"Are you actual Protestants, the Treaty of Westphalia applicable to you? Not mere fanatic mystics, as Right Reverend Firmian asserts; protectible by no Treaty?" That was Friedrich Wilhelm's first question; and he set his two chief Berlin Clergymen, learned Roloff one of them, a divine of much fame, to catechise the two Salzburg Deputies, and report upon the point. Their Report, dated Berlin, 30th November, 1730, with specimens of the main questions, I have read; [Fassmann, pp. 446-448.] and can fully certify, along with Roloff and friend, That here are orthodox Protestants, apparently of very pious peaceable nature, suffering hard wrong;orthodox beyond doubt, and covered by the Treaty of Westphalia. Whereupon his Majesty dismisses them with assurance, "Return, and say there shall be help!"and straightway lays hand on the business, strong swift steady hand as usual, with a view that way.
Salzburg being now a clear case, Friedrich Wilhelm writes to the Kaiser; to the King of England, King of Denmark;orders preparations to be made in Preussen, vacant messuages to be surveyed, moneys to be laid up;bids his man at the Regensburg Diet signify, That unless this thing is rectified, his Prussian Majesty will see himself necessitated to take effectual steps: "reprisals" the first step, according to the old method of his Prussian Majesty. Rumor of the Salzburg Protestants rises higher and higher. Kaiser intent on conciliating every CORPUS, Evangelical and other, for his Pragmatic Sanction's sake, admonishes Right Reverend Firmian; intimates at last to him, That he will actually have to let those poor people emigrate if they demand it; Treaty of Westphalia being express. In the end of 1731 it has come thus far.
"Emigrate, says your Imperial Majesty? Well, they shall emigrate," answers Firmian; "the sooner the better!" And straightway, in the dead of winter, marches, in convenient divisions, some nine hundred of them over the frontiers: "Go about your business, then; emigrateto the Old One, if you like!""And our properties, our goods and chattels?" ask they."Be thankful you have kept your skins. Emigrate, I say.!" And the poor nine hundred had to go out, in the rigor of winter, "hoary old men among them, and women coming near their time;" and seek quarters in the wide world mostly unknown to them. Truly Firmian is an orthodox Herr; acquainted with the laws of fair usage and the time of day. The sleeping Barbarossa does not awaken upon him within the Hill here:but in the Roncalic Fields, long ago, I should not have liked to stand in his shoes!