“That is not true!  That is a lie!” cried the Elector vehemently.  “Often have you declined to obey my commands in small as well as great things.  I remember yet very well how, when three years ago I came in the summertime from Prussia to Berlin, I was perfectly shocked at the filth and stench in the streets of Cologne and Berlin, where before every house, besides pigstyes, there were heaped high piles of trash and manure.  But when I ordered the high council of both cities to have the streets cleansed, they had the hardihood to answer me thus:  ’The citizens have no time now to clean the streets, since they are busy with agricultural work.’[3] And quite recently, when I merely applied to these two capitals for their yearly quota of fifteen thousand dollars, in order to increase my bodyguard from three hundred to six hundred men during these perilous times of warfare, did you not refuse to grant this subsidy to your rightful lord?”

“Your Electoral Highness, that was the result of the extremest affliction and necessity, because we were really in no condition to pay the money.  For whence shall we procure it if poverty, want, and affliction are the only things that yet belong to us?  Just on that very account, to bring this matter to the hearing of your Electoral Highness, have we been deputed as delegates by the corporations of Berlin and Cologne to wait upon your Electoral Grace, that we might represent our distresses to our Sovereign, and entreat him to forgive us if we are forced to decline contributions of money, for we are unable to raise them.  Since this fierce, horrible war has raged in Germany between the Imperialists and Swedes, between the Catholics and Protestants, the cities of Berlin and Cologne have suffered pitiably, and have been levied upon and plundered, sometimes by the Swedes and sometimes by the Imperialists.  Before the peace of Prague the Imperialists visited us quite often with cruel robberies and levies, but since the peace of Prague,[4] it has been yet worse, and what we have suffered and endured these past two years is enough to melt a stone, how much more the heart of a pitiful Sovereign.  Last year first came the Swedish colonel Haderslof into our town, and levied upon us for sixteen thousand dollars; and hardly had he left when Field-Marshal Wrangel came and demanded twenty thousand dollars besides.  Since, however, we were not in a position to pay that sum, he contented himself with a thousand dollars in money, but we had to furnish him in addition with fifteen thousand yards of cloth, three thousand pairs of socks, and as many pairs of shoes, and besides that he had all the cattle driven out of the city.  And yet again, a few weeks ago came the Swedish colonel Haderslof, and demanded of us a contribution of eleven thousand dollars.  It was impossible, however.  We could pay no more, since we had no more gold, and were obliged to receive it almost as a favor that he promised in the compact to accept silver in payment