Forthwith the burgers sank upon their knees, and imploringly stretched out their hands toward the Prince.
"Wherefore have you come and what will you have of me?" inquired the
Elector in a severe voice.
"Your Electoral Highness, we have been informed by the magistrate that your grace was angry with the corporations of Berlin and Cologne because we ventured, in our anxiety and distress, to have recourse to our own liege lord, and to implore in a petition his support and protection."
"How could you dare to do such a thing? Did you not know that the Count von Schwarzenberg had been appointed by me stadtholder within the Mark, and that to him alone you should have gone with your complaints and grievances?"
"But we knew, besides, that our despair had reached its height, and that we longed for the protection and presence of our own Sovereign, as weak, delicate children long for the sight of a strong, tender parent. Therefore have the united corporations of the cities of Berlin and Cologne determined to send a memorial in writing to your Electoral Highness, to conjure our liege lord not to deal with us as step-children, since we are children of one and the same father, and inferior to the Prussians neither in love nor obedience, but only more visited by misfortune and the calamities of war. But on this account we implored our hereditary Sovereign most graciously to turn his eye upon us, and to come to our aid, since we stood in such great need of his help and his protecting arm. This, Electoral Highness and most gracious lord, this is our sole crime. We longed after the presence of our Sovereign, in his own most sacred person, and told him so."
"But in what way have you presumed to speak?" cried the Elector with vehemence. "Not as in reverence and duty bound, but as if you would reproach us! What a rude expression is this when you say, in your petition, that you hope we shall no longer leave the Markgraviates as sheep without shepherd, just as if we would hand you over without protection to the free will and power of the enemy? Most probably those honorable citizens, the tailors and shoemakers, drew up this famous writing, but they would have done better to take into their counsel their priest, or at least a schoolmaster, because he could have enlightened them as to the proper style of address for obedient, submissive citizens to assume in writing to their Sovereign. I have always been an indulgent ruler, who continually cared for your best interests. If matters do not go so well with you, it is your own fault, because you would never carry out my intentions, which I made you acquainted with and urged upon you long years ago. For have we not perpetually, ever since God exalted us to the Electoral dignity and invested us with the reins of government, caused to be represented to you and to all the states in the land how highly necessary it was to establish another form of government? Who has it been but yourselves who hindered, obstructed, and opposed it? Now, however, when things go not so smoothly, you lament over it, and demand from me assistance, when in former times your pride always consisted in being wholly independent of us, through your free-city constitutions! Now, then, see what is the result, when a city will be wholly independent of its liege lord and persists in its obstinacy."
"Your Electoral Highness, it has never entered the minds of our citizens to oppose themselves obstinately to the most gracious of sovereigns," protested the spokesman of the burger deputation, "On the contrary, we have always been found ready to obey the behests of your Electoral grace."
"That is not true! That is a lie!" cried the Elector vehemently. "Often have you declined to obey my commands in small as well as great things. I remember yet very well how, when three years ago I came in the summertime from Prussia to Berlin, I was perfectly shocked at the filth and stench in the streets of Cologne and Berlin, where before every house, besides pigstyes, there were heaped high piles of trash and manure. But when I ordered the high council of both cities to have the streets cleansed, they had the hardihood to answer me thus: 'The citizens have no time now to clean the streets, since they are busy with agricultural work.'[3] And quite recently, when I merely applied to these two capitals for their yearly quota of fifteen thousand dollars, in order to increase my bodyguard from three hundred to six hundred men during these perilous times of warfare, did you not refuse to grant this subsidy to your rightful lord?"
"Your Electoral Highness, that was the result of the extremest affliction and necessity, because we were really in no condition to pay the money. For whence shall we procure it if poverty, want, and affliction are the only things that yet belong to us? Just on that very account, to bring this matter to the hearing of your Electoral Highness, have we been deputed as delegates by the corporations of Berlin and Cologne to wait upon your Electoral Grace, that we might represent our distresses to our Sovereign, and entreat him to forgive us if we are forced to decline contributions of money, for we are unable to raise them. Since this fierce, horrible war has raged in Germany between the Imperialists and Swedes, between the Catholics and Protestants, the cities of Berlin and Cologne have suffered pitiably, and have been levied upon and plundered, sometimes by the Swedes and sometimes by the Imperialists. Before the peace of Prague the Imperialists visited us quite often with cruel robberies and levies, but since the peace of Prague,[4] it has been yet worse, and what we have suffered and endured these past two years is enough to melt a stone, how much more the heart of a pitiful Sovereign. Last year first came the Swedish colonel Haderslof into our town, and levied upon us for sixteen thousand dollars; and hardly had he left when Field-Marshal Wrangel came and demanded twenty thousand dollars besides. Since, however, we were not in a position to pay that sum, he contented himself with a thousand dollars in money, but we had to furnish him in addition with fifteen thousand yards of cloth, three thousand pairs of socks, and as many pairs of shoes, and besides that he had all the cattle driven out of the city. And yet again, a few weeks ago came the Swedish colonel Haderslof, and demanded of us a contribution of eleven thousand dollars. It was impossible, however. We could pay no more, since we had no more gold, and were obliged to receive it almost as a favor that he promised in the compact to accept silver in payment in lieu of gold, and to estimate a half ounce of gilded silver at twelve groschen and a half ounce of white silver at nine groschen. We could do nothing but submit, and each householder and citizen bore all the silverware he possessed to the guildhall, where the Swede had ordered the contributions to be collected. And now, most gracious lord and Elector, now that we are poor and wretched, comes the stadtholder in the Mark, the Lord Count von Schwarzenberg, and requires of the cities of Berlin and Cologne the payment of their annual tax for purposes of defense."
"And you are bound by duty and obligation so to do," exclaimed the Elector quickly. "On the committee day of the year 1626 it was decided that the city of Berlin should annually pay a stipend for defense of eight thousand five hundred dollars, that therewith might be maintained her garrison and the fortress of Berlin. Therefore you are bound and under obligation to pay this assessment at present, for it strikes me forcibly that you were never in greater need of a garrison than just now."