the toll-taker and the gate-keeper, who stood conversing by the gate,
he fell upon the Tronkenburg. While, amid the crackling of the
outbuildings, which the men set on fire, Herse flew up the winding
staircase to the castellan’s tower, and cut and thrust at the castellan
and the bailiff, who were at play, half undressed. Kohlhaas rushed
into the castle to find Squire Wenzel. So does the angel of judgment
descend from Heaven, and the squire, who, amid peals of laughter, was
reading to a party of young friends, the decree, which the horse-dealer
had sent him, no sooner heard his voice in the yard, than he cried to
the rest, pale as death, “Save yourselves, brothers!” and vanished
immediately. Kohlhaas, who, on entering the hall, seized by the breast
and flung into the corner, one Squire Hans von Tronka, who was
advancing towards him, so that his brains were scattered on the stones,
asked, while his servants overpowered and dispersed the other knights,
who had taken up their weapons: “Where is Squire von Tronka?” And
when, as the astounded knights professed their ignorance, he had, with
a blow of his foot, burst open the doors of two rooms, which led into
the wings of the castle, and after searching the spacious building in
all directions, still found nobody, he went, cursing down into the
yard, that he might guard every egress. In the meanwhile, ignited by
the flames of the outbuildings, the castle itself, with all its wings,
took fire, and threw volumes of black smoke to the skies, and while
Sternbald, with three active fellows, dragged together all they could
lay hold of, and flung it upon their horses as lawful prize, the dead
bodies of the castellan and the bailiff, with their wives and children,
flew out of the upper window, accompanied by the shouts of Herse.
Kohlhaas, at whose feet, as he descended the stairs, the squire’s gouty
old housekeeper threw herself, asked her, as he paused on one of the
steps: “Where is Squire von Tronka?” When, with a weak trembling
voice, she answered, that she thought he had fled to the chapel; he
called for two servants with torches, broke open an entrance with
crow-bars and hatchets, for want of a key, and turned upside down the
altars and benches. Still no squire was found, to the great grief of
Kohlhaas. It happened, just as he was leaving the chapel, that a
boy--one of the servants at the Tronkenburg--hurried by to take the
squire’s coursers out of a large stone stall, that was threatened by
the flames. Kohlhaas, who at this moment saw his own two black horses
in a little thatched shed, asked the boy, why he did not save _them_,
and when the latter, as he put the key in the stable-door, answered
that the shed was already in flames, he tore the key out of the door,
flung it over the wall, and driving the boy with a shower of blows from
the flat of his sword, into the blazing shed, compelled him to save the
horses amid the frightful laughter of the bystanders. When, in a few
moments, the boy, pale as death, came with the horses out of the shed
that fell behind him, Kohlhaas was no longer there, and when he joined
the servants in the yard, and then asked the horse-dealer what he was
to do with the animals, Kohlhaas raised his foot with such violence,
that it would have been fatal had it reached him, leaped upon his brown
horse without giving any answer, went under the castle-gate, and while
his men carried on their work, quietly awaited the dawn of day. When
morning broke, the whole castle was burned, with the exception of the
bare walls, and no one was on the spot but Kohlhaas and his men. He
alighted from his horse once more in the bright rays of the sun,
searched every corner of the place, and when, hard as it was to be
convinced, he saw that his enterprise at the castle had failed, his
heart swelling with grief and pain, he sent out Herse with some of the
others to obtain intelligence about the direction which the squire had
taken in flight. A rich convent, called Erlabrunn, which was situated
on the banks of the Mulde, and the abbess of which, Antonia von Tronka,
was well known on the spot as a pious and benevolent lady, rendered him
particularly uneasy, for it seemed to him but too probable that the
squire, deprived as he was of every necessary of life, had taken refuge
in this asylum, since the abbess was his aunt, and had educated him in
his earliest years. Kohlhaas being informed of this circumstance,
ascended the castellan’s tower, within which he found a room that was
still habitable, and prepared what he called “Kohlhaasisch Mandate,” in
which he desired the whole country to give no assistance whatever to
Squire von Tronka, with whom he was engaged in lawful war, and bound
every inhabitant, not excepting his friends and relations, to deliver
up to him the aforesaid squire, under the penalty of life and limb, and
conflagration of all that could be called property. This declaration
he distributed through the country round, by means of travellers and
strangers. To his servant, Waldmann, he gave a copy with the special
charge that it was to be put into the hands of the Lady Antonia at
Erlabrunn. He afterwards gained over some of the Tronkenburg servants,
who were discontented with the squire, and tempted by the prospect of
booty, wished to enter his service. These he armed after the fashion
of infantry with daggers and cross-bars, teaching them to sit behind
the servants on horseback. After having turned into money all that the
troops had raked together, and divided the money among them, he rested
from his sad occupation for some hours, under the gate of the castle.
