# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 03 14_S118
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

118
sell; but in no case should they be oppressed or tormented in any way." But the Archbishop let himself not be moved by this in the least; he gave notice: "The people whom one takes under protection are indeed rebels, to such the articles of the Peace of Westphalia do not apply." With this one pretext he put the Protestant princes off, so that with all their earnest and threatening representations they could accomplish nothing.

Now they turned to the German Emperor, Charles VI himself, who as is well known was at that time still the head of the whole German Empire. Repeatedly they approached him reverently, but most urgently, that he might with his imperial power intervene and uphold the laws of the Empire. But the Emperor did nothing more than send some letters and later also his Vice-Chancellor to Salzburg, and have the Archbishop admonished, "that he should not, in this matter, transgress his duties as a prince of the Empire." Whether this admonition was obeyed, he troubled himself no further about. So the Protestant princes could achieve nothing, with all their labor and pains, even with the Head and Protector of the Empire.

When now the sudden Emigration Edict appeared and in the harsh winter season was put into execution without mercy, they sent yet another memorial to Salzburg: "According to the law the emigrants must be given 3 years' time; if this did not happen, they could not answer for any consequences." But the answer ran: "Once for all, the people are rebels, and for these the law has no protection. However, out of special grace one will extend the term for the landholders until St. George's Day, but of the landless send out every 14 days always two hundred."

But it was known everywhere that the accusation of insurrection was only cunning and deceit. Therefore on the evangelical side one began now to use counter-force. In the Netherlands several Catholic churches were closed; in Prussia, Holstein, Hanover and Hesse the Catholics were notified that their foundations and parishes would shortly be abolished. Fear and trembling seized them; they sent representations and petitions to Salzburg, Vienna and Rome. In vain; the mind of the Archbishop was not bent, and the Emperor and the Pope, — they also had their reason why they closed their ears.

The only kindness that could still be shown to the unhappy fellow-believers was to secure their lives outside of Salzburg. Already the Salt League had delegated Peter Heldensteiner of Werfen and Nikolaus Forstreuter of St. Johann, wherever it might be, to apply for new dwelling places. The praiseworthy King Frederick William of Prussia it was who promised them reception into his lands and provision on the journey. In his province of Lithuania large tracts had become empty of people through war and pestilence; these he wished to repopulate with them. —

The new year 1732 renewed for our sufferers in the mountains the old tribulations and terrors. The villages of the Lutherans were as if dead, because their inhabitants, anxious and timid, scarcely dared to venture out from their walls. And at home they were not allowed to strike up a heart-uplifting hymn, to pray aloud a Lutheran morning and evening sacrifice, nor to read to themselves from the holy Bible. The soldiers threatened to throw fire into the house in which anything Lutheran should be heard. Whoever gave the least offense was put in chains and led off to the Residence. There one rang the bells as soon as such fettered rebels approached the precincts of the city, to notify the people of the arrival of new monsters. These were wrapped in blue cloaks, with blindfolded eyes, as if to the place of execution, brought in. The people ran furiously beside the wagons, and uttered dreadful curses against them. Then they were thrown into the vaults of Hohensalzburg. The fortress became quite full, where then one and another died of hunger, cold and grief.

Yet the inhuman heart of the papistical oppressors could also practice all sorts of farces and mockeries on these poor confessors of Christ, to make them waver. On the open height beneath the holes of the prisons hired fellows built a wheel and wove a human body upon it. It was, however, only a stuffed suit of clothes. The guards called to one another, as agreed, so loudly that it sounded in the ears of the prisoners: "He also cannot depart in peace, he was converted too late, the devil does not let him go." The commandant of the fortress had wooden figures made, dressed in the garments of poor sinners, and beheaded before the eyes of the imprisoned. When the morning had scarcely dawned, the gravedigger went by, sang with hollow voice songs of death and judgment and complained to the guards that he now could not make graves enough. By such abominable delusions the cross-bearers were to be made quite soft and brought to apostasy. But they turned their souls in prayer to the heavenly fountain and became courageous, to suffer death itself for the sake of the Gospel, because they had the sure conviction that through it they would stand gloriously in the judgment.

Among these cruel farces belongs also an incident which indeed took place only several weeks later, but which may fitly be put here. There, namely, 300 newly arrived emigrants were led into a hall hung wholly with black cloth and frequently sprinkled with blood. On the table lay a bare sword, and on the one side stood the executioners, on the other, however, several priests. The latter now applied every imaginable persuasion to move the Lutherans to deny their faith, and pointed threateningly at the sword and the executioners. But also this severe trial was gloriously endured through the Spirit of Him who gives to the weary strength and power enough to the powerless.

Outright execution the Archbishop allowed of none; he must have feared, before whom? Yet his defiant answer to Regensburg he had carried out. Every 14 days a company of landless people marched toward the border. They walked outdoors in the struggle of snow and storm, or over creaking ice-paths, and because the way was often drifted over, here and there one slipped down the rocks and found freedom and peace, before his feet were out of the land of affliction.

Those who remained behind, on the other hand, had to endure from rude landlords on account of the rent, from the severity of winter in unheated rooms, from want of provisions etc. unspeakably much; also as exit fees one demanded not seldom the last thing that one had gathered for the journey. Then the priests asked mockingly how the Lutheran faith agreed with them? They showed them, in case of return, a laughing future and let glittering pieces of money run through their fingers. But it is once for all established experience that those who suffer for righteousness' sake are usually timid and weak only in the beginning; with growing distress they become rather more courageous and stronger. So here also the priests had again to see their pains in vain, with astonishment and shame.

The companies of wanderers became, in spite of the prohibition, ever larger the farther they went. But how many of the saddest and most touching stories took place on the way! Only a few of them.

A Lutheran woman had tied up her traveling bundle. She took once more her child of 21 weeks in her arms, and went out with it, while she gave her Catholic husband the traveling bundle to keep until she should come again. The man waited long, but the wife did not come back.

A boy of 14 years his relatives struck pegs under the nails and maimed some of his limbs, because he cherished heretical sentiments. Then they set a rapier on his breast and gave him the length of a Lord's Prayer to choose to remain in the Catholic church or to be run through. But the boy made a quick leap through the door and hid himself among the band of emigrants just passing by.

As a company was passing a farmstead a woman rushed out with a bloody hand. Her husband had, as a last act, chopped off two of her fingers.

From Hohensalzburg a prisoner had been released. It drove him once more back into his father's house, to take leave of the