Such an association, composed of thousands of men of all classes, from
the highest to the lowest,--for common freemen, mechanics, and citizens
shared the honor of membership with knights and even princes,--bound
together by a band of inviolable secrecy, and its edicts carried out so
mysteriously and ruthlessly, could not but attain to a terrible power,
and produce a remarkable effect upon the imagination of the people. "The
prince or knight who easily escaped the judgment of the imperial court,
and from behind his fortified walls defied even the emperor himself,
trembled when in the silence of the night he heard the voices of the
_Freischoeffen_ at the gate of his castle, and when the free count
summoned him to appear at the ancient _malplatz_, or plain, under the
lime-tree, or on the bank of a rivulet upon that dreaded soil, the
Westphalian or red ground. And that the power of those free courts was
not exaggerated by the mere imagination, excited by terror, nor in
reality by any means insignificant, is proved by a hundred undeniable
examples, supported by records and testimonies, that numerous princes,
counts, knights, and wealthy citizens were seized by these Schoeffen of
the secret tribunal, and, in execution of its sentence, perished by
their hands.
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