The terrible results of the Thirty Years' War may be summed up by saying
that Germany was the carcass, and the hosts which invaded the German
soil were the vultures. The Protestant invaders were Swedes, Finns,
Hollanders, Frenchmen, Englishmen, and Scotchmen; on the Catholic side
there came in Spaniards, Italians, Walloons, Poles, Cossacks, Croats,
and representatives of nearly all other Slavonic tribes. There was an
army never larger than 40,000 men, but the camp followers were 140,000,
consisting of gangs of Gypsies, Jewish camp traders, marauders, and
plunderers. The soldiers robbed and tortured all alike, both friend and
foe. The inhabitants would flee to the woods, taking with them or hiding
everything they could. But the invaders were experts in discovering
secret treasures; they would pour water on the ground, and where it sank
quickly there they knew something had been recently buried.
To retaliate, the peasants would watch for stragglers, for the sick and
wounded who had dropped behind, putting them to death with every device
of insult and cruelty known. Much of the cruelty is too hideous to
mention. In many districts the desolation was so great that persons were
found dead with grass in their mouths. Men climbed up the scaffolds and
tore down the bodies of those hanged and devoured them. The supply was
large. Newly buried corpses were dug up for food. Children were enticed
away that they might be slain and eaten. The population, when plundered,
would become plunderers in turn, forming into bands, and inflict on
others the horrors that they themselves had suffered. Men became wholly
indifferent to the sufferings of others. Whole countries were
destroyed, towns and villages reduced to ashes, and civilization was
pushed back into barbarism for half a century. The Thirty Years' War is
said to have been so unspeakably cruel and calamitous that the like has
never been known in Europe.