an Terzka; even the sword of
Gustavus Adolphus was considered to be enchanted. Ahaz Willenger also,
leader after the death of Fardinger, of the revolted Austrian peasants,
was rendered so hard that a cannon-ball at seven paces rebounded from
his skin without penetrating it; he was at last killed by an officer of
Pappenheim. All the Princes of the house of Savoy were considered
invulnerable, even, after the Thirty years' war. Field-Marshal
Schauenburg tried it with Prince Thomas when he besieged him in an
Italian fortress; the bullets of the best marksmen missed their aim. No
one knew whether the members of that noble house had especial grace,
because they were of the race of the royal prophet David, or whether
the art of rendering themselves invulnerable was hereditary.

There were hardly any who did not believe in the mystic art. The
renowned French General Messire Jacques de Puysegur, in the French
civil war in 1622, was obliged to compass the death of an opponent,
_qui avait un caractere_, by blows of a strong pole on his neck,
because he had no weapon that could kill him; he recounts this
circumstance to his King. At the blockade of Magdeburg in 1629, the
complaint against these practices became so general, that the parties
engaged in this war entered into negotiations concerning it. Gustavus
Adolphus, in his first article of war, earnestly forbade idolatry,
witchcraft, or the charming of weapons as sins against God.

But the dark powers which the soldier invoked to his aid were
treacherous. They did not protect against everything; it was, to say
the least, very unsatisfactory that they did not preserve from the
hand of the executioner: Zimmermann relates many cases in which the
far-reaching hopes of an invulnerable person and his adherents were
disappointed at the place of execution. Certain portions of the body,
the neck, and the back between the shoulders, the armpits, and the
under part of the knee, were considered not hard or invulnerable. The
body also was only charmed against the common metals of lead or iron.
The simplest weapons of peasants, a wooden club, bullets of more
precious metals, and sometimes inherited silver could kill the
invulnerable. Thus an Austrian governor of Greifswald, on whom the
Swedes had fired more than twenty balls, could only be shot by the
inherited silver button that a soldier carried in his pocket. Thus too
a witch in Schleswig was changed into a were-wolf, and shot by
inherite