Two barons Von der Trenck—Friedrich a cornet of the Gardes du Corps—Favoured by the Princess Amelia—Incurs the displeasure of Frederick the Great—Sent to the fortress of Glatz—Escaped to Bohemia and passed into Russia—Re-arrested at Danzig and sent to Magdeburg—Plans for escape—The grenadier Gefhardt a faithful friend—Communication established with friends outside—Funds obtained—Plot discovered—Removed to the Star Fort and loaded with irons—Terrible suffering—Attempt to cut through the doors discovered—His prison is strengthened but his courage is unbroken—Fresh plans made—A new tunnel begun—Plot discovered—The sympathy of the Empress-Queen of Austria aroused—Released on Christmas Eve, 1763—Married and settled in Aix-la-Chapelle—His death on the scaffold during the French Revolution.
There were two barons Von der Trenck, Franz and Friedrich, in the middle of the 18th century, both intimately associated with the prisons of their respective countries, for although cousins, Franz was an Austrian, and the other, Friedrich, a Prussian. Both were military officers. Franz was a wild Pandour, a reckless leader of irregular cavalry, who for his sins was shut up for life in the Spielberg, the famous prison fortress near BrÜnn, where he committed suicide. Friedrich, after enjoying the favour of Frederick the Great and winning the rank of cadet in the Gardes du Corps, was eventually disgraced and imprisoned in the fortress of Magdeburg, where he was detained for ten years and treated with implacable severity. Friedrich von der Trenck was richly endowed by nature; he was a gallant young soldier with good mental gifts and a handsome person which enabled him to shine in court society and achieve many successes. He was fortunate enough to gain the good graces of the king’s sister, the Princess Amelia of Prussia, who greatly resembled her celebrated brother both physically and mentally. She possessed the same sparkling wit, the same gracious vivacity and, like Friedrich, was a distinguished musician. She was a warm votary of art, science and literature and was always surrounded and courted by the most cultured German princes. All her contemporaries describe her beauty with enthusiasm. So far, she had declined the many proposals of marriage, which, as a matter of course, she had received. Her heart belonged to the cornet of the Gardes du Corps, and a secret understanding existed between them. The lovers were at first cautious, but soon became bolder, and the king’s suspicions were aroused. At first he tried fatherly remonstrances, but in vain. The extraordinary liaison became the talk of the hour. A lieutenant of the Prussian Foot Guards taunted the favoured lover about his relations with the princess, they quarrelled, and a duel followed. The king was furious, and a catastrophe was imminent, but was avoided by the outbreak of war. Then this gay and reckless courtier allowed himself to be drawn into a correspondence with his cousin in Vienna, the notorious colonel of the Pandours, and the measure of the king’s wrath overflowed. Trenck was cashiered and sent to the fortress of Glatz. The king wrote with his own hand to the commandant of the fortress on the 28th June, 1745, “Watch this rogue well; he wished to become a Pandour under his cousin.” Undoubtedly Frederick intended to keep Trenck imprisoned for a short time only, but he was detained for a whole year, during which time he made more than one attempt to escape.
The following account is in his own words: “At last, after I had spent about five months in confinement (at Glatz) peace had been proclaimed, the king had returned to Berlin and my place in the gardes had been filled. A certain lieutenant Piaschky of the Fouquet regiment and the ensign Reitz, who was often on sentinel duty outside my cell, offered to make preparations to enable me to escape and take them with me. Everything was settled and agreed upon. At that time there was in the cell next to mine a certain Captain von Manget, a native of Switzerland. He had been cashiered, was condemned to ten years’ imprisonment and had only four rix dollars to spend. I had shown this man much kindness out of pity, and I wished to save him as well as myself, and this was discussed and proposed to him. We were betrayed by this rascal on the first opportunity, he in consequence earning his pardon and liberty. Piaschky had wind that Reitz was already a prisoner, and saved himself by deserting. I denied everything, was confronted with Manget, and because I could bribe the judge with a hundred ducats, Reitz escaped with castigation and a year’s imprisonment. I, on the contrary, was now considered as a corrupter of the officers and was locked up in a narrow cell and strictly confined. Left to myself, I still meditated flight, as the seclusion in a small cell was too irksome to my fiery temperament. The garrison was always on my side, therefore it was impossible to deprive me of friends and assistance. I was known to have money, so that all was possible to me. The first plan was as follows. My window was above the ramparts, about ninety feet from the ground, and looked towards the town. I could not therefore get out of the citadel and must find a place of safety in the town. This was assured to me through an officer, in the house of an honest soap-boiler. I then cut with a pen knife that had been made jagged at the end, right through three iron bars of enormous thickness, but as this took up too much time, as eight bars must be sawn through before I could get out of the window, an officer provided me with a file, with which I had to work very carefully so as not to be heard by the sentries. As soon as this was accomplished, I cut my leather knapsack into strips, sewed them together with the thread from an unravelled stocking, brought my sheet likewise into requisition, and let myself down from this astounding height in safety. It was raining, the night was dark and everything went off well. I had, however, to wade through the public drain and this I had not foreseen. I only sank into it just above the knees, but was not able to work my way out of it. I did all I could, but stuck so fast that at last I lost all my strength and called to the sentry on the rampart, ‘Tell the commandant that Trenck is sticking in the mire!’
“Now to augment my misfortune, it happened that General Fouquet was at that time commandant in Glatz. He was a well known misanthrope, had fought a duel with my father and been wounded by him, and the Austrian Trenck had taken his baggage from him in 1744. He was therefore a great enemy to the Trenck name, and consequently made me remain in the filth for some hours as a public spectacle to the garrison, then had me pulled out and confined in my cell, allowing no water to be taken to me for cleaning purposes. No one can imagine how I looked; my long hair had got into the mud, and my condition was really pitiable until some prisoners were permitted to wash and cleanse me.”
