sh nobleman
Roskowski put on a red and a black boot: the one signified fire, and
the other death; thus he rode from one place to another, laying all
under contribution; at last, in Jastrow, he caused the hands, feet, and
finally the head of the Evangelical preacher Wellick to be cut off, and
the limbs to be thrown into a bog. This happened in 1768.

Such was the state of the country shortly before the Prussian
occupation. Dantzic, which was indispensable to the Poles, kept itself,
through this century of decay, from the rest of the country; it
remained a free State under Sclavonian protection, and was long adverse
to the great King. But the country and most of the German cities
energetically helped to preserve the King from destruction. The
Prussian officials who were sent into the country were astonished at
the wretchedness which existed at a few days' journey from their
capital. Only some of the larger cities, in which German life was
maintained by old trading intercourse within strong walls, and
protected strips of land exclusively occupied by Germans,--like the low
countries near Dantzig,--the villages under the mild government of the
Cistercians of Oliva, and the wealthy German districts of Catholic
Ermland, were in tolerable condition. Other cities lay in ruins, as did
most of the farms on the plains. The Prussians found Bromberg, a city
of German colonists, in ruins; it is not possible now accurately to
ascertain how the city came into this condition;[21] indeed the fate of
the whole Netze district, in the last ten years before the Prussian
occupation, is quite unknown. No historians, no records, and no
registers give any account of the destruction and slaughter with which
that country was ravaged. Apparently the Polish factions must have
fought amongst themselves; bad harvests and pestilence may have done
the rest. Kulm has from ancient times preserved its well-built walls
and stately churches, but in the streets the covered passages to the
cellars projected over the rotten wood and the fragments of brick from
the dilapidated buildings; whole streets consisted of such cellars, in
which the miserable inhabitants dwelt. Twenty-eight of the forty houses
of the great market-place had no doors, no roofs, no inhabitants, and
no proprietors. In a similar condition were other cities.

The greater number of the country people lived in circumstances which
appeared to the King's officials lamentable; especially on the
fr