proprietors of importance,
monasteries, and villages, endeavoured to obtain the protection of a
"_salva guardia_." They had to pay dear for this guard, yet had to bear
with much unseemly conduct from them. If a place lay between two
armies, both parties had to be asked for _salva guardia_, and both
guards lived by agreement in peaceful intercourse at the expense of
their host. But it was seldom that either individuals or communities
were so fortunate as to be able to preserve even this unsatisfactory
protection; for it was necessary for the army to live. When a troop of
soldiers entered a village or country town, the soldiers rushed like
devils into the houses; wherever the dung-heaps[28] were the largest,
there the greatest wealth was to be expected. The object of the
tortures to which the inhabitants were subjected, was generally to
extort from them their hidden property; they were distinguished by
especial names, as the "Swedish fleece," and the "wheel." The
plunderers took the flints from the pistols and forced the peasants'
thumbs in their place; they rubbed the soles of their feet with salt,
and caused goats to lick them; they tied their hands behind their
backs; they passed a bodkin threaded with horse-hair through their
tongues, and moved it gently up and down; they bound a knotted cord
round the forehead and twisted it together behind with a stick; they
bound two fingers together, and rubbed a ramrod up and down till the
skin and flesh were burnt to the bone; they forced the victims into the
oven, lit the straw behind them, and so they were obliged to creep
through the flames. Ragamuffins were everywhere to be found who
bargained with the soldiers, to betray their own neighbours. And these
were not the most horrible torments. What was done to the women and
maidens, to the old women and children, must be passed over in silence.

Thus did the army misbehave amongst the people, dishonouring every bed,
robbing every house, devastating every field, till they were themselves
involved in the general ruin. And the destruction of these thirty years
increased progressively. It was the years from 1635 to 1641 which
annihilated the last powers of the nation; from that period to the
peace, a death-like lassitude pervaded the country; it communicated
itself to the armies, and one can easily understand that the bitter
misery of the soldiers called for some consideration for the citizens
and peasants. The remaining population