[History of Friedrich II. of Prussia<br> Vol. IX. (of XXI.) by Thomas Carlyle]@TWC D-Link book
History of Friedrich II. of Prussia
Vol. IX. (of XXI.)

CHAPTER III
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Prussian Commissaries are, by this time, got to Donauworth; but these poor Salzburgers are ahead of them, wandering under the voluntary principle as yet.

Nordlingen, in Bavaria, is an old Imperial Free-Town; Protestantism not suppressed there, as it has been all round; scene of some memorable fighting in the Thirty-Years War, especially of a bad defeat to the Swedes and Bernhard of Weimar, the worst they had in the course of that bad business.

The Salzburgers are in number three hundred and thirty-one; time, "first days of February, 1732, weather very cold and raw." The charitable Protestant Town has been expecting such an advent:-- "Two chief Clergymen, and the Schoolmaster and Scholars, with some hundreds of citizens and many young people" went out to meet them; there, in the open field, stood the Salzburgers, with their wives and their little ones, with their bullock-carts and baggage-wains," pilgriming towards unknown parts of the Earth.

"'Come in, ye blessed of the Lord! Why stand ye without ?' said the Parson solemnly, by way of welcome; and addressed a Discourse to them," devout and yet human, true every word of it, enough to draw tears from any Fassmann that were there;--Fassmann and we not far from weeping without words.

"Thereupon they ranked themselves two and two, and marched into the Town," straight to the Church, I conjecture, Town all out to participate; "and there the two reverend gentlemen successively addressed them again, from appropriate texts: Text of the first reverend gentleman was, _And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundred-fold, and shall inherit everlasting life._ [Matthew xix.


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