from Prussia to Berlin, I was perfectly shocked at the filth and stench in
the streets of Cologne and Berlin, where before every house, besides
pigstyes, there were heaped high piles of trash and manure. But when I
ordered the high council of both cities to have the streets cleansed, they
had the hardihood to answer me thus: 'The citizens have no time now to
clean the streets, since they are busy with agricultural work.'[3] And
quite recently, when I merely applied to these two capitals for their
yearly quota of fifteen thousand dollars, in order to increase my
bodyguard from three hundred to six hundred men during these perilous
times of warfare, did you not refuse to grant this subsidy to your
rightful lord?"

"Your Electoral Highness, that was the result of the extremest affliction
and necessity, because we were really in no condition to pay the money.
For whence shall we procure it if poverty, want, and affliction are the
only things that yet belong to us? Just on that very account, to bring
this matter to the hearing of your Electoral Highness, have we been
deputed as delegates by the corporations of Berlin and Cologne to wait
upon your Electoral Grace, that we might represent our distresses to our
Sovereign, and entreat him to forgive us if we are forced to decline
contributions of money, for we are unable to raise them. Since this
fierce, horrible war has raged in Germany between the Imperialists and
Swedes, between the Catholics and Protestants, the cities of Berlin and
Cologne have suffered pitiably, and have been levied upon and plundered,
sometimes by the Swedes and sometimes by the Imperialists. Before the
peace of Prague the Imperialists visited us quite often with cruel
robberies and levies, but since the peace of Prague,[4] it has been yet
worse, and what we have suffered and endured these past two years is
enough to melt a stone, how much more the heart of a pitiful Sovereign.
Last year first came the Swedish colonel Haderslof into our town, and