ia suddenly changed the physiognomy of the
literary market. The secret writings obtained as booty from the
Bohemian party were published by their opponents; and about these bulky
quartos there raged for years a battle of petty flying sheets.
Revengeful, and joyfully triumphant, the Imperialists sounded their
paean. It is true that in their brochures there was still some
moderation, for they were obliged to spare the Lutheran Saxons; but so
much the more irritably did they attack the enemy, in countless
pictorial sheets and satirical verses. Endless and merciless were the
satires on the fugitive winter King, he, the proud and witless one,
with his wife and children, were depicted in every kind of pitiful
situation, seeking their bread, departing in bad waggons, and digging a
grave for themselves.

This strife was interrupted by another, which will ever be of high
interest. It was the storm of the German press against the "_Kipper_
and _Wipper_."

Of all the terrors at the beginning of the war, nothing gave such vague
apprehension to the people, as the sudden depreciation of the coinage.
To the fancy of the suffering generation, the evil became so much the
greater, as in the gloomy frame of mind of that period it appeared to
occur suddenly, and everywhere roused the most frightful passions,
discord in families, and hatred and strife between debtors and
creditors, leaving behind, hunger, poverty, beggary, and immorality. It
made honourable citizens gamblers, drunkards, and profligates, it drove
preachers and schoolmasters from their offices, brought opulent
families to beggary, plunged every government into miserable confusion,
and threatened the dwellers in cities, in a thickly populated country,
with famine.

It was the third year of the war; its flames had already carried
destruction over Bohemia and the Palatinate, and the ruins were still
glowing, on which the Imperial troops erected the cross of the old
faith. A sultry atmosphere loured over the country; throughout the
empire, in every class, men armed themselves, and anxiety for the
future pervaded all. But intercourse with the provinces in which the
war was at first located, was then comparatively small. The countries
exposed to its fury were, with the exception of the Palatinate,
provinces belonging to the Emperor; and on the Elbe and lower Rhine, in
Thuringia, Franconia, and the territories of lower Saxony, it was still
a question whether the danger was appro