Herse returned about noon, and confirmed the gloomy suspicions, which
he had already felt in his heart, namely, that the squire was in the
convent at Erlabrunn, with his aunt, the lady Antonia von Tronka. He
had, it appeared, slipped through a door at the back of the castle,
which led into the open air, and gone down a narrow flight of stone
steps, which, under a little roof, went down to some boats in the Elbe.
At least Herse told him that about midnight he reached a village on the
Elbe in a boat without a rudder, to the astonishment of the people, who
were collected together on account of the fire at the Tronkenburg, and
that he had proceeded to Erlabrunn in a waggon. Kohlhaas sighed deeply
at this intelligence; he asked whether the horses had had their feed,
and when his men answered in the affirmative, he ordered the whole
troop to mount, and in three hours was before Erlabrunn. While a
distant storm was murmuring in the horizon, he entered the convent yard
with his band, lighted by torches, which he had kindled before the
place. The servant, Waldmann, who met him, told him that he had given
the copy of the mandate, when he saw the abbess and the beadle of the
convent talking in an agitated manner beneath the portal. The latter,
a little old man, with hair as white as snow, darting fierce glances at
Kohlhaas, ordered his armour to be put on, and with a bold voice told
the servants who stood round him to ring the alarm bell, while the
abbess with a silver crucifix in her hand, descended, white as her own
garment, from the landing-place, and with all her maidens, threw
herself before Kohlhaas’s horses. Kohlhaas, himself, while Herse and
Sternbald overcame the beadle, who had no sword, and were leading him
off away to the horses as a prisoner, asked her: “Where is Squire von
Tronka?” When, drawing from her girdle a large bunch of keys, she
answered: “At Wittenberg, worthy man,” and in a trembling voice, added:
“Fear God, and do no wrong,” the horse-dealer, cast back into the hell
of disappointed revenge, turned about his horse, and was on the point
of shouting out: “Set alight!” when a monstrous thunder-bolt fell to
the earth at his feet. Kohlhaas, again turning his horse to her, asked
if she had received his mandate, and when with a weak and scarcely
audible voice, she said: “Only just now, about two hours after my
nephew had departed,”--and Waldmann, on whom Kohlhaas cast suspicious
glances, stammered out a confirmation of the statement, saying, that
the water of the Mulde had been swelled by the rain, and had hindered
him from arriving sooner, he collected himself. A sudden fall of rain,
which extinguished the torches, and rattled on the stones, seemed to
ease the anguish of his wretched heart; he once more turned round,
touching his hat to the lady, and crying out: “Brothers, follow
me,--the Squire is in Wittenberg,” clapped spurs to his horse and left
the convent.
At nightfall he put up at an inn on the road, where he had to rest a
day on account of the great fatigue of his horses, and as he plainly
saw, that with a troop of ten men (such was his force now), he could
not attack a place like Wittenberg, he drew up a second mandate, in
which, after strictly narrating what had happened to him, he called, to
use his own words, “Upon every good Christian to espouse his cause
against Squire von Tronka, the common enemy of all Christians, with the
promise of a sum of money down, and other advantages of war.” In a
third mandate he called himself a “Sovereign, free from the empire and
the world, subject to God alone;” a morbid and disgusting piece of
fanaticism, which nevertheless accompanied as it was with the chink of
money and the hope of prey, procured an accession to his numbers from
the rabble, whom the peace with Poland had deprived of a livelihood.
