He answers those who wish to persuade
him to go back with words which seem quite appropriate to-day:
"My God, where do you want to carry me? Here is peace. There is
war. Here I know nothing of the arts of the court, ambitions,
anger, envy, deceit, nor have I cares concerning my clothing and
nourishment.... While I still lived in Europe everything was
(O, woe that I must appear witness to such acts of Christians!)
filled with war, burning, murder, robbery, plundering and the
shame of women and virgins." The Munich weekly, "Simplicissimus,"
whose powerful political cartoons have often startled Europe,
takes its name from this character.
After the conclusion of the Thirty Years' War, Germany was again
and again ravaged by smaller wars, culminating in the Seven Years'
War of Frederick the Great and the humbling of Germany under
the heel of Napoleon. In the wars Of Frederick the Great, one
tenth of the population was killed. Even the great Battle of
the Nations at Leipsic in 1813 did not free Germany from wars,
and in 1866 Prussia and the smaller North German States, with
Italy, defeated Austria, assisted by Bavaria, Hesse-Cassel,
Hesse-Darmstadt, Nassau, Saxony, Baden, Wurttemberg and Hanover.
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