Crossword-Solution: OELS 4 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 4

Duke Ernest of Austria had challenged Duke Kanthner of Oels in Silesia to meet him in the lists and, besides the glory to be gained, there was a prize of sixty and four gold pieces.

The warlike excitement of Germany increased; the Tyroleans were again rising, and General Deroy found himself forced to evacuate Innspruck; a corps of German refuges, under the orders of the Duke of Brunswick-Oels, took the road to Dresden, the court immediately taking refuge in Leipzic; a second detachment threatened King Jerome in Westphalia.

They were settled beyond the Marcomanni and Quadi, and occupied the northern part of Transdanubian Hungary; perhaps extending to Silesia, where is a place called Ossen in the duchy of Oels, famous for salt and glass works.

What might not have been the result had the plan of the Archduke Charles to march rapidly through Franconia been followed on the opening of the campaign? William, duke of Brunswick, the son of the hapless Duke Ferdinand, had quitted Oels, his sole possession, for Bohemia, where he had collected a force two thousand strong, known as the black Brunswickers on account of the color of their uniform and the death's head on their helmets, with which he resolved to avenge his father's death.

This resolution, noble as it was, would probably have been lost, like many others, in the vagueness of German metaphysics; but about that time William, Duke of Brunswick, who had been stripped of his duchy, had retired to his principality of Oels in Silesia.