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 Iarrived 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 continues."It will readily be imagined how fast his accusers would increase, and what kind of people they were. The pay of these witnesses alone amounted to fifteen thousand florins. I now began the labour in concurrence with Doctor Gerhauer, and the cause soon took another turn; but such was the state of things, it would have been necessary to have broken all the members of the council of war, as well as counsellor Weber, a man of great power. Thus, unfortunately, politics began to interfere with the course of justice.
The Empress Queen gave Trenck to understand she required he should ask her pardon; and on that condition all proceedings should be stopped, and he immediately set at liberty. Prince Charles, who knew the court of Vienna, advised me also to persuade my cousin to comply; but nothing could shake his resolution. Feeling his right and innocence, he demanded strict justice; and this made ruin more swift.
I soon learned Trenck must fall a sacrifice--he was rich--his enemies already had divided among them more than eighty thousand florins of his property, which was all sequestered, and in their hands. They had treated him too cruelly, and knew him too well, not to dread his vengeance the moment he should recover his freedom.
I was moved to the soul at his sufferings, and as he had vented public threats, at the prospect of approaching victory over his enemies, they gained over the Court Confessor: and, dreading him as they did, put every wily art in practice to insure his destruction.
I therefore, in the fulness of my heart, made him the brotherly proposition of escaping, and, having obtained his liberty, to prove his innocence to the Empress Queen. I told him my plan, which might easily have been put in execution, and which he seemed perfectly decided to follow.
Some days after, I was ordered to wait on field-marshal Count Konigseck, governor of Vienna. This respectable old gentleman, whose memory I shall ever revere, behaved to me like a father and the friend of humanity, advised me to abandon my cousin, who he gave me clearly to understand had betrayed me by having revealed my proposed plan of escape, willing to sacrifice me to his ambition in order to justify the purity of his intentions to the court, and show that, instead of wishing to escape, he only desired justice.
Confounded at the cowardly action of one for whom I would willingly have sacrificed my life, and whom I only sought to deliver, Iresolved to leave him to his fate, and thought myself exceedingly happy that the worthy field-marshal would, after a fatherly admonition, smother all farther inquiry into this affair.
I related this black trait of ingratitude to Prince Charles of Lorraine, who prevailed on me to again see my cousin, without letting him know I knew what had passed, and still to render him every service in my power.
