his, we learn from the fact that the
town chronicles frequently reported the particulars concerning it.
Thus, in 1624, at Michaelmas, at Leipzig a Fortune's urn of seventeen
thousand gulden was prepared; each ticket cost eighteen pfennige; there
were seventeen blanks to one prize; the highest prize was three hundred
and fifty gulden, and there were three hundred thousand blanks. The
students at last became angry at the number of blanks; they attacked
and broke down the lottery booth. The pleasure of the people in
spectacles was greater than now, at least more easily satisfied;
processions and city solemnities were frequent; plays undoubtedly were
still a rare enjoyment, in these the children of the citizens had
always the pleasure of representing the characters themselves, as bands
of travelling players were still new and rare. The clerical body was
already unfavourably disposed to what were called profane pieces,
therefore ecclesiastical subjects and allegories with moral tendencies
were always interspersed with burlesque scenes, and great was the
number of the actors. At the yearly markets the play booths were more
abundant than now. At the Easter fair at Leipzig in 1630, was to be
seen, amongst other things, a father with six children who performed
beautifully on the lute and violin, a woman who could sew, write, and
convey her food to her mouth with her feet, a child of a year old quite
covered with hair and with a beard; and of strange animals, there were
two marmoset monkeys, a porpoise, and a spoonbill, and, as now, these
monsters were recommended to the people by large pictures. Besides
these there were rope-dancers, fire-eaters, jugglers, acrobats, and
numerous ballad singers and vendors.

But what gave the greatest feeling of independence to the citizen in
1618 was his martial aptitude--almost every one had some practice in
the use of weapons. Every large city had an arsenal; even the heavy
artillery on the fortifications were served by the citizens, who, as a
body, were under ordinary circumstances superior to the young companies
of besieging soldiers. Magdeburg would have made a stronger resistance,
if feeling of duty and discipline had not already become weaker among
the citizens than in former sieges, in one of which the maiden of the
City Arms so valiantly defended her garland.

Besides the city train bands, there was in most of the Circles of the
Empire a regular militia for the defence of the country.