George shooting also three martens from a pole erected for that purpose
in the courtyard. It seemed proper for him thus to exhibit a specimen of
the skill for which he was justly famed. The Elector before his life
closed, so says the chronicle, had killed 28,000 wild boars, 208 bears,
3543 wolves, 200 badgers, 18,967 foxes, besides stags and roedeer in
still greater number, making a grand total of 113,629 beasts. The leader
of the Lutheran party of Germany had not lived in vain.

Thus the great chiefs of Catholicism and of Protestantism amicably
disported themselves in the last days of the year, while their respective
forces were marshalling for mortal combat all over Christendom. The
Elector certainly loved neither Matthias nor Ferdinand, but he hated the
Palatine. The chief of the German Calvinists disputed that Protestant
hegemony which John George claimed by right. Indeed the immense
advantage enjoyed by the Catholics at the outbreak of the religious war
from the mutual animosities between the two great divisions of the
Reformed Church was already terribly manifest. What an additional power
would it derive from the increased weakness of the foe, should there be
still other and deeper and more deadly schisms within one great division
itself!

"The Calvinists and Lutherans," cried the Jesuit Scioppius, "are so
furiously attacking each other with calumnies and cursings and are
persecuting each other to such extent as to give good hope that the
devilish weight and burthen of them will go to perdition and shame of
itself, and the heretics all do bloody execution upon each other.
Certainly if ever a golden time existed for exterminating the heretics,
it is the present time."

The Imperial party took their leave of Dresden, believing themselves to