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Description: | [1588], February 3. O.S. Francfort [am-Main].
As regards the affairs of France, all the German troops are dead or broken from pure negligence. Since then, other troops (which went from this country to the help of the King of France) with some French, under command of the sons of the Duke of Lorraine and Duke of Guise, are come to besiege Mompelgard,* at the end of the town of Strasbourg (sic), on the borders of Switzerland, having pillaged and burnt many villages round about belonging to the canton of Berne, and having been seen in the neighbourhood of Swebrugge [Zwei-brücken], whereupon the Pfaltz has taken alarm, and all around the Rhine preparations are being made for defence. The greater part of the potentates or secular electors have resolved to raise a good number of troops for defence of the country, viz. ten-thousand horse and forty-thousand foot, which are to be ready by the 8th of March. The Creyts [circle] of the Rhine (being held in this town) is to furnish one thousand horse and four thousand five hundred foot.
News came yesterday that the Archduke Maximilian has had a great loss in Poland, all his camp (only five or six thousand men) having been routed, and he himself, with twelve of his principal men, taken prisoner, and although news has come to Prague that he and five of the others have escaped, it is to be presumed that it will not be so good for the house of Austria.
The Turk is making preparations with seventy thousand men to fall upon Hungary, and the Emperor has summoned all his nobles in those parts to hold council concerning the affair.
A strange story comes from the parts of Hungary of a terrible combat between geese and ducks, who, having covered the fields, rivers and other waters for two days, rose at night into the air and fought in such a fashion that two or three hundred boats were filled with those that fell dead.
French.
* Montbelliard. See D'Avila's "Civil Wars of France." Eng: ed: 1678, p.331. | Subjects: | Country Estates | Temporal: | 3 Feb 1588 | Source: | Lincolnshire County Council | Identifier: | http://www.lincstothepast.com/Records/Re... | Go to resource |
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