The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck-1 [37]
The foot-passenger sees the world, becomes acquainted with it, converses with men of every class. The lord luxuriously lolls and slumbers in his carriage, while his servants pay innkeepers and postillions, and passes rapidly over a kingdom, in which he sees some dozen houses, called inns; and this he calls travelling. I met with more adventures in this my journey of 169 miles, than afterwards in almost as many thousand, when travelling at ease, in a carriage.
Here, then, ends my journal, in which, from the hardships therein related, and numerous others omitted, I seem a kind of second Robinson Crusoe, and to have been prepared, by a gradual increase and repetition of sufferings, to endure the load of affliction which I was afterwards destined to bear.
Arrived at Vienna in the month of April, 1747.
And now another act of the tragedy is going to begin.
CHAPTER IX.
After having defrayed the expenses of travelling for me and my friend Schell, for whose remarkable history I will endeavour to find a few pages in due course, I divided the three hundred ducats which remained with him, and, having stayed a month at Vienna, he went to join the regiment of Pallavicini, in which he had obtained a lieutenant-colonel's commission, and which was then in Italy.
Here I found my cousin, Baron Francis Trenck, the famous partisan and colonel of pandours, imprisoned at the arsenal, and involved in a most perplexing prosecution.
This Trenck was my father's brother's son. His father had been a colonel and governor of Leitschau, and had possessed considerable lordships in Sclavonia, those of Pleternitz, Prestowacz, and Pakratz. After the siege of Vienna, in 1683, he had left the Prussian service for that of Austria, in which he remained sixty years.
That I may not here interrupt my story, I shall give some account of the life of my cousin Baron Francis Trenck, so renowned in the war of 1741, in another part, and who fell, at last, the shameful sacrifice of envy and avarice, and received the reward of all his great and faithful services in the prison of the Spielberg.
The vindication of the family of the Trencks requires I should speak of him; nor will I, in this, suffer restraint from the fear of any man, however powerful. Those indeed who sacrificed a man most ardent in his country's service to their own private and selfish views, are now in their graves.
I shall insert no more of his history here than what is interwoven with my own, and relate the rest in its proper place.
A revision of his suit was at this time instituted. Scarcely was I arrived in Vienna before his confidential agent, M. Leber, presented me to Prince Charles and the Emperor; both knew the services of Trenck, and the malice of his enemies; therefore, permission for me to visit him in his prison, and procure him such assistance as he might need, was readily granted. On my second audience, the Emperor spoke so much in my persecuted cousin's favour that I became highly interested; he commanded me to have recourse to him on all occasions; and, moreover, owned the president of the council of war was a man of a very wicked character, and a declared enemy of Trenck. This president was the Count of Lowenwalde, who, with his associates, had been purposely selected as men proper to oppress the best of subjects.
The suit soon took another face; the good Empress Queen, who had been deceived, was soon better informed, and Trenck's innocence appeared, on the revision of the process most evidently. The trial, which had cost them twenty-seven thousand florins, and the sentence which followed, were proved to have been partial and unjust; and that sixteen of Trenck's officers, who most of them had been broken for different offences, had perjured themselves to insure his destruction.
It is a most remarkable circumstance that public notice was given, in the Vienna Gazette, to the following purport.
"All those who have any complaints to make against Trenck, let them appear, and they shall receive a ducat per day, so long as the prosecution
Here, then, ends my journal, in which, from the hardships therein related, and numerous others omitted, I seem a kind of second Robinson Crusoe, and to have been prepared, by a gradual increase and repetition of sufferings, to endure the load of affliction which I was afterwards destined to bear.
Arrived at Vienna in the month of April, 1747.
And now another act of the tragedy is going to begin.
CHAPTER IX.
After having defrayed the expenses of travelling for me and my friend Schell, for whose remarkable history I will endeavour to find a few pages in due course, I divided the three hundred ducats which remained with him, and, having stayed a month at Vienna, he went to join the regiment of Pallavicini, in which he had obtained a lieutenant-colonel's commission, and which was then in Italy.
Here I found my cousin, Baron Francis Trenck, the famous partisan and colonel of pandours, imprisoned at the arsenal, and involved in a most perplexing prosecution.
This Trenck was my father's brother's son. His father had been a colonel and governor of Leitschau, and had possessed considerable lordships in Sclavonia, those of Pleternitz, Prestowacz, and Pakratz. After the siege of Vienna, in 1683, he had left the Prussian service for that of Austria, in which he remained sixty years.
That I may not here interrupt my story, I shall give some account of the life of my cousin Baron Francis Trenck, so renowned in the war of 1741, in another part, and who fell, at last, the shameful sacrifice of envy and avarice, and received the reward of all his great and faithful services in the prison of the Spielberg.
The vindication of the family of the Trencks requires I should speak of him; nor will I, in this, suffer restraint from the fear of any man, however powerful. Those indeed who sacrificed a man most ardent in his country's service to their own private and selfish views, are now in their graves.
I shall insert no more of his history here than what is interwoven with my own, and relate the rest in its proper place.
A revision of his suit was at this time instituted. Scarcely was I arrived in Vienna before his confidential agent, M. Leber, presented me to Prince Charles and the Emperor; both knew the services of Trenck, and the malice of his enemies; therefore, permission for me to visit him in his prison, and procure him such assistance as he might need, was readily granted. On my second audience, the Emperor spoke so much in my persecuted cousin's favour that I became highly interested; he commanded me to have recourse to him on all occasions; and, moreover, owned the president of the council of war was a man of a very wicked character, and a declared enemy of Trenck. This president was the Count of Lowenwalde, who, with his associates, had been purposely selected as men proper to oppress the best of subjects.
The suit soon took another face; the good Empress Queen, who had been deceived, was soon better informed, and Trenck's innocence appeared, on the revision of the process most evidently. The trial, which had cost them twenty-seven thousand florins, and the sentence which followed, were proved to have been partial and unjust; and that sixteen of Trenck's officers, who most of them had been broken for different offences, had perjured themselves to insure his destruction.
It is a most remarkable circumstance that public notice was given, in the Vienna Gazette, to the following purport.
"All those who have any complaints to make against Trenck, let them appear, and they shall receive a ducat per day, so long as the prosecution