Polish Persecutions (Jones Vol. II) 312-14
When, therefore, in the year 1655, the Swedish army out of Pomerania drew near to the borders of Poland, and the nobility were summoned to arms, according to the custom of the country, it came to pass that the Papists brake forth into many furious expressions, crying out, that the heretics had invited the enemy, and, therefore, they were first of all to be put to the sword and extirpated; which reports, though falsely scattered abroad, yet they easily found credit among the sworn enemies of the gospel, who sought nothing more than our ruin. . . . In a little time after, they endeavored to cast off the Swedish yoke, and turned their arms not against the Swedes, but first against our evangelical professors, as conspiring with the Swedes upon the account of religion, and none of them scrupled to take revenge upon them. They first of all set upon those of Lesna, with the resolution of putting all to the sword, and destroying that heretical city by fire, and they had effected both. God had, by sending some persons before, who warning, by signifying the coming of the enemy, and with what intent they came, this had possessed the citizens with a panic fear, so that leaving all their estates, every man fled; and thus within the space of one hour, a most populous city, abounding with all manner of wealth, was left without inhabitants, who, in a miserable condition, wandered then into the neighboring woods and marshes into Silesia. But the Polish nobility, with their army, entering the city, did what they pleased, slaying a great number of decrepit old people, and sick persons, that were not able to save themselves by flight; then the city itself was first plundered; and afterwards so destroyed by fire, for three days together, that no part of it remained besides rubbish and ashes. In what manner they would have handled the citizens, especially their pastors, they showed by their “heroic” actions performed in other places, by the most savage slaughtering of divers ministers of the church, and other faithful members of Christ of both sexes: for of all that they laid hold on, they gave not one man quarter, but very cruelly put them to death with most exquisite tortures.
They endeavored to force Mr. Samuel Cards, pastor of the church of Czuertzinen, to renounce his religion, after they had taken him, and miserably handled him with all manner of cruelty; but he stoutly resisting, they first put out his eyes, and led him about for a spectacle, then they pulled off his fingers’ end with pincers; but he not yet condescending to their mad fury, they found out a new kind of torment, poured molten lead into his mouth, and, at length, while he was yet half alive, they clapped his neck between folding doors, and violently pulling them together severed his head from his body.
They took John Jacobides, pastor of the church of Dembnick, and Alexander Wartens, his colleague, and another that was in company with them, as they passed through the town of Lubin, and hurrying them up and down for divers hours, and grievously handling them after the manner of tyrants, they last of all, cutting their throats with a razor, threw them headlong, while they were yet breathing, into a great pit, which had been before-hand prepared for their martyrs, and stifled them by casting down dung and dirt upon them.
They pursued Andrew Oxlitius, a young man designed for the ministry, whom, after long seeking, they at last found in the open field, and in the end having taken him, they cut off his head with a scythe, chopping it into small pieces, and the dead carcass also they slashed in a barbarous manner. The same fate befell Adam Milota, a citizen of Lesna; but they more grievously handled an old man above seventy, whose name was Simon Priten, and many others, whose names it were too tedious to relate.
Of that barbarous execution which they did upon the weaker sex, there were, besides other examples, horrid trophies of cruelty erected in the said city of Lesna; a pious matron there, who was the mother of three children, not being able quick enough to leave the city, and being slain in the open street, they cut off her hands and feet, and cutting off her children’s heads, they laid two of them at her breasts, and the third by her side. In like manner, another woman having her hands and feet cut off, and her tongue cut out, being enclosed and bound in a sack, lived the space of two days, making most miserable lamentation.
Grief forbids us to add more, for they behaved themselves so furiously towards us, that there remains not an example of any one man saved of all those that happened to fall into their hands. It is notoriously known how that fury of theirs tyrannized also over the dead; some they dragged out of their graves and cut into pieces, as at Zichlin; others they exposed naked for a public spectacle, as at Lesna; of which outrageous action we had an example, even in the dead body of the most serene Landgrave of Hessia, which was drawn out of the grave, who was heretofore slain in a most barbarous and tyrannical manner at Koscian, but buried by our friends at Lesna. The like was acted also upon the body of the most noble Arciszevius, heretofore the valiant admiral of the Hollanders in Brazil, which was likewise dragged out of the grave, and being stripped of the grave clothes, was found after the firing of Lesna. There are divers other examples, which the Christian reader may find in the book entitled Lesnas Excidium, faithfully written, and lately set forth in print; but they are such examples only as are commonly known, for who is able to relate all things in particular? as burning men alive, drowning others with stones tied about their necks, etc.
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