When he finally escaped from Glatz, he went to Bohemia, to NÜrnberg and to Vienna, whence he passed into Russia and entered the service of the czar for a time. Then he again travelled through northern Europe and returned to Vienna, where he was coldly received, and he started once more for Russia, but was intercepted at Danzig and again arrested in 1753, after which he suffered a more severe imprisonment for nearly ten years, characterised with such inhuman treatment that it must ever tarnish the reputation of the monarch who posed as a poet and a philosopher, the friend of Voltaire. Frederick the Great would hardly have earned his ambitious epithet had it depended upon the measure he meted out to his turbulent subject, Friedrich von der Trenck. He hated him cordially and persecuted him cruelly, behaving with a pitiless severity, and exhibiting such a contemptible spirit of revenge that he has been hopelessly disgraced by the enlightened verdict of history.
Von der Trenck has told his own story in one of the most remarkable books published in the eighteenth century, as the following excerpts will show. He was taken into custody at Danzig, despoiled of all his cash and valuables, and carried in a closed coach under escort to Lauenberg, and thence via Spandau to Magdeburg, where he was lodged in the destined prison. “It was a casemate,” according to his own account of the cell, “the forepart of which was six feet wide and ten feet long, and divided by a separation wall in which were double doors with a third at the entrance of the casemate. The outer wall was seven feet thick, with one window giving upon the top of the magazine, sufficient for light, but I could see neither the heaven nor the earth. It was barred inside and outside, and there was a narrow grating in the middle, through which nothing could be seen. Six feet beyond my wall stood a row of palisades which prevented the sentry or any one from coming near enough to pass anything in. I had a bed with a mattress, the bedstead clamped down to the floor so that I might not drag it to the window and climb upon it to look out. A small stove and night table were fixed in like manner near the door.
“I was not ironed, and my daily ration was one pound and a half of ammunition bread and a jar of water. I had an excellent appetite, but the bread was mouldy and I could barely touch it. Through the avarice of the town major, the supplies were almost uneatable and for many months following I suffered torture from raging hunger.... I begged for an increase, but prayers and entreaties were of no avail. ‘It is the king’s order,’ I was told; ‘we dare not give you more.’ The commandant, General Borck, cruelly reminded me that I had long enough eaten patties out of the king’s silver service, I must learn now to be satisfied with ammunition bread.”
Von der Trenck turned his thoughts at once to the possibilities of escape. He soon found that he was left very much to himself; his food was brought every day and passed in to him through a slit in the door; but his cell was actually opened only once a week for the visit and inspection of the major of the fortress. He might work, therefore, for seven days without fear of interruption, and he proceeded forthwith to execute a plan he had formed of breaking through the wall of his cell into an adjoining casemate, which he learned from a friendly sentry was unoccupied and unlocked. This sentry and another spoke to him through the window, despite strict orders to the contrary. They gave him a good idea of the interior arrangements of the fortress, and told him that the Elbe was within easy reach. He might cross it by swimming or by a boat, and so gain the Saxon frontier.
Thus encouraged, he devoted himself with unremitting energy to his gigantic task of making a practicable hole in the wall. He found bricks in the first outward layers, and then came upon large quarry stones. His first difficulty was to dispose of the debris and material produced by the excavation; after reserving a part to replace and so conceal the aperture formed, the rest he gradually distributed when ground down into dust. The quarry stones gave infinite trouble, but he tackled them with the irons extracted from his bedstead, and he got other tools from his sentries,—an old ramrod and a soldier’s clasp knife. The labour of piercing this wall of seven feet in thickness was incredible. It was an ancient building, the mortar was very hard, and it was necessary to grind the stones into dust. It lasted over six months, and at length the outer layer of bricks on the side of the adjoining casemate was reached.
Fortune now favoured Von der Trenck in the discovery of a veteran grenadier among his guards, named Gefhardt, who proved to be of inestimable service then and afterwards, and a devoted ally. Through the sentries’ good offices, Trenck was enabled to communicate with his friends outside, and through Gefhardt he made the acquaintance across the palisades of a Jewish girl of Dessau, Esther Heymannin, whose father was serving a sentence of ten years’ imprisonment in Magdeburg. With splinters cut from his bed board, the prisoner manufactured a long staff which reached from his window beyond the palisades, and by means of it obtained writing materials, a knife and a file. This was effected by Esther with the assistance of two friendly sentries. Trenck wrote to his sister, who resided at Hammer, a village fourteen miles from Berlin, begging her to hand over a sum in cash to the girl when she called; he wrote another letter to the Austrian ambassador in Berlin, enclosing a bill on his agent in Vienna, for Trenck, although in the Prussian service, was of Austrian extraction and owned estates in that country. The girl succeeded in her mission to Hammer and took the money to Berlin, where the Austrian minister’s secretary, Weingarten, assured her that a larger sum was on its way from Vienna, and that if she would return to Berlin after carrying her first good news to Magdeburg, it would be handed over to her. But on approaching the prison, the wife of one of the sentries met her with the sad news that both men had been arrested and lay in irons awaiting sentence, and Esther, rightly judging that all was discovered, hurriedly fled to Dessau. It may be added that the thousand florins to come from Vienna were retained by the Austrian secretary, and although Trenck years later, after his release, made constant applications to both Count Puebla and Weingarten, he never recovered the money. Weingarten had acted the traitor throughout and it was on his information, extracted from the Jewish girl, that the plot to escape became known. The consequences were far reaching, and entailed cruel reprisals upon Von der Trenck’s friends. The two sentries, as has been said, were arrested, tried and condemned, one to be hanged and the other to be flogged up and down the streets of Magdeburg on three successive days. Trenck’s sister was cruelly persecuted; she was fined heavily and plundered of her fortune, a portion of which was ingloriously applied to the construction of an entirely new prison in the Star Fort of the Magdeburg fortress, for the special confinement of her brother.
