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supplications; and be it in all seriousness announced to all the respective jurisdictions and public authorities that the missionary fathers shall by nothing, and in no way or manner, be hindered, but upon their call shall receive all necessary assistance with all force and effect. Also to report to us, from time to time, all future occurrences by and through our royal Bohemian Court Bureau. Herein let our will be executed.
"Decreed at Vienna, the 30th of July, 1725.
"CHARLES,
"Ad mandatum,
"Joh. Christoph Jordan.
"FERD. COMES VINSKY,
"Ris Bohoemi� Sup Cancellarius.
"To the Royal Superior Magistracy
"in Silesia.
"Presented the 19th of August, 1725.
"The foregoing copy was taken from the original, with the same carefully compared and found to agree with the same in every particular, which is hereby attested by deliberately attaching thereto the great royal official seal.
"So done at the Royal Castle in Jauer, the 19th of September, 1725.
"L. S."

The missionaries now bent all their energies to the accomplishment of the work in hand, and to the full exercised with the utmost rigor the powers granted to them, and were aided therein by the civil magistrates even to patrolling the highways to prevent the escape of any of the doomed people. Thus was this unhappy people shut up to the choice of either apostasy, or continued endurance of the ever-increasing miseries of their situation, or flight. The first was to the true Schwenkfelder simply impossible; the second was too horrible to be contemplated. They therefore resolved to escape from the country at all hazards.

The exodus commenced in the month of February, 1726. During that month and the months of March, April, and May following, upwards of one hundred and seventy families escaped by night from Harpersdorf, Armenruh, and Hockenau, and fled on foot to Upper Lusatia, then a part of the Electorate of Saxony,