 and beyond a besieging enemy, in a land like Germany,
with its prodigious subdivision of independent states and free cities, were far
greater than they could have been in any one great continuous principality.
    In many fortified places these passages had existed from the middle ages. In
Klosterheim they had possibly as early an origin; but by this period it is very
probable that the gradual accumulation of rubbish, through a course of
centuries, would have unfitted them for use, had not the Peasants' War, in the
time of Luther's Reformation, little more than one hundred years before, given
occasion for their use and repair. At that time Klosterheim had stood a siege
which, from the defect of artillery, was at no time formidable in a military
sense; but as a blockade, formed suddenly when the citizens were slenderly
furnished with provisions, it would certainly have succeeded, and delivered up
the vast wealth of the convents as a spoil to the peasantry, had it not been for
one in particular of these subterraneous passages, which opening on the opposite
side of the little river Iltiss, in a thick boccage, where the enemy had
established no posts, furnished the means of introducing a continual supply of
fresh provisions, to the great triumph of the garrison, and the utter dismay of
the superstitious peasants, who looked upon the mysterious supply as a
providential bounty to a consecrated cause.
    So memorable a benefit had given to this one passage a publicity and an
historical importance which made all its circumstances, and amongst those its
internal mouth, familiar even to children. But this was evidently not the avenue
by which Maximilian had escaped into the forest. For it opened externally on the
wrong side of the river, whilst everybody knew that its domestic opening was in
one of the chapels of the schloss; and another circumstance equally decisive was
that a long flight of stairs, by which it descended below the bed of the river,
made it impassable to horses.
    Every attempt, however, failed to trace out the mode of egress for the
present. By his spies, Adorni doubted not to find it soon; and in the meantime,
that as much as possible the attention of the public might be abstracted from
the travellers and their concerns, a public proclamation was issued forbidding
all resorts of crowds to the walls. These were everywhere dispersed on the 9th;
and for that day were partially obeyed. But there was little chance that, with
any fresh excitement to the popular interest, they would continue to command
respect.
 

                                   Chapter VI

The morning of the 10th at length arrived - that day on which the expected
