brightest view of the most desolate situations. He was a poet. His
German verses are thoroughly pitiful, as may be seen by the specimen
heading this chapter, but they served him as elegant begging letters by
which, in the worst times, he endeavoured to procure sympathy. He
celebrated all the officials and receivers of the parish of Heldburg in
an epic poem, as also the melancholy condition of Coburg, where he
tarried for a certain time as a fugitive.

Of the career which he noted down, the beginning and the last portion
were already torn out when Krauss, in 1730, incorporated it in his
history of the Hildburghaus church, school, and province. The following
is faithfully transcribed from this fragment; only the series of events
which are intermingled in his autobiography are here arranged according
to years. Boetzinger was a collegian at Coburg and a student at Jena,
during the _Kipper_ time;[30] and in 1626, he became pastor at
Poppenhausen. In the spring of 1627, the young pastor entertained the
idea of marrying the only daughter of Michael Boehme, burgher and
counsellor at Heldburg, whose name was Ursula.

"In the year 1627, on the Tuesday after the Jubilate, all necessary
preparations being made, on this very day, a body of eight thousand
men, people from Saxe Lauenburg, together with the Prince himself,
encamped before Heldburg; pitched their camp on the cropped ground, and
in eight days ruined the city and land belonging to the corporation, so
that neither calf nor lamb, beer nor wine, could any more be procured.
Provisions were brought from all the neighbouring districts, and yet
even the royal officers and officials could hardly be maintained. They
were, on account of the cold, quartered some days in the city and
villages. It was then, for the first time, I was plundered in the
parsonage house at Poppenhausen, for not only had I not secured
anything, but rather had I made preparation as if I had to lodge an
honourable guest or officer; I lost my linen, bedding, shirts, and so
forth, for I did not yet know that the soldiers were robbers, and took
everything away with them. The prince of the country, Duke Casimir, was
himself obliged to journey to Heldburg; he ordered for the Lauenburger
a princely banquet; he presented him with fine horses and eight
thousand thalers if he would only take himself away. After this
misfortune, the blessing of God made itself miraculously visible
everywhere. Owing to the thousands