The citizens eagerly sought every opportunity for social enjoyment. The carnival mummeries were general in Northern Germany, when masks swarmed through the streets; the favourite costumes were those of Turks, Moors, and Indians. When during the war the Council of Leipzig prohibited masks, they made their appearance armed with spears and pistols, and there were tumults with the city watchers. Sledge parties were not less popular, and sometimes they also were in costume. Public dances were less frequent than now, even at the marriage and artisan feasts they were looked upon with mistrust, as it was difficult to restrain the recklessness of wild boys. They wished to dance without mantles; they lifted up, swung, and twirled about their partners, which was strictly forbidden, and the thronging of the gaping domestics into the saloon was displeasing to the authorities. At twilight all dancing amusements were to cease.
The larger cities had lists where the sons of the patricians held their knightly exercise and ran at the ring, also shooting galleries, and trenches for crossbow and rifle practice. The shooting festivities were a great source of enjoyment throughout the country, and on these occasions booths, tents, and cook-shops were erected. The people also took a lively interest in the festivals of particular guilds, and almost every town had its own public feast; for example, Erfurt had yearly prize races for the poorer classes; the men ran for stockings and the women for fur cloaks. Tennis was a favourite game of the young citizens, which unfortunately in the troubles of the century almost disappeared. There were special tennis courts, and a tennis-court master, of the town. If any gentlemen of distinction came into the town, a place in the market was strewed with sand, and a playground marked off with pegs and cords. There these distinguished persons played, and the citizens watched with pleasure from the windows, to see how a young Prince of Hesse threw the ball, and how one of Anhalt did his best. At the great yearly markets, for more than a century, Fortune's urn was a favourite game. Sometimes it was undertaken by the town itself, but generally it was granted to some speculator. How much the people were interested in this, we learn from the fact that the town chronicles frequently reported the particulars concerning it. Thus, in 1624, at Michaelmas, at Leipzig a Fortune's urn of seventeen thousand gulden was prepared; each ticket cost eighteen pfennige; there were seventeen blanks to one prize; the highest prize was three hundred and fifty gulden, and there were three hundred thousand blanks. The students at last became angry at the number of blanks; they attacked and broke down the lottery booth. The pleasure of the people in spectacles was greater than now, at least more easily satisfied; processions and city solemnities were frequent; plays undoubtedly were still a rare enjoyment, in these the children of the citizens had always the pleasure of representing the characters themselves, as bands of travelling players were still new and rare. The clerical body was already unfavourably disposed to what were called profane pieces, therefore ecclesiastical subjects and allegories with moral tendencies were always interspersed with burlesque scenes, and great was the number of the actors. At the yearly markets the play booths were more abundant than now. At the Easter fair at Leipzig in 1630, was to be seen, amongst other things, a father with six children who performed beautifully on the lute and violin, a woman who could sew, write, and convey her food to her mouth with her feet, a child of a year old quite covered with hair and with a beard; and of strange animals, there were two marmoset monkeys, a porpoise, and a spoonbill, and, as now, these monsters were recommended to the people by large pictures. Besides these there were rope-dancers, fire-eaters, jugglers, acrobats, and numerous ballad singers and vendors.
But what gave the greatest feeling of independence to the citizen in 1618 was his martial aptitude--almost every one had some practice in the use of weapons. Every large city had an arsenal; even the heavy artillery on the fortifications were served by the citizens, who, as a body, were under ordinary circumstances superior to the young companies of besieging soldiers. Magdeburg would have made a stronger resistance, if feeling of duty and discipline had not already become weaker among the citizens than in former sieges, in one of which the maiden of the City Arms so valiantly defended her garland.
Besides the city train bands, there was in most of the Circles of the Empire a regular militia for the defence of the country. About every tenth man in the city or country was drawn, regularly armed, paid during service, and appointed for the internal defence of the frontiers of the country. The beginning of the Landwehr dates from the sixteenth century. This regulation was recommended by military theorists as most efficient, and from time to time it was renewed. It was introduced by the States in Saxony in 1612, and renewed in 1618; there were to be altogether in the Electorate nine thousand men. The privates were to receive a daily pay of four groschen, and the serjeants ten and a half, and the cost was distributed among the houses. But this militia was found very useless in the war. The discipline was much too lax; the industrious citizen endeavoured to withdraw himself when danger did not threaten his own city; the consequence was, that many unsettled people were scouring the country in arms. If they were required by the community to defend the ploughs in the field against roving marauders, they demanded a special gratification, or they evaded it, and very soon they became more a plague than a benefit to their own country.
