hat Cologne should for many years burn its three
hundred witches annually? the district of Barnberg its four hundred?
Nuremberg, Geneva, Paris, Toulouse, Lyons, and other cities, their two
hundred?

A few of these trials may be cited, taking them in the order of
priority, as they occurred in different parts of the Continent. In 1595
an old woman residing in a village near Constance, angry at not being
invited to share the sports of the country people on a day of public
rejoicing, was heard to mutter something to herself, and was afterwards
seen to proceed through the fields towards a hill, where she was lost
sight of. A violent thunderstorm arose about two hours afterwards,
which wet the dancers to the skin, and did considerable damage to the
plantations. This woman, suspected before of witchcraft, was seized and
imprisoned, and accused of having raised the storm, by filling a hole
with wine, and stirring it about with a stick. She was tortured till
she confessed, and was burned alive the next evening.

About the same time two sorcerers in Toulouse were accused of having
dragged a crucifix about the streets at midnight, stopping at times to
spit upon and kick it, and uttering at intervals an exorcism to raise
the devil. The next day a hail-storm did considerable damage to the
crops, and a girl, the daughter of a shoemaker in the town, remembered
to have heard in the night the execrations of the wizards. Her story
led to their arrest. The usual means to produce confession were
resorted to. The wizards owned that they could raise tempests whenever
they pleased, and named several persons who possessed similar powers.
They were hanged, and then burned in the market-place, and seven of the
persons they had mentioned shared the same fate.

Hoppo and Stadlin, two noted wizards of Germany, were executed in 1599.
They implicated twenty or thirty witches, who went about causing women
to miscarry, bringing down the lightning of heaven, and making maidens
bring forth toads. To this latter fact several girls were found to
swear most positively! Stadlin confessed that he had killed seven
infants in the womb of one woman.

Bodinus highly praises the exertions of a witchfinder, named Nider, in
France, who prosecuted so many that he could not calculate them. Some
of these witches could, by a single word, cause people to fall down
dead; others made women go with child three years instead of nine
months; while others, by certain inv