Von der Trenck, as his measures for evasion had become ripe, was on the point of breaking prison when a more terrible blow fell upon him. The new prison in the Star Fort had been finished most expeditiously, and orders were suddenly issued for his removal after nightfall. The major and a party of officers, carrying lanterns, entered his cell. He was roused and directed to put on his clothes, and manacles were slipped on his hands and feet, but not before he had managed to conceal the knife on his person; he was blindfolded, lifted under the arms and conveyed to a coach, which drove through the citadel and down toward the Star Fort, where it had been rumoured he was to be beheaded. He was thrown into his new place of durance, and forthwith subjected to the pain and ignominy of being loaded with fetters; his feet were attached to a ring in the wall about three feet high by a ponderous chain, allowing movement of about two feet to the right and left; an iron belt as broad as the palm of a hand was riveted around his naked body, a thick iron bar was fixed to the belt, and his hands were fastened to the bar two feet apart. “Here,” says Trenck, “was I left to my own melancholy reflections, without comfort or aid, and sitting in gloomy darkness upon the wet floor. My fetters seemed to me insupportable, until I became accustomed to them; and I thanked God that my knife had not been discovered, with which I was about to end my sufferings forthwith. This is a true consolation for the unfortunate man, who is elevated above the prejudices of the vulgar, and with this a man may bid defiance to fate and monarchs.... In these thoughts I passed the night; the day appeared, but not its brightness to me; however, I could, by its glimmerings, observe my prison. The breadth was eight feet, the length ten; four bricks were raised from the ground and built in the corner, upon which I could sit and lean my head against the wall. Opposite to the ring to which I was chained was a window, in the form of a semicircle, one foot high and two feet in diameter. This aperture was built upwards as far as the centre of the wall which was six feet thick, and at this point there was a narrow grating, secured both without and within with strong close iron bars from which, outward, the aperture sloped downward and its extremity was again secured with strong iron bars. My prison was built in the great ditch, close to the rampart, which was about eight feet broad on the inside; but the window reached almost to the second wall, so that I could receive no direct light from above and had only its reflection through a narrow hole. However, in the course of time my organs became so accustomed to this dimness that I could perceive a mouse run, but in winter, when the sun seldom or never shone in the ditch, it was eternal night with me. On the inside, before the grating, was a glass window, the middle pane of which might be opened to let in the air. In the wall my name, ‘Trenck,’ might be read, built with red bricks; and at my feet was a gravestone, with a death’s head and my name inscribed upon it, beneath which I was to have been interred. My gaol had double doors made of oak; in front of them was a sort of antechamber, with a window, and this was likewise fastened with two doors. As the king had given positive orders that all connection and opportunities of speaking with sentries should be debarred me, that I might not have it in my power to seduce them, my den was built so as not to be penetrated; and the ditch in which the prison stood was crossed on each side by palisades twelve feet high, the key being kept by the officer of the guards. I had no other exercise than leaping up and down on the spot where I was chained, or shaking the upper part of my body till I grew warm. In time I could move about four feet from side to side, but my shin bones suffered by this increase of territory.
Baron Friedrich von der Trenck
After the painting by Marckl
A love affair with the Princess Amelia was the cause of the long imprisonment of Von der Trenck by Frederick the Great, first in Glatz, from which he escaped, and afterward in the Star Fort of the Fortress of Magdeburg. He endured almost untold hardships, and his numerous attempts to escape showed marvellous persistence and almost superhuman endurance. His life was romantic and stormy. He went to Paris during the French Revolution and was finally guillotined by Robespierre.
“In this prison I sat for six months, constantly in water, which was perpetually dropping down upon me from the roof of the arch. I can assure my reader that my body was never dry during the first three months and yet I continued in health. As often as I was visited, which was every day at twelve o’clock after guard mounting, the doors were obliged to be left open some minutes, or the stifled vapour and dampness would have extinguished the candles of the lantern. In this condition I remained, abandoned by friends, without help or comfort; where reflection was my only employment and where, during the first days, until my constancy became confirmed and my heart more obdurate, nothing but the most frightful images of grief and woe were perpetually presenting themselves to my diseased imagination. The situation could not have been more calculated for despair, nor can I describe the cause which restrained my arm from suicide, for I was far above all narrow prejudices and never felt the least fear for occurrences beyond the grave. My design was to challenge fortune and obtain my victory in spite of every impediment. The ambition to accomplish this victory was perhaps the strongest inducement to my resolve, which at length rose to such a degree of heroism and perseverance, that Socrates, in his old days, could not boast of more. He was old, ceased to feel, and drank the poison with indifference. I, on the contrary, was in the fire of my youth, and the aim to which I aspired seemed to be on all sides far distant. The present situation of my body and the tortures of my soul were of such a nature as gave me but little reason to expect that my frame could support them for any length of time.