What ruin the war brought upon the towns may be learned from every town chronicle. First, the disorders of the Kipper time inflicted deep wounds on their morality and prosperity. Then came the sufferings that even distant war brought upon the citizens, the scarcity and dearness of provisions. Everything became so insecure that nothing was thought of but the enjoyment of the day. Rough and wild was the love of pleasure; and foreign modes, which had been learned from the travelled courtiers and soldiers became prevalent. From 1626 dandyism began in Germany after the French fashion; the Messieurs à la mode strutted about, molesting every one on the paved footpaths of the streets. They had short pointed beards, long hair in frizzled locks, or cut short on one side, and on the other hanging on the shoulder in a queue or lock, a large flapped hat, spurs on their heels, a sword on the left side, dresses slashed and jagged, a coxcombical bearing, and added to all this, a corrupt language full of French words. The women were not behindhand; they began to carry foreign masks before their faces, and feather fans in their hands; they wore whalebones in their dresses, and repudiated sables, gold and silver stuffs, and, above all--what appeared very remarkable--silver, and at last, indeed, white lace. This conduct raised the indignation of the authorities and pastors, as being fantastic and immoral. To us it appears as the characteristic evil of a time when the old independence of the German citizen was crushed.
When an army approached a town, the traffic with the country almost entirely ceased, the gates were carefully watched, and the citizens maintained themselves on the provisions that had been collected. Then began the levying of contributions, the passage and quartering of friendly armies, with all its terrors. Still worse was the passage of the enemy. They uselessly endeavoured to purchase safety--it was a favour if the enemy did not set fire to the town woods or cut them down for sale, or carry off the town library on his baggage waggon; everything that was inviting to plunder, such as the organ or church pictures, had to be ransomed, even to the church bells, which, according to the custom of war, belonged to the artillery. The cities were not in a position to satisfy the demands of the Generals, so the most considerable of the citizens were dragged off as hostages till the sum exacted was paid.
If a town was considered strong enough to resist the enemy's army, it was always filled with fugitives at the approach of the enemy, the number of whom was so great that the citizens could not think of providing for them. There came to Dresden, for example, in 1637, after the capture of Torgau in the course of three days, from the 7th to the 9th of May, twelve thousand waggons with fugitive country people. The enemy surrounded the over-filled place; round the walls the battle raged, and within, not less voracious, hunger, misery and sickness. All the fugitives who were capable of bearing arms were employed in severe siege service; the nobility also of the neighbourhood sometimes assisted. If the siege lingered long, the high prices were followed by shameless usury, the millers ground only for the rich, and the bakers made exorbitant demands. The pictures of famine, such as was then experienced in many towns, are too horrible to dwell upon. When at Nördlingen a fortified tower was taken by the besiegers, the citizens themselves burnt it down, hungry women fell upon the half-roasted bodies of the enemy and carried pieces home for their children.
But if a town was taken by storm it experienced the fate of Magdeburg; the mowing down of masses, the dishonouring of women, horrible torments and mutilations; and, added to all this, pestilence. To what an extent pestilence then raged in the cities is scarcely credible; it frequently carried off more than half the inhabitants. In 1626 and the following years, it depopulated wide districts; from 1631 to 1634 it returned again, and still worse in 1636.
At all events it gave to each town for years plenty of space, and proportionate peace; and the places--not very numerous--which were only once destroyed in the course of the war, were able to recover themselves. But the most fearful cases of all, were those where the same calamities were two, three, and four times repeated. Leipzig was besieged five times, and Magdeburg six, and most of the smaller towns were more frequently filled with foreign soldiers; thus both large and small towns were equally ruined.
But this was not all; over wide territories raged a plague of quite another kind,--religious persecution,--which was practised by the Imperial party wherever it established itself. The army was followed everywhere by crowds of proselytizers, Jesuits, and mendicant monks on foot. These performed their office by the help of the soldiers. Wherever the Roman Catholics had a footing, the leaders of the Protestant party, and above all the shepherds of souls, were swept away, more especially in the provinces which were the Emperor's own domains. Much had been done there before the war, but still in the beginning of the war in upper Austria, Moravia, Bohemia, and Silesia, the active intelligence of the country and the greater part of the community were evangelical. Their general character was improved. Whoever, after imprisonment and torture, would not give up his faith was obliged to abandon the country, and many, many thousands did so. The citizens and country people were driven in troops by the soldiers to confession. It was considered a favour when the fugitives were allowed a short insufficient delay for the sale of their movable goods.