ntry soldiers, there were fifty women and forty children,
besides sutlers, horseboys, &c., &c., somewhat more than a third of the
soldiers. But in the field the proportion was quite different even in
the beginning of the war. Wallhausen reckons as indispensable to a
German regiment of infantry, four thousand women, children, and other
followers. A regiment of three thousand men had at least three hundred
waggons, and every waggon was full to repletion of women, children, and
plundered goods; when a company broke up from its quarters, it was
considered an act of self-denial if it did not carry away with it
thirty or more waggons. At the beginning of the war a regiment of north
German soldiers, three thousand strong, started from the muster-place
where it had remained some time, followed by two thousand women and
children.

From that time the baggage-train continued increasing to the end of the
war. It was only for a brief space of time that great commanders, like
Tilly, Wallenstein, and Gustavus Adolphus were able to diminish this
great plague of the army. In 1648, at the end of the great war, the
Bavarian General, Gronsfeld, reports that in the Imperial and Bavarian
armies there were forty thousand soldiers who drew war rations, and a
hundred and forty thousand who did not; on what were these to subsist
if they did not obtain their food by plunder, especially as in the
whole country where the army encamped, there was not a single place
where a soldier could buy a bit of bread. In the year 1648 the
camp-followers were more than three times the number of the
fighting-men. These numbers tell more significantly than any
deductions, what a dreadful amass of misery surrounded these armies.

Before we proceed to describe the influence which armies thus composed
exercised upon the life of the German people, we must once more remind
the reader, that this monstrous evil was not created by the Thirty
years' war, but for the most part already in existence. Some
observations will therefore be here introduced from the above-quoted
and now rare little book, written by Adam Junghans von der Olnitz, at
that period when the worth and capacity of the old Landsknecht army
passed away into the wild dissolute life of mercenaries. It appears
here as the prologue to the monstrous tragedy which began twenty years
later.

"Each and every officer, captain of horse, or other captain, knows well
that no doctors, magisters, or any other God-feari