l more inaccessible, and
for weeks, indeed months, the fugitives passed their anxious existence
there. On the dark moor, midst ditches, rushes and elders, in the deep
shade of woody glens, in old clay-pits, and amid the ruins of decaying
walls, did they seek their last refuge. The countryman in many places
still shows with emotion such spots. There is a large vault with an
iron door in an old tower at Aspach, whither the Aspachers fled
whenever small bands of soldiers approached the village; for a more
distant refuge they had a field of many acres, overgrown with thick
hornbeam, and there they planted thorns which from the fertility of the
soil grew into large trees and became like a thick wall. Within this
barricade, which could only be attained by creeping on the belly, the
villagers often concealed themselves. After the war the thorns were
rooted up, and the land changed into hop, and afterwards cabbage
grounds. But a portion of this land is still called the "Schutzdorn,"
"thorn-defence." When the soldiers had withdrawn, the fugitives
returned and repaired with their scanty means what had been laid waste.
Often, indeed, they found only a smoking pile.

All however who fled did not return. The more wealthy sought a refuge
for themselves and their property in the cities, where martial
discipline was a little more rigorous, and the danger less. Many also
fled into another country, and if they were threatened by enemies
there, again into another; and most of them assuredly had not less
misery to suffer there. Those who remained in the country did not all
return to their own fields. The wild life in hiding-places and woods,
the rough pleasure in deeds of violence and pillage, turned the boldest
of them into robbers; provided with rusty weapons, which they had
perhaps taken from some dead marauder, they carried on a lawless life
under the mountain pines, as companions of wolves and crows, as
poachers and highwaymen.

Thus did the population of the plains decrease with frightful rapidity.
Even in the time of the King of Sweden many villages were entirely
abandoned, the beasts of the woods roamed about among the blackened
rafters, and perhaps the tattered figure of some old beldame or cripple
might be seen. From that time ruin increased to such an extent, that
nothing like it can be found in modern history. To the destructive
demons of the sword were added others, not less fearful and still more
voracious. The land was lit