Note 172 — Scene I.—A Hall in the same Palace.

{371}[The Swedish garrisons did not evacuate Bohemia till 1649, and then, as their occupation was gone, with considerable reluctance. "It need not, therefore, be a matter of wonder that from the discharged soldiers numerous bands of robbers ['bande nere,' or 'black bands:' see Deformed Transformed, Part II. sc. i. line 65] were formed; that these pursued on their own account the trade that they had formerly carried on under the cover of military law, and that commerce became again unsafe on the highways."—History of the Thirty Years' War, by A. Gindely, 1885, ii. 382, 383.]