“With these thoughts I struggled till midday, when my cage was for the first time opened. Sorrow and compassion were painted on the countenances of my guards; not one spoke a word, not so much as a good-morrow, and terrible was their arrival, for not being used to the monstrous bolts and locks, they rattled nearly half an hour at the doors before the last could be opened. A wooden bedstead with a mattress and a woollen cover were brought in, likewise an ammunition loaf of six pounds; upon which the town-major said: ‘That you may no longer complain of hunger, you shall have as much bread as you can eat.’ A water jar, containing about two quarts, was placed beside me, the doors were again shut and I was left to myself. How shall I describe the luxurious delight I felt in the moment I had an opportunity, for the first time, of satiating the raging hunger which had been eleven months gnawing at me! No joy seemed to be more perfect than this, and no mill could grind the hard corn with more expedition than my teeth devoured my ammunition loaf; no fiery lover, after a long and tedious languishing, could fall with more eagerness into the arms of his yielding bride, nor any tiger be more ravenous on his prey, than I on my humble repast. I ate, I rested, ate again, shed tears; took one piece after another, and before night all was devoured. My first transports did not last long and I soon learned that enjoyment without moderation creates disgust. My stomach was enfeebled by long abstinence, and digestion was impeded; my whole body swelled, my water jar was empty; cramps, colics and at last thirst, with incredible pains, tortured me continually until the next day. I already cursed those whom a short time before I had blessed for giving me enough to eat. Without a bed that night, I should certainly have despaired. I was not accustomed to my cruel chains, nor had I learned the art of lying extended in them, which afterward time and habitude taught me; however, I could sit on my dry mattress. That night was one of the most severe I ever endured. The following day, when my prison was opened, I was found in the most wretched condition. The officers were amazed at my appetite and offered me a loaf. I refused it, believing that I should have no occasion for more. However, they brought me one, gave me water, shrugged their shoulders and wished me happiness, for to every appearance I could not suffer long; and the door was shut again without my being asked if I wanted any further assistance.... During the first three days of my melancholy incarceration my condition appeared to me quite insupportable and deliverance impossible. I found a thousand reasons which convinced me that it was now time to put an end to my sufferings.”
Yet we read that this man’s indomitable pluck survived and once more his thoughts turned to escape. He was encouraged at finding that the doors of his cell were only of wood, and he conceived the idea that he might cut out the locks with the knife he had so fortunately brought with him from the fortress. “I immediately made an attempt to rid myself of my irons, and luckily forced the fetter from my right hand though the blood trickled from my nails. I could not for a long time remove the other; but with some pieces of the brick from my seat I hammered so fortunately against the rivet, which was but negligently fastened, that I finally effected this also, and thus freed both my arms. To the belt round my body there was only one hasp fastened to the chain or arm bar. I set my foot against the wall and found I could bend it; there now remained only the principal chain between the wall and my feet. Nature had given me great strength; I twisted it across, sprang with force back from the wall, and two links instantly gave way. Free from chains and fancying myself already happy, I hastened to the door, groped in the dark for the points of the nails by which the lock was fastened, and found that I had not a great deal of wood to cut out. I immediately cut a small hole through the oak door with my knife and discovered that the boards were only one inch thick, and that there was a possibility of opening all the four doors in the space of one day. Full of hope, I returned to put on my irons; but what difficulties had I here to surmount!
“The broken link I found, after a long search, and threw into my sink. Fortunately for me, nobody had examined my cell because they suspected nothing. With a piece of my hair ribbon I bound the chain together, but when I tried to put the irons on my hands, they were so swollen that every attempt was in vain. I worked the whole night to no purpose. Twelve o’clock, the visiting hour, approached. Necessity and danger urged me on; fresh attempts were made with incredible torture, and when my keepers entered everything was in proper order.”
After this Trenck concentrated all his efforts upon cutting out the locks of his doors. The first yielded within an hour, but the second was a far more difficult task, as it was also closed by a bar and the lock was opened on the outside. The work was carried on in darkness and his self-inflicted wounds bled profusely. But when the second door had been cut through, he came out into half daylight, which enabled him to cut out the third lock as readily as the first. The fourth, however, was placed like the second and involved equal labour. He was attacking it bravely when his knife broke in his hand and the blade fell to the ground.
Despair then seized him, and picking up his knife blade he opened the veins of his left arm and foot, meaning to bleed to death. When almost insensible, a voice crying, “Baron Trenck!” roused him, and on asking who called, he learned that it was his staunch friend and ally, the grenadier Gefhardt, who had come to the rampart to comfort him. He told Gefhardt that he was lying in his blood and at the point of death, but the stout old soldier consoled him with the assurance that it would be much easier to escape here, as there were no sentries over him and only two in the whole fort. Trenck listened with revived hope and determined on a new plan of action. The seat in his prison was built of brickwork, still green, and he quickly tore it down to provide himself with missiles, which he laid out ready for use against his gaolers at their next visit. They came at midday and were horrified to find the three inner doors opened, the last of them barred by a terrific figure, wounded and bleeding, and in a posture of desperate defiance. In one hand he held a brick and with the other he brandished his knife blade, crying fiercely, “Let no one enter; I will kill all who attempt it. You may shoot me down, but I will not live here in chains. Stand back. I am armed.”
The commandant had inadvertently stepped forward but retired at these threats, and ordered his grenadiers to storm the cell. The narrow opening allowed only one to enter at a time and a combined attack was impossible. All halted irresolute under the menace of the missiles, and in the pause the major and chaplain tried to reason with Von der Trenck. The former implored him to yield and surrender the knife blade, as the major was responsible for his possession of it and would no doubt lose his place. These entreaties prevailed, and Trenck gave in, being promised milder treatment. His condition cried aloud for pity; he lay there suffering and exhausted. A surgeon was called in to apply restoratives and dress his wounds, and for four days he was relieved of his irons and was well fed with meat soup. Meanwhile the cell doors were repaired and bound with iron bands. The fetters were reimposed, but that which chained the prisoner to the wall and which he had broken was strengthened. No amelioration of his state was possible, for the king was implacable and still ferociously angry. Von der Trenck remained in extreme discomfort. As his arms were constantly fastened to the iron cross bar and his feet to the wall, he could put on neither his shirt nor his breeches; the former, a soldier’s shirt, was tied together at the seams and renewed every fortnight; the breeches were opened and buttoned up at the sides; on his body he wore a blue frock of coarse common blue cloth, and on his feet were rough ammunition stockings and slippers.