Indeed his band amounted to upwards of thirty, when he turned back to
the left bank of the Elbe to lay Wittenberg in ashes. With his men and
horses he took shelter under the roof of an old ruined shed in the
depth of a gloomy wood, that in those days surrounded the place, and he
no sooner learned from Sternbald, that the mandate, with which he had
sent him into the town disguised, had been made known, than he set off
with his band--it was Whitsun eve,--and while the inhabitants lay fast
asleep, set a-light to the place at many corners. He then, with his
men, plundered the suburbs, affixed a paper to the door-post of a
church, in which he said that “He, Kohlhaas, had set the city on fire,
and that if the squire was not given up to him, he would lay it in
ashes in such sort, that he would not have to look behind a wall to
find him.” The terror of the inhabitants at this unparalleled atrocity
was indescribable, and the flames, which in a particularly calm
summer’s night, had not consumed more than nineteen houses, including a
church, being extinguished in some measure about day-break, the old
governor (Landvoigt), Otto von Gorgas, sent out a company of about
fifty men, to capture the fearful invader. The captain of this
company, whose name was Gerstenberg, managed so badly, that the
expedition, instead of defeating Kohlhaas, rather helped him to a very
dangerous military reputation; for while he separated his men into
several divisions, that he might, as he thought, surround and curb
Kohlhaas, he was attacked by the latter, who kept his men close
together at the different isolated points, and was so beaten, that on
the evening of the following day, not a single man of the whole band
was left to face the aggressor, although on that band rested all the
hopes of the country. Kohlhaas, who had lost none of his own men in
the encounter, fired the town anew on the following morning, and his
criminal plans were so well laid that a number of houses, and nearly
all the barns of the suburbs were reduced to ashes. He then again
posted up his decree, and that in the corners of the town-house, adding
an account of the fate of Captain von Gerstenberg, whom the governor
had sent out against him, and whom he had demolished. The governor,
greatly enraged at this defiance, placed himself with several knights
at the head of a band of a hundred and fifty men. To Squire von
Tronka, who had sent him a written petition, he gave a guard, to
protect him from the violence of the people, who wished him to be
turned out of the city without more ado, and after he had posted guards
in all the villages around, and also had garrisoned the walls of the
city to defend it from a surprise, he set out on St. Gervas’s day, to
capture the dragon that was thus laying waste the country. The
horse-dealer was cunning enough to avoid this troop, and after he had,
by his clever retreats, lured away the governor five miles from the
city, and had made him believe by various preparations that if pressed
by numbers he would throw himself into the Brandenburg territory, he
suddenly faced about at the approach of the third night, and galloping
back to Wittenberg for the third time to set it on fire. This
frightful act of audacity was achieved by Herse, who had entered the
city disguised, and the conflagration, through the action of a sharp
north wind was so destructive, and extended its ravages so far that in
less than three hours, two-and-forty houses, two churches, several
schools and convents, and the governor’s residence were levelled with
the ground. The governor, who believed that his adversary was in
Brandenburg, at break of day, found the city in a general uproar, when
having been informed of what had passed, he returned by forced marches.
The people had assembled by thousands before the house of Squire von
Tronka, which was fortified with boards and palisades, and with the
voices of maniacs were demanding that he should be sent out of the
city. In vain did two burgomasters, named Jenkens and Otto, who
appeared at the head of the whole magistracy, clad in robes of office,
show the necessity of waiting for the return of a courier who had been
sent to the chancery to ask permission to send the squire to Dresden,
whither he himself, for many reasons, wished to be removed; the mob,
deaf to reason, and armed with pikes and staves would hear nothing, and
they not only ill-used some members of the council, who were urging too
severe measures, but they were on the point of tearing down the
squire’s house, when the governor, Otto von Gorgas, appeared in the
city at the head of his troop of horse. This venerable nobleman, whose
presence alone had usually awed the people to respect and obedience,
had succeeded in capturing three stragglers from the incendiary’s band
at the very gates of the city, as if by way of compensation for the
failure of his enterprise; and as, while these fellows were loaded with
chains in sight of the people, he assured the magistrates, in a
seasonable address, that he thought he was in a fair way to capture
Kohlhaas himself, and in a short time to bring him in, also enchained,
he succeeded in disarming the rage of the assembled multitude, and in
appeasing them, in some measure, as to the squire’s remaining among
them, till the return of the courier from Dresden. He alighted from
horseback, and with some of his knights, the palisades being removed,
he entered the house, where he found the squire, who was continually
fainting, in the hands of two physicians, who, by the aid of essences
and stimulants, were endeavouring to restore him to consciousness.
