m with green silk between the leaves of a branch of
oak, that they might be able to throw them away, without suspicion, in
time of danger.[26] These despatches were written in gipsy language or
gibberish, in foreign characters, and if there were runaway students in
the companies, they were written perhaps in French with Greek letters;
they employed, for these purpose, a simple kind of short-hand writing,
displacing the letters of the words, or agreeing that only the middle
letter of the words should have signification.[27] The transition from
such partisan service to becoming dishonourable marauders and
freebooters was easy. In the beginning of the war, the newly raised
regiment of Count Merode was so reduced by long marches and bad
nourishment, that it could hardly set its guard; it dissolved almost
entirely, on the march, into stragglers, who lay under the hedges and
in the byways, or sneaking about the army with defective weapons, and
without order. After that time, the stragglers, whom the soldier wits
had before called "_sausaenger_" and "_immemchneider_" (drones), were
now denoted as "Merode-ing brothers." After a lost battle their
numbers increased enormously. Horsemen who were slightly wounded, and
had lost their horses, associated themselves with them, and it was
impossible, from the then state of military discipline, to get rid of
them.

The most undisciplined, abandoned the route of the army, and lived as
highwaymen, footpads, and poachers. Vain were the endeavours of the
sovereigns, at the end of the war, to annihilate the great robber
bands; they lasted, to a certain extent, up to the beginning of the
present century.

Such was the character of the war which raged in Germany for thirty
years. An age of blood, murder, and fire, of utter destruction to all
property which was movable, and ruin to that which was not; and an age
of spiritual and material decay in the nation. The Generals imposed
exorbitant contributions, and kept part in their own pockets. The
colonels and captains levied charges on the cities and towns in which
their troops were quartered, and merciless were the demands on all
sides. The princes sent their plate and stud horses as presents to the
Generals, and the cities sent sums of money and casks of wine to the
captains, and the villages, riding horses and gold lace to the cornets
and sergeant-majors, as long as such bribery was possible. When an army
was encamped in a district, any landed