“Agathe! Come look!” Adam whispered, appearing at the bedchamber door of the small cottage where she was tucking in the children with prayers and kisses. She shook her head at him and he silently backed away.
“What is it Mama? I want to see!” came a shrill little voice. “Sshh. Go to sleep,” was the firm command in return.
Agathe tiptoed out of the dark room to the kitchen, lit only by the corner stove, and sank down on the bench. A chilly breeze shook her as Adam entered the cottage.
“Look!” he whispered again.
Feet planted on the floorstones, she sighed. “Look at what? I am sitting down. I haven’t sat down all day.”
“I don’t know what it is. A star, maybe. It’s huge.”
Agathe blew out her breath and stood heavily. Whatever the new thing was could not be worth having to get up after a full day, a full week, of harvesting wheat. But there would be no rest until Adam was answered. She pulled on her cloak and stepped thru the narrow doorway.
It was worth it. The biggest object in the sky, a fuzzy ball with a long tail shone among the myriad stars. Agathe lifted her head to stare at it and her mouth hung open. Fatigue forgotten, she moved toward Adam, whose eyes were also transfixed on the sky. He took her hand in his.
Uncle Fritz from next door approached without them noticing. “Nothing good will come of that,” he grunted.
“It’s a sign from God,” Agathe breathed wonderingly.
“A warning, is what it is. Bad days ahead. Ruined harvest, probably.”
“Why would you say that? The harvest is looking good,” Adam pointed out in a reasonable tone.
“Looking good doesn’t mean anything. A storm could come up and knock all the stalks down any day. A whole year’s crop could burn up in the barn. Mark my words. Bad times are coming.”
Agathe shivered and gripped Adam.
“Don’t mind him,” Adam said softly. “Look at the little cottage we’ve built just since we got married. Look at our sleeping children, all healthy. I’m not trying to say it’s easy, but when you put in the hard work, everything falls into place.”
“God puts beautiful sights in the sky,” Agathe agreed. “He wouldn’t send us evil.”
Uncle Fritz sputtered. “You’re too young. Wait a few years. Then you’ll realize. Life is just one tough climb. While you struggle to put one foot in front of the other, rocks just keep rolling down that hill, knocking you down.”
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The comet, more accurately three separate comets, sailed across the sky every clear night between St. Martin’s Day and Christ’s Day 1618, over the twin villages of Rockenberg and Oppershofen where my Sulzbach ancestors lived, in Hesse, a German staat. Afterward, the few who were left believed the comets had been evil omens indeed.
What followed is the saddest thing I have ever read.
The first misfortune the comets foretold was the Mouse Year. A long drought followed by flooding pushed the field mice into the houses. They ate every grain they smelled. Mice were found in beer barrels and under pillows, down wells and behind stoves. Only half the harvested wheat and grain was fit for consumption; the mice had fouled the rest.
Spring sent the mice back to their fields and the sowers to their seeds, but the next piece of portent came true…a faraway war that no one had paid attention to, two years in now, crept closer. Soldiers of several German counts quartered only 3 miles away. By the end of summer, two towns had been razed by 10,000 troops with 2500 horses. For an entire year, Agathe, Adam, and Uncle Fritz heard tales of troops plundering nearby towns, coming ever closer.
We're fairly used to seeing lists of dead people: the Vietnam War Memorial, Officers Down Memorial Page, monuments to hometown sons killed in the World Wars. But the Thirty Years' War was so devastating, when it was over, they published names of the survivors.
Bavarian and Spanish soldiers reached Rockenberg the following January. They ransacked their way thru town, smashing windows, stealing anything of value, and beating people. Two barns and stables were set ablaze.
That was just a little taste of what was to come.
In Rockenberg, the population dropped between one- and two-thirds. Only Agathe, one of her children, and Uncle Fritz would survive the Thirty Years’ War. Adam was killed trying to defend her from being raped by a soldier, one child died of plague, and another succumbed to starvation. Canny Uncle Fritz kept alive by using paths only he knew after a lifetime in the countryside to hide livestock in the forest and sneak back into town to steal. Agathe prostituted herself in the soldiers’ camp for food and protection for her child.
These characters are fictitious. After war ended, only one of my ancestors, Ruppel Dietz, remained, along with his household.
"Soldiers Plundering a Farm" - Sebastian Vrancx
The Thirty Years' War was ostensibly between Catholics and Protestants, but rulers changed sides based on where they could get the most power, and generals changed sides depending on who offered the most money. Europe had tons of "kingdoms," some tiny and others large, so there were a lot of rulers - princes, counts, dukes. Some kingdoms were ruled by large countries far away, like Spain ruling Holland. And the biggest "kingdom" was the Holy Roman Empire in central Europe, ruled by the Kaiser.
Friedrich V von der Pfalz, who started the war by accepting the crown of Bohemia, which he had no business doing - Michiel Jansz van Mierevelt, artist, Kunsthandel Hoogsteder & Hoogsteder
Every one of my German ancestors’ records before 1700 says something like, “lived here before the Thirty Years' War.” When I asked what that meant, I learned all records were destroyed in that war, so it is impossible to trace anything before then. My ancestors lived in Rockenberg, so I thought I would start there to see what happened.
I have been "reading" the Heimatbuch Rockenberg (hometown book of Rockenberg). This history was written in 1950 to commemorate the 800th anniversary of the town. You read that right, 800 years!