“It is certain,” says Trenck, “that nothing but pride and self-love, or rather a consciousness of my innocence, together with a special confidence in my resolutions, kept me afterward alive. The hard exercise of my body and my mind, always busy in projects to obtain my freedom, preserved at the same time my health. But who would believe that a daily exercise could be taken in my chains? I shook the upper part of my body and leaped up and down till the sweat poured from my brows, and by this means I grew fatigued and slept soundly.
“By degrees I accustomed myself to my chains. I learned to comb my hair and at length even to tie it with one hand. My beard, which had not yet been shaved, gave me a frightful appearance. This I plucked out; the pain was considerable, more especially about the lips; however, I became accustomed to this also and performed the operation during the following years, once every six weeks or two months, for the hairs being pulled out by the roots required that length of time to grow again long enough to lay hold of them with my nails. Vermin never tormented me; the great dampness of the walls was not favourable to them; neither did my limbs swell, because I took the exercise already mentioned; the constant darkness alone was the greatest hardship. However, I had read, learned and already seen and experienced much in the world; therefore I always found matter to banish melancholy from my thoughts, and in spite of every obstacle, could connect my ideas as well as if I had read them, or written them on paper. Habit made me so perfect in this mental exercise that I composed whole speeches, fables, poems and satires, and repeated them aloud to myself. At the same time they were impressed so forcibly on my memory that after I obtained my freedom I could have written a couple of volumes of such works.
“I employed myself in projecting new plans. That I might be more nearly observed, a sentry was posted at my door who was always chosen from what were called the trusty men, or the married men and natives. These, as will be related in the course of my memoirs, were easier and safer to bring over to my relief than strangers; for the Pomeranian is honest and blunt, and consequently easy to move and be persuaded into anything you please. About three weeks after the last attempt, my honest Gefhardt was posted sentry over me. As soon as he came upon his post we had a free opportunity of conversing with each other, for when I stood with one foot on my bedstead my head reached as high as the air-hole of the window. He described the situation of my gaol to me, and the first project we formed was to break under the foundation, which he had seen built and assured me was only two feet deep. I wanted money above all things, and this I contrived to get in the following manner: After Gefhardt was first relieved, he returned with a wire round which a sheet of paper was rolled, and also a piece of small wax candle which luckily he could pass through the grating; I got likewise some sulphur, a piece of burning tinder and a pen; I now had a light, pricked my finger, and my blood served for ink. I wrote to my worthy friend, Captain Ruckhardt, at Vienna, described to him my situation in a few words, gave him a draft for three thousand florins upon my revenues and settled the affair in the following manner: He was to keep one thousand florins for the expenses of his journey and to arrive without fail on the 15th of August in Gummern, a small Saxon town, only two miles from Magdeburg; there he was to appear at twelve o’clock with a letter in his hand, which with the two thousand florins he should give to a man whom he would see there carrying a roll of tobacco. Gefhardt had these instructions, received my letter through the window in the same manner as he had given me the paper, sent his wife with it to Gummern and there put it safely into the post office.
“At length the 15th of August arrived,—but some days passed before Gefhardt was posted as sentry over me. How did my heart leap with happiness when he suddenly called out to me:—‘All is well—we have succeeded.’ In the evening it was agreed in what manner the money was to be conveyed to me; as my hands were fettered, I could not reach to the grate of the window, and as the air-hole was too small, we resolved that he should do the work of cleaning my cell and should convey the money to me by putting it into my water jar when he filled it. This was fortunately effected, but judge of my astonishment when I found the whole sum of two thousand florins, of which I had promised and desired him to take the half. Only five pistoles were wanting, and he absolutely refused any more. Generous Pomeranian, how rare is thy example!
“I now had money to put my designs into execution. The first plan was to undermine the foundation of my prison, and to do this it was necessary that I should be free from chains. Gefhardt conveyed to me a pair of fine files. The cap or staple of the foot-ring was made so wide that I could draw it forward a quarter of an inch; therefore I filed the inside of the iron which passed through it. The more I cut out, the further I could draw the staple, till at last the whole inside iron through which the chain passed was entirely cut through, the cap remaining on the outside entire. Thus my feet were free from the wall and it was impossible, with the most careful examination, to find the cut, as only the outside could be searched. By squeezing my hands every day, I made them more pliant and at last got them through the irons. I then filed round the hinge, made myself a screw-driver with a twelve-inch nail drawn from the floor, and turned the screws as I pleased, so that no marks could be seen when I was visited. The belt round my body did not at all hinder me. I filed a piece out of a link of the chain which fastened the bar to my arms, and the link next to it I filed so small as to be able to get it through the opening. I then rubbed some wet ammunition bread upon the iron to give it the proper colour, stopped the open link with dough, and let it dry over night by the heat of my warm body, then put spittle upon it, to give it the burnish of iron; by this invention, I was sure that without striking upon each with a hammer it would be impossible to find out that which was broken.
“It was now in my power to get loose when I chose. The window never was examined; I took out the hooks with which it was fastened in the wall, but I put them properly in again every morning and made all as it should be with some lime. I procured wire from my friend and endeavoured to make a new grating. This I likewise completed; therefore I took the old one from the window and fixed mine in its place; this opened a free communication with the outside, and by this means I obtained light and fire materials. That my light might not be seen, I hung my bed cover before the window, and thus I could work as it was convenient.”
Trenck now proceeded to penetrate the floor, which was of oaken planks in three layers, altogether nine inches thick. He used the bar which had fastened his arms and was now removable, and which he had ground on the gravestone till it formed an excellent chisel to serve in digging into the boards. These he patiently cut through and pulled up, reaching the fine sand below the foundation on which the Star Fort was built. The wood splinters were hidden, the sand run over in long narrow linen bags provided by Gefhardt, which could be dragged through the window. By the same friendly help he obtained a number of useful implements; a knife, a bayonet, a brace of pocket pistols, and even powder and shot, all of which he concealed under the floor.
