It was known that Maximilian had escaped with a strong party of friends from the city; but how, or by whose connivance, could in no way be discovered. This had drawn upon all persons who were known as active partisans against the Landgrave, or liable to suspicion as friends of Maximilian, a vexatious persecution from the military police of the town. Some had been arrested; many called upon to give security for their future behaviour; and all had been threatened or treated with harshness. Hence, as well as from previous irritation and alarm on account of the party from Vienna, the whole town was in a state of extreme agitation.

Klosterheim, in the main features of its political distractions, reflected, almost as in a representative picture, the condition of many another German city. At that period, by very ancient ties of reciprocal service, strengthened by treaties, by religious faith, and by personal attachment to individuals of the Imperial house, this ancient and sequestered city was inalienably bound to the interests of the Emperor. Both the city and the university were Catholic. Princes of the Imperial family, and Papal commissioners, who had secret motives for not appearing at Vienna, had more than once found a hospitable reception within the walls. And, amongst many acts of grace by which the Emperors had acknowledged these services and marks of attachment, one of them had advanced a very large sum of money to the city chest for an indefinite time; receiving in return, as the warmest testimony of confidential gratitude which the city could bestow, that jus liberi ingressus which entitled the Emperor's armies to a free passage at all times, and, in cases of extremity, to the right of keeping the city gates and maintaining a garrison in the citadel. Unfortunately, Klosterheim was not sui juris, or on the roll of free cities of the Empire, but of the nature of an appanage in the family of the Landgrave of X––; and this circumstance had produced a double perplexity in the politics of the city; for the late Landgrave, who had been assassinated in a very mysterious manner upon a hunting party, benefited to the fullest extent both by the political and religious bias of the city – being a personal friend of the Emperor's, a Catholic, amiable in his deportment, and generally beloved by his subjects. But the Prince who had succeeded him in the Landgraviate as the next heir was everywhere odious for the harshness of his government, no less than for the gloomy austerity of his character; and to Klosterheim, in particular, which had been pronounced by some of the first jurisprudents a female appanage, he presented himself under the additional disadvantages of a very suspicious title and a Swedish bias too notorious to be disguised. At a time when the religious and political attachments of Europe were brought into collisions so strange that the foremost auxiliary of the Protestant interest in Germany was really the most distinguished Cardinal in the Church of Rome, it did not appear inconsistent with this strong leaning to the King of Sweden that the Landgrave was privately known to be a Catholic bigot, who practised the severest penances, and, tyrant as he showed himself to all others, grovelled himself as an abject devotee at the feet of a haughty confessor. Amongst the populace of Klosterheim, this feature of his character, confronted with the daily proofs of his entire vassalage to the Swedish interest, passed for the purest hypocrisy; and he had credit for no religion at all with the world at large. But the fact was otherwise. Conscious from the first that he held even the Landgraviate by a slender title (for he was no more than cousin once removed to his immediate predecessor), and that his pretensions upon Klosterheim had separate and peculiar defects, sinking of course with the failure of his claim as Landgrave, but not therefore prospering with its success, – he was aware that none but the most powerful arm could keep his princely cap upon his head. The competitors for any part of his possessions, one and all, had thrown themselves upon the Emperor's protection. This, if no other reason, would have thrown him into the arms of Gustavus Adolphus; and with this, as it happened, other reasons of local importance had then and since co-operated. Time, as it advanced, brought increase of weight to all these motives. Rumours of a dark and ominous tendency, arising no one knew whence, nor by whom encouraged, pointed injuriously to the past history of the Landgrave, and to some dreadful exposures which were hanging over his head. A lady, at present in obscurity, was alluded to as the agent of redress to others, through her own heavy wrongs; and these rumours were the more acceptable to the people of Klosterheim because they connected the impending punishment of the hated Landgrave with the restoration of the Imperial connexion; for it was still insinuated, under every version of these mysterious reports, that the Emperor was the ultimate supporter, in the last resort, of the lurking claims now on the point of coming forward to challenge public attention. Under these alarming notices, and fully aware that sooner or later he must be thrown into collision with the Imperial court, the Landgrave had now for some time made up his mind to found a merit with the Swedish chancellor and general officers, by precipitating an uncompromising rupture with his Catholic enemies, and thus to extract the grace of a voluntary act from what, in fact, he knew to be sooner or later inevitable.

Such was the positive and relative aspect of the several interests which were now struggling in Klosterheim. Desperate measures were contemplated by both parties; and, as opportunities should arise, and proper means should develop themselves, more than one party might be said to stand on the brink of great explosions. Conspiracies were moving in darkness, both in the council of the burghers and of the university. Imperfect notices of their schemes, and sometimes delusive or misleading notices, had reached the Landgrave. The city, the university, and the numerous convents, were crowded to excess with refugees. Malcontents of every denomination and every shade, – emissaries of all the factions which then agitated Germany, – reformado soldiers, laid aside by their original employers, under new arrangements, or from private jealousies of new commanders, – great persons with special reasons for courting a temporary seclusion, and preserving a strict incognito, – misers, who fled with their hoards of gold and jewels to this city of refuge, – desolate ladies, from the surrounding provinces, in search of protection for themselves, or for the honour of their daughters; and (not least distinguished among the many classes of fugitives) prophets and enthusiasts of every description, whom the magnitude of the political events, and their religious origin, so naturally called forth in swarms; – these, and many more, in connexion with their attendants, troops, students, and the terrified peasantry, from a circle of forty miles radius around the city as a centre, had swelled the city of Klosterheim, from a total of about seventeen, to six or seven-and-thirty thousand. War, with a slight reserve for the late robberies of Holkerstein, had as yet spared this favoured nook of Germany. The great storm had whistled and raved around them; but hitherto none had penetrated the silvan sanctuary which on every side invested this privileged city. The ground seemed charmed by some secret spells, and consecrated from intrusion. For the great tempest had often swept directly upon them, and yet still had wheeled off, summoned away by some momentary call, to some remoter attraction. But now at length all things portended that, if the war should revive in strength after this brief suspension, it would fall with accumulated weight upon this yet unravaged district.

This was the anticipation which had governed the Landgrave's policy in so sternly and barbarously interfering with the generous purposes of the Klosterheimers for carrying over a safe-conduct to their friends and visitors, when standing on the margin of the forest.