The electors, in a dignified and reasonable address, express their firm conviction that the whole blame for the misery, disgrace, and infamy, the cruel and unnecessary military exactions, which are daily increasing, rest with the new duke in Mechlenburg [Wallenstein], who, as commander of the imperial forces, has been invested, without the consent of the estates, with such powers as no one before him had ever exercised. The soldiery, now become unspeakably numerous, serve no other purpose than to lay waste the common fatherland. Moreover war has been waged upon those against whom it had never been declared. Contributions which, according to the decrees of the diet, no one had the right to demand without the consent of the assembled estates, were levied at the duke’s own will and pleasure and wrung from the people in barbarous ways. It was shown that the electorate of Brandenburg alone in the last few years has furnished twenty million gulden, to say nothing of the terrible disturbances and destruction that war always brings with it.

[Among the complaints from other princes and estates of the realm, the following, presented to the emperor by an ambassador from the duke of Pomerania, is especially noteworthy.] The duke of Pomerania doubts not that your Imperial Majesty has in remembrance how that he has at divers times protested against the unheard-of and unspeakable hardships and extortions which have now for almost three years been practiced upon him and his subjects by the troops quartered in the land, and which still continue unabated; whereof he once more most earnestly complains, and humbly begs for relief. The burden has now become so great that he can bear it no longer.

According to the decisions and decrees of the imperial diet, the said duke is under no obligation to support an army by himself and bear unaided a burden that should be divided among all the members of the empire. Nevertheless, for almost three years past, he has had to maintain within his dukedom and other territories over a hundred companies of your Imperial Majesty’s army, besides sending supplies to outside points, and having the soldiery continually marching about the country. The outlay in the principality of Stettin alone amounts to fully ten million gulden; this can be verified at any time.

Worst of all are the vexatious means used in collecting these monthly contributions from our officials and subjects. A new and unheard-of modus extorquendi has been invented, such as was never before practiced by honest soldiers quartered in a friendly land; and the exactions are carried out with such rigorous excess under the officers in charge that the miserable victims can scarce keep shirts on their backs. And what insolent excesses and willful interference with church services, despoiling of churches, violation of graves of the dead, infringements of every sort of our sovereignty and authority, disarming of our subjects and curtailing of our revenue as ruler ! This last has actually gone so far that it is impossible for us, from all the length and breadth of our land, to maintain a table befitting our princely rank; whereas every captain, out of his own district alone, lives in more than princely style and sends away large sums besides. Toward the poor people they are barbarous and tyrannical beyond words, beating, burning, and plundering, and depriving them of the very necessities of existence, till they are in danger of soul as well as body, for they are driven to such unnatural and inhuman food as buds of trees and grass, and even to the flesh of their own children and of dead bodies.