Herr Otto von Gorgas, feeling that this was not the moment to bandy
words with the squire about his bad conduct, merely told him, with a
look of silent contempt, to dress himself, and for his own security, to
follow him to apartments in the prison. When they had put him on a
doublet, and set a helmet on his head, and he appeared in the street
with his breast half open for want of air, leaning on the arm of the
governor and his brother-in-law, Count von Gerschau, the most frightful
imprecations ascended to the skies. The mob, kept back with difficulty
by the soldiers, called him a blood-sucker, a miserable pest to the
country, the curse of the city of Wittenberg, and the destruction of
Saxony. After a melancholy procession through the ruins, during which
the squire often let the helmet drop from his head without missing it,
and a knight as often set it on again from behind him, he reached the
prison, and vanished into a town under the protection of a strong
guard. In the meanwhile, the city was thrown into new alarm by the
return of the courier with the electoral decree. For the government,
having listened to the applications of the citizens of Dresden, would
not hear of the squire taking up his abode in this the chief city, till
the incendiary was conquered; but charged the governor to protect him,
wherever he might be, and remember he must be content with such forces
as he had. He, however, informed the good city of Wittenberg, to allay
uneasiness, that a troop of five hundred strong, under the command of
Prince Frederic, of Misnia, was advancing to protect it from further
molestations by Kohlhaas. The governor plainly saw that a decree of
this kind would by no means satisfy the people, since not only had the
many little advantages which the horse-dealer had gained at different
points before the city, caused most alarming reports to be spread as to
his increase of strength, but the war which he carried on in the
darkness of night, with pitch, straw, and brimstone, aided by a rabble
in disguise, might, unexampled as it was, completely frustrate a
greater protective force than that which was coming with the Prince of
Misnia. Therefore, after a short reflection, the governor resolved to
suppress the decree. He merely posted up against the corners of the
city, a letter, in which the Prince of Misnia announced his arrival. A
covered cart, which left the prison-yard at break of day, accompanied
by four guards on horse-back, heavily armed, passed along the street to
Leipzig, the guards causing it to be vaguely reported that it was going
to the Pleissenburg. The people being thus appeased as to the
ill-fated squire, to whose presence fire and sword were bound, the
governor himself set off with a troop of three hundred men, to join
Prince Frederic of Misnia. In the meanwhile, Kohlhaas, by the singular
position he had taken in the world, had increased his force to a
hundred and ten persons; and as he had procured a good store of arms at
Jessen, and had armed his band in the most perfect manner, he was no
sooner informed of the double storm, than he resolved to meet it with
all possible speed, before it should break over him. Therefore, on the
following night he attacked the Prince of Misnia, by Mühlberg, in which
encounter, to his great grief, he lost Herse, who fell by his side on
the first fire. However, enraged at this loss, he so defeated the
prince, who was unable to collect his force together, in a three hours
contest, that at break of day, on account of several wounds, and
likewise of the total disorder of his men, he was forced to retreat to
Dresden. Emboldened by this advantage Kohlhaas turned back upon the
governor, before he could have received intelligence of the event, fell
upon him in an open field near the village of Damerow in broad
daylight, and fought with fury till nightfall, suffering terrible loss,
but still with equal advantage. The next morning unquestionably, with
the remainder of his force, he would have again attacked the governor,
who had thrown himself into the church-yard at Damerow, if the latter
had not been informed of the prince’s defeat by Mühlberg, and therefore
held it advisable once more to return to Wittenberg, and await a better
opportunity. Five days after the dispersion of these two forces,
Kohlhaas was before Leipzig, and fired the city on three sides. In the