He ascertained now that the foundation was four feet thick and that a very deep hole must be dug to get a passage underneath the outer wall, a long, wearisome operation demanding time, labour and caution, and especially difficult of execution, with his figure twisted into an awkward shape so that his hands might extract the sand. There was no stove in the cell and it was bitterly cold, but he was warmed by his joyous anticipations of escape. Gefhardt kept him well supplied with provisions, sausages and hung beef, brought in paper for writing and supplies for light, so that the time did not hang heavily.
A sudden catastrophe nearly ruined everything. In replacing the window sash, it slipped out of his hands and fell, breaking three panes of glass. Detection was now imminent, as fresh panes must be inserted before the sash was refixed. Trenck was in despair, and as a last resource appealed to the sentry of the night, a stranger, whom he offered thirty pistoles to seek new panes. The man was happily agreeable, and by good fortune the gate of the palisades in the ditch had been left unlocked, so he prevailed on a comrade to relieve him for a short time and ran down into the town, taking with him the dimensions of the glass, secured the panes, and returned with them in time to allow Trenck to complete his task as glazier. But for this lucky ending, Gefhardt’s complicity would have been discovered and he would certainly have been hanged.
Misfortunes never come singly. Trenck wanted more money and wrote to his friend in Vienna, enclosing a draft which he was to cash and asking him to bring the effects to the Saxon village of Gummern, a few miles from Magdeburg, and there await Trenck’s messenger. This letter was to be despatched by Gefhardt’s wife from Gummern across the frontier. The foolish woman told the Saxon postmaster that the letter was of the utmost importance, affecting a law suit of Gefhardt’s in Vienna, and she was so anxious for its safe transmission that she handed it over with a large fee, ten rix dollars. The postmaster’s suspicions were aroused; he opened the letter, read it, and thinking to curry favour, brought it to Magdeburg, where it fell into the hands of the governor, Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick. All the fat was then in the fire.
The first intimation Trenck received was from the prince who came in person to his cell, followed by a large staff of officials. The governor called upon the prisoner to confess who had carried his letter to Gummern. Trenck denied that he had sent any letter, and his cell was searched forthwith. Smiths, carpenters and masons entered, but after an hour’s work failed to discover more than the false grating in the window. The prince upbraided, argued, threatened; but Trenck obstinately refused to speak. The governor had scarcely been gone an hour when some one came in saying that one of his accomplices had already hanged himself, and, fearing that it was his good friend, he was on the point of betraying Gefhardt, when he heard by accident that the suicide was some one else. He took fresh courage from the fact that his diggings had not been exposed, and that he had five hundred florins in gold safely concealed, with a good supply of candles and all his implements. After this collapse, there was a change in Trenck’s condition. The regiment in the garrison went off to the Seven Years’ War which had just broken out, and was relieved by a party of militia, and a new commandant took charge, General Borck, who was informed by the king that he must answer for Trenck with his head. Borck was timorous and mistrustful, a stupid bully, who acted to his prisoner “as an executioner to a criminal.” He increased Trenck’s irons, and had a broad neck ring added with a chain that hung down and joined the anklet; he removed the prisoner’s bedding, did not even give him straw, and constantly abused him with “a thousand insulting expressions.” “However,” says Trenck, “I did not remain a single word in his debt and vexed him almost to madness.”
The object of the governor was to cut Trenck off from all communication with mankind. To assure complete isolation, the four keys of his four doors were kept by four different persons; the commandant held one, the town-major another, the third was kept by the officer of the day and the fourth by the lieutenant of the guard. The prisoner had no opportunity for speaking to any of them singly, until the rule slackened. The commandant rarely appeared; Magdeburg became so filled with prisoners of war that the town-major gave up his key to the officer of the day; and the other officers, when they dined with General Walrabe, who was also confined in the Star Fort, passed their keys to the lieutenant of the guard. So in this way Trenck sometimes had a word with each of them alone, and in due course secured the friendship of two of them.
At this period his situation was truly deplorable. “The enormous iron round my neck,” he says, “pained me and impeded motion, and I dared not attempt to disengage myself from the pendent chains till I had for some months carefully observed the method of examination and learned which parts they supposed were perfectly secure. The cruelty of depriving me of my bed was still greater; I was obliged to sit upon the bare ground and lean with my head against the damp wall. The chains that descended from the neck collar I was obliged to support, first with one hand and then with the other, for, if thrown behind, they would have strangled me, and if hanging forward occasioned excessive headaches. The bar between my hands held me down, while, leaning on one elbow, I supported my chains with the other, and this so benumbed the muscles and prevented circulation that I could perceive my arms sensibly waste away. The little sleep I could have in such a situation may easily be supposed, and at length body and mind sank under this accumulation of miserable suffering, and I fell ill of a burning fever. The tyrant Borck was inexorable; he wished to expedite my death and rid himself of his troubles and his terrors. Here did I experience the condition of a sick prisoner, without bed, refreshment, or aid from a human being. Reason, fortitude, heroism, all the noble qualities of the mind, decay when the bodily faculties are diseased, and the remembrance of my sufferings at this dreadful moment still agitates, still inflames my blood so as almost to prevent an attempt to describe what they were. Yet hope did not totally forsake me. Deliverance seemed possible, especially should peace ensue; and I sustained, perhaps, such suffering as mortal man never bore, being, as I was, provided with pistols or any such immediate mode of despatch. I continued ill about two months, and was so reduced at last that I had scarcely strength to lift the water jug to my mouth. What must be the sufferings of that man who sits two months on the bare ground in a dungeon so damp, so dark, so horrible, without bed or straw, his limbs loaded as mine were, with no refreshment but dry ammunition bread; without so much as a drop of broth, without physic, without a consoling friend, and who under all these afflictions must trust for his recovery to the efforts of nature alone!”
