A wasteland of tree stumps ringed Frankfurt am Main in 1548, two years aftercitizens had cleared land outside their walls while preparing defencesduring the Schmalkaldic War. Now that the war was over, Frankfurt and itsresidents struggled with crippling debt. The city had borrowed and spentenormous sums and had lost income from its fair, among Europe'sforemost trade events, which had seen weak participation in 1546, as warmoved from rumour to reality. The fair did not take place at all in 1547.Rather than offering room and board to thousands of paying, internationalguests, Frankfurt's citizens endured over nine months, from lateDecember 1546 to early October 1547, when they were forced to quarterimperial soldiers, who spread dysentery and diphtheria to their unwillinghosts. By January 1547, rising food prices provoked the bitter,‘[N]othing was cheaper than sick people and lice’. So fiercewas the cold that some soldiers became ‘Egyptian locusts’,helping themselves to firewood and breaking up panelling and furniture toburn. They stank up the town with excrement, urine, and vomit; they drank,cursed, gambled, fought, beat civilians, whored. Frankfurt was notorious forprostitution, but now multiple women were punished for fornication oradultery with the soldiers; a Lutheran preacher described with approval onewoman's flogging. Where in a normal year visitors from all overEurope milled about market stands, on the Romerberg, a military executionerlopped off heads, sometimes leaving the malefactor's corpse lying asa warning until burial at sundown.