mandate which he distributed on this occasion he called himself,
“Vicegerent of Michael the Archangel who had come to avenge, with fire
and sword, the villany into which the whole world had fallen, on all
who had taken the squire’s part in this struggle.” At the same time
from the Lützen Castle, of which he had taken possession, and in which
he had established himself, he called upon the people to join him, and
bring about a better order of things. The mandate was signed, as if by
a sort of madness: “Given at the suit of our provisional
world-government,--the Castle of Lützen.” Fortunately for the
inhabitants of Leipzig, the fire did not catch on account of the
continual rain, and moreover the means of extinguishing being used with
great promptness, only a few shops about the Pleissenburg burst into
flames. Nevertheless the alarm of the city at the presence of the
violent incendiary, and his notion that the squire was at Leipzig, was
indescribable; and when a body of a hundred and eighty troopers, who
had been sent out against him, returned to the city in confusion, the
magistracy, who did not wish to endanger the property of the place, had
no other course left them but to close the gates, and set the citizens
to watch day and night outside the walls. In vain did they post up
declarations in the surrounding villages, that the squire was not in
the Pleissenburg; the horse-dealer in similar papers affirmed the
contrary, and declared that even if the squire was not in the
Pleissenburg, he would nevertheless proceed just in the same manner,
until they informed him where he actually was. The elector, instructed
by a courier of the peril in which the city of Leipzig stood, stated
that he was collecting a force of two thousand men, and that he would
put himself at the head of it, to capture Kohlhaas. He severely
reproved Otto von Gorgas for the indiscreet stratagem he had employed
to remove the incendiary from the neighbourhood of Wittenberg, and no
one can describe the alarm which arose in Saxony in general, and in the
capital in particular, when the inhabitants learned that an unknown
hand had posted up in the villages near Leipzig, a declaration that
Squire Wenzel was with his armies at Dresden.
Under these circumstances, Dr. Martin Luther, supported by the
authority which he owed to his position in the world, took upon himself
by the force of words to call back Kohlhaas into the path of order, and
trusting to a suitable element in the heart of the incendiary, caused a
placard, worded as follows, to be set up in all the towns and villages
of the electorate:
“Kohlhaas--thou who pretendest that thou art deputed to wield the sword
of justice, what art thou doing, presumptuous one, in the madness of
thy blind passion, thou who art filled with injustice from the crown of
thy head to the sole of thy foot? Because thy sovereign, whose subject
thou art, hath refused thee justice, dost thou arise in godless man,
the cause of worldly good, with fire and sword, and break in like the
wolf of the desert upon the peaceful community that he protecteth.
Thou, who misleadest mankind by a declaration full of untruth and
craftiness, dost thou believe, sinner that thou art, the same pretext
will avail thee before God on that day when the recesses of every heart
shall be revealed? How canst thou say that justice hath been
denied--thou, whose savage heart, excited by an evil spirit of
self-revenge, entirely gave up the trouble of seeking it after the
failure of thy first trivial endeavours? Is a bench of beadles and
tipstaffs, who intercept letters, or keep to themselves the knowledge
they should communicate, the power that ruleth? Must I tell thee,
impious man, that thy ruler knoweth nothing of thy affair? What do I
say? Why that the sovereign against whom thou rebellest doth not even
know thy name, and that when thou appearest before the throne of God,
thinking to accuse him, he with a serene countenance will say: ‘Lord to
this man did I no wrong, for his existence is strange unto my soul.’
Know that the sword that thou bearest is the sword of robbery and
murder; thou art a rebel and no warrior of the just God. Thine end
upon earth is the wheel and the gallows, and thine end hereafter is
that condemnation which threateneth the worker of evil and impiety.
“Wittenberg.
“MARTIN LUTHER.”