The officers on guard all commiserated him, and one of them, Lieutenant Sonntag, often came and sat with him when he could get all the keys. This officer was poor and in debt and did not refuse the money liberally offered by Trenck. A fresh plan of escape was soon conceived. As before, the essential preliminary was to obtain more cash to be employed in further bribery. The lieutenant, Sonntag, provided false handcuffs so wide that Trenck could easily draw his hands out, and he was soon able to disencumber himself at pleasure of all his other chains except the neck-iron. It was no longer possible to get out by the hole first constructed, as the sentinels had been doubled, and Trenck began driving a new subterranean passage thirty-seven feet long to the gallery in the principal rampart, through which, if gained, a free exit was assured.
Another superhuman task was begun, which lasted for nearly a year. A deep hole was sunk, and on reaching the sand below the foundation, a transverse passage was driven through it, entailing such severe fatigue that at the end of one day’s work Trenck was obliged to rest for the three following days. It was necessary to work naked, as the dirtiness on his shirt would have been observed; at the depth of four feet the sand became wet and a stratum of gravel was reached. “The labour toward the conclusion,” Trenck tells us, “became so intolerable as to incite despondency. I frequently sat contemplating the heaps of sand during a momentary respite from work, and thinking it impossible I could have strength or time to replace all things as they were. I thought sometimes of abandoning my enterprise and leaving everything in its present disorder. Recollecting, however, the prodigious efforts and all the progress I had made, hope would again revive and exhausted strength return; again would I begin my labours to preserve my secret and my expectations. When my work was within six or seven feet of being accomplished, a new misfortune happened that at once frustrated all further attempts. I worked, as I have said, under the foundations of the rampart near where the sentinels stood. I could disencumber myself of my fetters, except my neck-collar and its pendent chain. This, although it had been fastened, got loose as I worked, and the clanking was heard by one of the sentinels about fifteen feet from my dungeon. The officer was called; they laid their ears to the ground, and heard me as I went backward and forward to bring my earth bags. This was reported the next day, and the major, who was my best friend, with the town-major, a smith and a mason entered my prison. I was terrified. The lieutenant, by a sign, gave me to understand I was discovered. An examination was begun, but the officers would not see, and the smith and mason found everything, as they thought, safe. Had they examined my bed they would have seen the ticking and sheets were gone.”
A few days later the same sentinel, who had been called a blockhead for raising a false alarm, again heard Trenck burrowing, and called his comrades. The major came also to hear the noise, and it was now realised that Trenck was working under the foundation toward the gallery. The officials entered the gallery at the other end with lanterns, and Trenck as he crawled along saw the light and their heads. He knew the worst, and hurrying back to his cell, had still the presence of mind to conceal his pistols, candles, paper and money in various holes and hiding places, where they were never found. This was barely accomplished before his guards arrived, headed by the brutal and stupid major, Bruckhausen by name. The hole in the floor was at once filled up and the planking reinstated; his foot-chains, instead of being merely fastened as before, were screwed down and riveted. The worst trial for the moment was the loss of his bed, which he had cut up to make into bags for the removal of the sand.
At this time General Borck was ill with an ailment that soon ended in mental derangement. Another general, Krusemarck, replaced him and proceeded to visit Trenck. They had been old friends and brother officers, but the general showed him no compassion; on the contrary, he abused him roundly, promising him even more severe treatment. It was then that the inhuman order was issued to the night guards to waken Trenck every quarter of an hour,—a devilish form of cruelty unsurpassed in prison punishments. Kindly nature, however, came to the rescue, and Trenck learned to answer automatically in his sleep; yet this cruel device was continued for four years and until within a few months of his final release.
The precautions taken effectually debarred the prisoner from any fresh attempt at evasion. A new governor had replaced the madman Borck, Lieutenant-Colonel Reichmann, a humane and mild-mannered officer. About this time, several members Of the royal family, including Princess Amelia, came to reside at Magdeburg and showed a kindly interest in Trenck’s grievous lot; his cell doors were presently opened each day to admit daylight and fresh air. He found employment, too, for his restless energies and was permitted to carve verses and figures upon the pewter cup provided as part of his cell furniture. The first rude attempt was much admired, the cup was impounded, and a new one served out; several, indeed, were provided in succession, so that Trenck became quite expert in this artistic employment and laboured at it continuously until the day of his release. By means of these cups he opened up communication with the outside world. Hitherto all correspondence had been forbidden; no one under pain of death might converse with him or supply him with pen, ink or paper. Strange to say, he was allowed to engrave what he pleased upon the pewter, and the cups were in great demand and passed into many hands. One reached the empress-queen of Austria and stimulated her to plead for Trenck’s pardon through her minister accredited to the court of Frederick. The engraving that touched her feelings was that of a bird in a cage held by a Turk, with the inscription, “The bird sings even in the storm: open his cage and break his fetters, ye friends of virtue, and his songs shall be the delight of your abodes.” The demand for these cups was so keen that Trenck worked at them by candle light for eighteen hours a day, and the reflected lustre from the pewter seriously injured his eyesight. It is a pathetic picture,—that of the active-minded, undefeated captive, labouring incessantly although weighed down by chains and the terrible encumbrance of a huge collar which pressed on the arteries at the back of his neck and occasioned intolerable headache.
