Bohemians, and shared
their booty with them; indeed, some of them took pleasure in a wild
robber life, carrying it on even in their own country. These deeds of
violence and lamentable struggles continued quite into the sixteenth
century, till the Reformation gave a new bent to this lively and
impressible race, and brought with it new sufferings.

Through all these times the Silesians retained their love of orderly
arrangements, even in the most desperate situations. When, for example,
in the year 1488, Duke Hans of Sagen, one of the lawless characters who
figured in the border wars, imprisoned seven honourable counsellors of
his own city, Glogau, in a tower, and starved them to death because
they had refused to act contrary to a solemn engagement; these seven
martyrs, in a truly German manner, punctually and conscientiously kept
a diary of their sufferings, and left in writing, prayers to the
Almighty for mercy and a happy death; but it is a truly Silesian and
almost modern trait, that the writer of this fearful journal had a
certain gloomy pleasure in reflecting on his painful fate, and in the
last lines he wrote before his death, he endeavoured to depict the
destitution of his situation by mentioning that he had been obliged to
use the black of the burnt wick as ink.[9]

In the century of the reformation, the Silesians, as might be expected
of a people of such quick susceptibilities, were for the most part
zealous for the new teaching. They had been bound by strong ties to the
old Church, like most of the other races; for it was partly at the call
of the Church that their ancestors had come into that country;
notwithstanding which, almost the whole people freed themselves from
Rome, and manfully ventured life and property for their convictions.
And most severely was their constancy tried; for the supreme power,
which had been in Polish and Bohemian hands, had now fallen into those
of the House of Austria.[10] Of all the countries under the power of
the House of Hapsburg, Silesia is the only one which did not make a
sacrifice of the new faith to the iron hand of reaction, but maintained
a desperate resistance even into the eighteenth century. These were
indeed two most unhappy centuries; the Thirty years' war laid the
country waste, and not a third part of the former population escaped
from the brutality of the soldiers, or from pestilence, or famine. But
just at this time, when the whole of Germany had become one vas