In the Castle of Lützen Kohlhaas was meditating, in his diseased mind,
a new plan for reducing Leipzig to ashes, paying no attention to the
notice set up in the villages, that Squire Wenzel was in Dresden,
because it had no signature, though he had required one of the
magistrates; when Sternbald and Waldmann perceived with the greatest
astonishment the placard that had been set up by night against the
gateway of the castle. In vain did they hope for many days that
Kohlhaas, whom they did not wish to approach for the purpose, would see
it. Gloomy and brooding in his own thoughts, he merely appeared in the
evening to give a few short commands, and saw nothing, and hence one
morning, when he was about to hang up two of his men, who had been
plundering in the neighbourhood against his will, they resolved to
attract his attention. He was returning from the place of judgment,
with the pomp to which he had accustomed himself since his last
mandate, while the people timidly made way on both sides. A large
cherub-sword on a red leather cushion, adorned with gold tassels was
carried before him, and twelve servants followed him with burning
torches. The two men, with their swords under their arms, walked round
the pillar to which the placard was attached, so as to awaken his
surprise. Kohlhaas, as with his hands locked behind him, and sunk deep
in thought, he came under the portal, raised his eyes and started; and
as the men timidly retired from his glance, witnessing the confusion,
he approached the pillar with hurried steps. But who shall describe
the state of his mind, when he saw upon it the paper which accused him
of injustice, signed with the dearest and most revered name that he
knew--the name of Martin Luther? A deep red overspread his face;
taking off his helmet he read it twice from beginning to end; then with
uncertain looks stepped back among his men as if about to say
something, and yet said nothing; then took the paper from the wall,
read it once more, and cried as he disappeared: “Waldmann get my horses
saddled, Sternbald follow me into the castle!” More than these few
words was not wanted to disarm him at once among all his purposes of
distinction.
He put on the disguise of a Thuringian farmer, told Sternbald that
business of importance called him to Wittenberg, entrusted him, in the
presence of some of his principal men, with the command of the band
left at Lützen, and promising to return in three days, within which
time no attack was to be feared, set off to Wittenberg at once.
He put up at an inn under a feigned name, and at the approach of night,
wrapped in his mantle, and provided with a brace of pistols which he
had seized at the Tronkenburg, walked into Luther’s apartment. Luther
was sitting at his desk, occupied with his books and papers, and as
soon as he saw the remarkable looking stranger open the door, and then
bolt it behind him, he asked who he was and what he wanted. The man,
reverentially holding his hat in his hand, had no sooner answered, with
some misgiving as to the alarm he might occasion, that he was Michael
Kohlhaas, the horse-dealer, than Luther cried out, “Away with thee,”
and added, as he rose from his desk to ring the bell: “Thy breath is
pestiferous, and thy approach is destruction!”
Kohlhaas, without stirring from the spot said: “Reverend sir, this
pistol, if you touch the bell, lays me a corpse at your feet. Sit down
and hear me. Among the angels, whose psalms you write, you are not
safer than with me.”
“But what dost thou want?” asked Luther, sitting down.
“To refute your opinion that I am an unjust man,” replied Kohlhaas.
“You have said in your placard that my sovereign knows nothing of my
affairs. Well, give me a safe-conduct, and I will go to Dresden, and
lay it before him.”
“Godless and terrible man!” exclaimed Luther, both perplexed and
alarmed by these words, “Who gave thee a right to attack Squire von
Tronka, with no other authority than thine own decree, and then, when
thou didst not find him in his castle, to visit with fire and sword
every community that protected him?”
“Now, reverend sir,” answered Kohlhaas, “the intelligence I received
from Dresden misled me! The war which I carry on with the community of
mankind is unjust, if I have not been expelled from it, as you assure
me!”
“Expelled from it?” cried Luther, staring at him, “What madness is
this? Who expelled thee from the community of the state in which thou
art living? When, since the existence of states, was there an instance
of such an expulsion of any one, whoever he might be?”
“I call him expelled,” answered Kohlhaas, clenching his fist, “to whom
the protection of the laws is denied! This protection I require to
carry on my peaceful trade; it is only for the sake of this protection
that, with my property, I take refuge with this community, and he who
denies it me drives me back to the beasts of the desert, and puts in my
own hand, as you cannot deny, the club which is to defend me.”