Although repeatedly foiled in his assiduous attempts to break prison, the indomitable Trenck never abated his unshaken desire to compass freedom. At length opportunity offered for a larger and more dangerous project: the seizure of the Star Fort and the capture of Magdeburg. At that time the war was in full progress and the garrison of the fortress consisted of only nine hundred discontented men of the militia. Trenck had already won over two majors and two lieutenants to his interest. The guard of the Star Fort was limited to one hundred and fifteen men. The town gate immediately opposite was held by no more than twelve men under a sergeant; just within it was a barrack filled with seven thousand Croat prisoners of war, several of whose officers were willing to join in an uprising. It was arranged that a whole company of Prussians should turn out at a moment’s notice with muskets loaded and bayonets fixed, to head the attack as soon as Trenck had overpowered the two sentinels who stood over him, secured them and locked them into his cell. It was an ambitious plan and was well worth the attempt. Magdeburg was the great national storehouse, holding all the sinews of war, treasure and munitions, and Trenck in possession, backed with sixteen thousand Croats, might have dictated his own terms. The plot failed through the treachery of an agent despatched to Vienna with a letter, seeking cooperation; it was given into the wrong hands and was sent back to Magdeburg, where the governor, then the landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, read it and took prompt precautions to secure the fortress. An investigation was ordered, and Trenck was formally arraigned as a traitor to his country, but he sturdily denied the authorship of the incriminating letter, and the charge was not brought home to him. The landgrave was more merciful than former governors and showed great kindness to Trenck, relieved him of his intolerable iron collar, sent his own private physician to attend him in his illness and revoked the cruel order that prescribed his incessant awakening during the night.
A fresh attempt to undermine the wall was soon undertaken by the captive, but he was presently discovered at work and the hole in the floor walled up. The humane landgrave did not punish him further, and in the period of calm that followed, Trenck’s hopes were revived with the prospect of approaching peace, for he was now at liberty to read the newspapers. But when the landgrave succeeded to his throne and left Magdeburg, Trenck in despair turned his thoughts once more to a means of escape, and decided on the same method of driving a tunnel underground. A dreadful accident befell him in this particular attempt. While mining under the foundation, he struck his foot against a loose stone which dropped into the passage and completely closed the opening. Death by suffocation stared him in the face and paralyzed his powers. For eight full hours he could not stir a finger to release himself, but at last he managed to turn his body into a ball and excavate a hole under the stone till it sank and left him sufficient space to crawl over it and get out.
All was in a fair way to final evasion when Trenck had another narrow escape from discovery. It occurred through a pet mouse he had tamed and trained to come at his call, to play round him and eat from his hand. One night Trenck had encouraged it to dance and caper on a plate, and the noise made attracted the attention of the sentries, who gave the alarm. An anxious visitation was made at daybreak; smiths and masons closely scrutinised walls and floors and minutely searched the prisoner. Trenck was asked to explain the disturbance, and whistled to his mouse which came out and jumped upon his shoulder. The alarm forthwith subsided, and yet he found what the searchers had missed,—that his mouse had nibbled away the chewed bread with which he had filled the interstices between the planks of the floor which he had cut to penetrate below.
Trenck’s efforts did not flag till the very last hour of his imprisonment, nor did his gaolers relax their determination to hold him. One of their last devices was to reconstruct and strengthen his prison cell by paving the floor with huge flagstones. His courage was beginning to fail, but the darkest hour was before the dawn. Quite unexpectedly on Christmas Eve, 1763, the governor appeared at his cell door, accompanied by the blacksmith. “Rejoice,” he cried, “the king has been graciously pleased to relieve you of your irons;” and again,—“The king wills that you shall have a better apartment;” and last of all,—“The king wills that you shall go free.”
It has been said that the empress-queen of Austria had been moved to compassion for Trenck by the engraving on the pewter cup that came into her hands. His beloved Princess Amelia had also been active in trying to obtain his release. She employed a clever business man in Vienna, who at her bidding and for a sum of two thousand ducats won over a confidential servant of Maria Theresa, and caused him to intercede for the wretched prisoner at Magdeburg, who after all was still an Austrian officer. The kind-hearted Hapsburg sovereign wrote a personal letter to Frederick, her great antagonist, and the king of Prussia at last pardoned the miserable man who had dwelt for ten years in a living tomb. Like all political prisoners, he was obliged to bind himself by oath to the following conditions, which were not exactly performed by him:—that he would take no revenge on anyone; that he would not cross the Saxon or the Prussian frontiers to re-enter those states; that he would neither speak nor write of what had happened to him; that he would not, so long as the king lived, serve in any army either in a civil or military capacity.
After his liberation, he first lived in Vienna, where he came into personal contact with Maria Theresa and the emperors Francis and Joseph II. Later he settled at Aix-la-Chapelle, where he married the daughter of Burgomaster de Broe, and conducted a flourishing wine business. He undertook long journeys, and published his poems and autobiography, which had an immense success and were translated into almost every European language; he was also the editor of a newspaper and another periodical entitled The Friend of Men, and he amassed a handsome fortune.
After the death of Frederick, Trenck was allowed to return to Berlin and his confiscated goods were restored to him. His first visit was to his liberator and earliest love, the Princess Amelia; the interview was most affecting and heartrending. They were both greatly changed in appearance and more like the ghosts of their former brilliant selves. She inquired for his numerous children, for whom she assured him she would do all in her power, and he parted from her full of gratitude and greatly moved. It is a creditable trait in Trenck’s character that in spite of all his sufferings he did not hate the Prussian king, Frederick the Great.
One would think this aged adventurer would now seek rest, but far from it. He was attracted to Paris by the outbreak of the French Revolution, and he felt the necessity for playing an active part. He finally fell into the hands of Robespierre, and was tried and guillotined at the age of sixty-nine. On the scaffold his great stature, for he was much above the average height, towered over his fellow-sufferers. He looked quietly at the crowd and said, “Why do you stare? This is but a comedy À la Robespierre!”
The day before his tragic death he gave to a fellow-prisoner, Count B——, the last memento he possessed of the lady who had been the first innocent cause of his sufferings, a tortoise-shell box with the portrait of the Princess Amelia. The 9th Thermidor saved the count, and the box was long preserved in his family.
