p amongst the revengeful soldiery the belief in their invulnerability.

We may add to these delusions, the endeavours of individuals to read
from the course of the stars the events and issue of the war, and their
own fate. Prognostics accumulated, the terrors of the approaching year
were unweariedly prophesied from constellations, shooting-stars,
comets, and other atmospheric phenomena; the casting of horoscopes was
general. Some individuals also possessed second sight, they foresaw to
whom the approaching future would be fatal. When in 1636 the Imperial
Saxon army was lying before Magdeburg, there was an invalid
mathematician in the camp who foretold to his friends that the 26th of
June would be fatal to him. He was lying in a closed tent when a
lieutenant rode up, and unloosening the tent cords, forced himself in
and begged the sick man to draw his nativity. After refusing a long
time, the invalid prophesied to him that he would be hanged that very
hour. The lieutenant, very indignant that any one should dare to say
such a thing to a cavalier, drew his sword and killed the sick man.
There immediately arose a great tumult, the murderer then threw himself
upon his horse and tried to escape; it happened however, accidentally,
that the Elector of Saxony was riding through the camp with General
Hatzfeld and a great retinue. The Elector exclaimed, that there would
be bad discipline in the Imperial camp if the life of a sick man in bed
could not be secured from murderers. The lieutenant was hanged.

Whoever was considered the possessor of such secrets was feared by his
comrades, but not esteemed. "For if they were not cowardly, dastardly
ninnies, they would not use such charms." Certain officers in the
sixteenth century caused every prisoner to be hanged upon whom were
found jagged or iron-coated balls, "which were consecrated for the sake
of a soul." In the Thirty years' war, a coward begged of his comrade a
Passau parchment, who wrote on a strip of paper three times: "Defend
yourself, scoundrel," folded it up and made the dastard sew it in his
clothes. From that day every one imagined that he was invulnerable, and
he went about on all occasions amongst the enemies' weapons, as hard as
horn, like a _Siegfried_, and always came out unwounded.

But the soldier had not only to win the favour of the Fates, but still
more the approbation of his comrades. Whoever carefully examines this
period, without ceasing to view with horro