Tales from the German, Comprising specimens from the most celebrated authors

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."

"But who has denied thee the protection of the laws?" cried Luther, "Did not I myself write that the complaint which was sent by thee to the elector, is still unknown to him? If his servants suppress suits behind his back, or abuse his sacred name, without his knowledge, who but God shall call him to account for the choice of such servants, and as for thee, abominable man, who has entitled thee to judge of him?"

"Well," answered Kohlhaas, "then if the elector does not expel me, I will return back again to the community which is under his protection. Give me, as I said before, a safe conduct to Dresden, and I will disperse the band I have assembled at the Castle of Lützen, and will once more bring the suit, with which I failed, before the tribunal of the country."

Luther, with a dissatisfied countenance, turned over the papers which lay upon his table and was silent. The bold position which this man took in the state offended him, and thinking over the decree which had been sent to the squire from Kohlhaasenbrück, he asked "what he wanted from the tribunal at Dresden?"

"The punishment of the squire, according to law," answered Kohlhaas, "the restoration of my horses to their former condition, and compensation for the injury which has been suffered both by me and my man Herse, who fell at Mühlberg, through the violence inflicted upon us."

"Compensation for injury!" cried Luther, "Why thou hast raised sums by thousands from Jews and Christians, in bonds and pledges, for the satisfaction of thy wild revenge. Wilt thou fix an amount if there should be a question about it?"

"God forbid," said Kohlhaas, "I do not ask back again my house and farm, or the wealth that I possessed – no more than the expenses of burying my wife! