A most interesting account of the persecution is to be found in
two thin quarto volumes by J.M. TEUBENER, entitled Historie derer
Emigranten oder Vertriebenen Lutheraner aus dem Ertz-Bissthum
Saltzburg. 2 vols. 4to. Leipz. 1732.
"About twenty-five thousand persons, a tenth part of the population, migrated on this occasion. Their property was sold for them, under the King of Prussia's protection; some injustice, and considerable loss must needs have been suffered by such a sale, and the chancellor, by whom this strong measure was carried into effect, is accused of having enriched himself by the transaction. Seventeen thousand of the emigrants settled in the Prussian states. Their march will long be remembered in Germany. The Catholic magistrates at Augsburgh shut the gates against them, but the Protestants in the city prevailed, and lodged them in their houses. The Count of Stolberg Warnegerode gave a dinner to about nine hundred in his palace; they were also liberally entertained and relieved by the Duke of Brunswick. At Leipsic the clergy met them at the gates, and entered with them in procession, singing one of Luther's hymns; the magistrates quartered them upon the inhabitants, and a collection was made for them in the church, several merchants subscribing liberally. The university of Wittenberg went out to meet them, with the Rector at their head, and collections were made from house to house. 'We thought it an honor,' says one of the Professors, 'to receive our poor guests in that city where Luther first preached the doctrines for which they were obliged to abandon their native homes.' These demonstrations of the popular feeling render it more than probable that if a religious war had then been allowed to begin in Saltzburg, it would have spread throughout all Germany.
"Thirty-three thousand pounds were raised in London for the relief of the Saltzburgers. Many of them settled in Georgia,—colonists of the best description. They called their settlement Ebenezer. Whitfield, in 1738, was wonderfully pleased with their order and industry. 'Their lands,' he says, 'are improved surprisingly for the time they have been there, and I believe they have far the best crop of any in the colony. They are blest with two such pious ministers as I have not often seen. They have no courts of judicature, but all little differences are immediately and implicitly decided by their ministers, whom they look upon and love as their fathers. They have likewise an orphan house, in which are seventeen children and one widow, and I was much delighted to see the regularity wherewith it is managed.'"
SOUTHEY'S Life of Wesley, Vol. I. p. 98, note.
XVI.
With reference to these persecuted exiles, are the following lines of
Thomson.
"Lo! swarming southward on rejoicing suns
New colonies extend'. the calm retreat
Of undeserved distress, the better home
Of those whom bigots chase from foreign lands;
Such as of late an Oglethorpe has formed,
And crowding round, the pleased Savannah sees."
[Liberty, Part V.]
I give, also, an extract from the London Journal of the day.
"As the Trustees for settling Georgia are giving all proper encouragement for the Saltzburg emigrants to go over and settle there, some of the managers for those poor people have sent over to the Trustees from Holland, a curious medal or device, enchased on silver, representing the emigration of the poor Saltzburgers from their native country, which opens like a box, and in the inside contains a map of their country, divided into seventeen districts, with seventeen little pieces of historical painting, representing the seventeen persecutions of the primitive Christians; the whole being folded up in a very small compass, and is a most ingenious piece of workmanship."