The Heimatbuch is written in German. That's why I say I am "reading" it. I copy a paragraph or two, paste it in Google Translate, and then try to combine the high school German I learned forty-five years ago with what Google Translate thinks it says. So I am not at all sure I am getting the true story.
Here is a sample:
"This was believed even before the great, devastating Thirty Years' War People have to see evil omens as war reporters."
Which I translate as, "Already before the great army-something Thirty Years' War, people believed that angry omens must be seen as war-something."
The information about what my ancestors endured is taken from my poor translation of the Heimatbuch. If you find the phrasing unusual, it is because I tried not to stray too far from the text.
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It is no wonder that the government troops of the Kaiser plundered Catholic places as well as Protestant places, because they weren't fighting for patriotic or religious reasons. They were fighting to plunder and rob. They were called the "gartende Knechte," or garden knights, and they were a big scourge in every part of the land. Not only did they steal, they also demanded money.
After defeat in 1622, these troops fled. “Many of (these) murderers drowned in the Main River, having been beaten by the farmers."
"New troops new sorrow!” If the townspeople felt victorious, that was short-lived. In fall, another army quartered in town and stole food to get thru the winter. When they left, the townspeople felt hope again. “During the spring and summer of 1623, Rockenberg shone, as its houses lying in ashes were rebuilt.” Abbess Margarethe Krach reported in 1623 that the cloister and its farm buildings were repaired.
The third year of seasonal destruction must have quashed all hope. The same troops wintered in the town again. Plundering, thieving, burning, and highway robbery happened daily. Only the fields in the town centers were left alone, and no farmer risked his life to go far from the town center. The vagabond "garden knights," leaderless people, looked to rob and rape. The great danger of the streets prevented food supplies from reaching cities.
Men exchanged their worries for a soldier's life of robbery because they could take their wives and children with them. Kreidius, a famous preacher, said, "People left scissors, needles, awls, ….and took the musket over the axle. It was a much more comfortable life, if one robbed the gardens and committed burglaries at night, and in daytime stole pigs, geese, and chickens from the street." (p.115)
The danger grew. Soldiers bound, beat, and even hanged people, demanding money. If people had none, they smashed windows, ovens, and everything else in the house. They stole every item farmers hadn't been able to hide.
To this misery, plague arrived in 1626, finding a good breeding ground in the starving people. Most houses had been burnt and not completely rebuilt, so many people lived crowded in few rooms. Residents could not withstand sickness. The death rate was so high, bones had to be dug out of graves and stored in bonehouses to allow for new corpses to be buried. On 28 March, a former burgermeister, full of sorrow from war and melancholy for the future, stabbed himself to death in church during the sermon.
By the 1630s, the Protestant Swedes had captured the area. Their harassment mainly consisted of taxes and forced recruitment. Looting and rioting subsided, tithes were delivered, and farming was possible. But the war turned against them, and as the troops from the Holy Roman Empire approached, the Protestant Princes burned everything in retreat. Murder and looting left more than half the countryside in ashes. The skies were dark with smoke yet red with fire, the air full of howling and cries of lament.
Often a few residents fled to the woods for a long time. They hid cattle and the last remnants of their food, which they retrieved during quiet times using secret routes. However, they were often surprised by attacks in the middle of times of peace. As victims of a religious war, churches, convents, and clergy were targets rather than sanctuaries. In December 1643, Abbess Anna Mailachin reported that "Swedish Lieutenant Baltasarn with his people at midday unexpectedly plundered our poor monastery as well as the village. A few cattle that we had kept back had to be sacrificed without a cry, along with 51 hard-earned thaler. We had to give up all beds, many other furniture, and other wanted items to be hit and ruined rather than keep them hidden." (p. 123)
Two years later, the convent was overrun again, its contents smashed and burned, the young nuns set upon with fury and displaced thru the countryside. Kindly Father Schrenkelius visited them in disguise to deliver communion and comfort. On one such mission, he was attacked and left for dead by the river. Once strong enough to move, he dragged himself to the road, only to be kidnapped by a local nobleman and held for a 1000-ducat ransom. When the poor priest protested that he didn’t have that kind of money, he was hanged until his eyes popped. Cut down, he was then strung up naked by one foot and left to the designs of a violent mob. Unbelievably, the heroic Father returned to his mission of comfort after recovering.
Storehouse records from the 1640s report that no grain was delivered, as any harvest was stolen by the military.
I cannot imagine an entire generation subjected to one disaster after another: attack, starvation, disease. The fictitious baby who was born the Year of the Comet grew to age 30 amid near constant violence, destruction, and plague. There surely is no chance she was mentally healthy, but probably spent her whole life in survival mode, living for the moment, loving no one, stealing and hoarding, raising distrustful children. Very likely it wasn’t until her grandchildren were adults that the first townspeople weighed stories of destruction against their personal lived evidence to see a point in building a new house or improving a mill.
It is no wonder that the Heimatbuch tells us, “The Peace Bells of 1648 could not ring away the great misery.”
Signing of the Peace of Munster, 30 January 1648, by Gerard ter Borch
See my post Our Sulzbach Hometown of Rockenberg in the Ruin of the Thirty Years' War for more info.
References:
http://www.marienschloss.de/arc-roc800.html
https://burgenarchiv.de/burg_rockenberg_in_hessen
http://www.marienschloss.de/arc-roc800.html
Heimatbuch Rockenberg, Johann Jakob Gesser, 1950, http://www.marienschloss.de/arc-roc800.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War
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