, every one, be he who he may, has sought
his own advantage; therefore Magdeburg lies in ashes, Wismar is in
ruins, Augsburg is bound with the fetters of servitude, Nuremberg is in
peril of death, Ulm is in quotidian fever, Strasburg has passed to the
French, Frankfort has the jaundice, and the whole Empire is consumed.
The enemy have beaten with rods, but you have chastised with scorpions.
The Wallensteiners inflicted wounds, and you physicians have applied
drawing plasters as a remedy instead of oil, have corrupted the blood
and fastened yourselves on like a crab; such a crab must either be cut
out by force, or satisfied daily by inordinate sums of money. The last
is out of our power, the first we do not wish to do to you, but cannot
help it. If God thus harasses you it is your own fault. Meanwhile, do
you think that God has a flaxen beard, and will allow himself to be led
by the nose? Oh, no, He sees well that you shelter yourselves under the
name of freedom, that you make use of the cloak of the gospel, and at
the same time live as Turks.

"You cry out much about the Spanish monarchy. I have no fears of it.
Give me one of the best chemists who is sufficiently scientific to know
how to mingle earth and ores, so that they will hold together firm and
infrangible, and then let us see whether we have to fear the Spanish
monarchy. But I am afraid that France will be to us Germans, the broken
reed of Egypt, which will pierce the hand of whoever leans on it. All
empires have their fixed time appointed by God, and a boundary across
which they cannot pass. First they arise, then grow like boys; some
improve as youths, remain for a time at a standstill in their manhood,
then decline, become old, languish and at last die; nay, are so utterly
annihilated, that one scarcely knows that they have existed. This
course of things cannot be prevented by any human wisdom. The wise man
sees this, and prepares himself beforehand; the fool does not believe
it, and is ruined, like the surviving Generals of Alexander the Great,
who so long divided his conquests, till the Romans became their
masters. And truly the Empire has great need to rid herself at last of
foreign physicians.

"I have been severe, but a steel axe is necessary to sever such a hard
knot, one cannot cut with a fur coat.

"It is asked what will be the issue? It rests with God. Have you had
too little bloodshed? Let God be the judge, and fly ye from his wrath.
Although the