities were so fortunate as to be able to preserve even this unsatisfactory protection; for it was necessary for the army to live. When a troop of soldiers entered a village or country town, the soldiers rushed like devils into the houses; wherever the dung-heaps[[28]] were the largest, there the greatest wealth was to be expected. The object of the tortures to which the inhabitants were subjected, was generally to extort from them their hidden property; they were distinguished by especial names, as the "Swedish fleece," and the "wheel." The plunderers took the flints from the pistols and forced the peasants' thumbs in their place; they rubbed the soles of their feet with salt, and caused goats to lick them; they tied their hands behind their backs; they passed a bodkin threaded with horse-hair through their tongues, and moved it gently up and down; they bound a knotted cord round the forehead and twisted it together behind with a stick; they bound two fingers together, and rubbed a ramrod up and down till the skin and flesh were burnt to the bone; they forced the victims into the oven, lit the straw behind them, and so they were obliged to creep through the flames. Ragamuffins were everywhere to be found who bargained with the soldiers, to betray their own neighbours. And these were not the most horrible torments. What was done to the women and maidens, to the old women and children, must be passed over in silence.
Thus did the army misbehave amongst the people, dishonouring every bed, robbing every house, devastating every field, till they were themselves involved in the general ruin. And the destruction of these thirty years increased progressively. It was the years from 1635 to 1641 which annihilated the last powers of the nation; from that period to the peace, a death-like lassitude pervaded the country; it communicated itself to the armies, and one can easily understand that the bitter misery of the soldiers called for some consideration for the citizens and peasants. The remaining population were once more reduced to despair, as they had to pay the cost, maintenance, and peace subsidies for the standing army. And the army dispersed itself amongst the population.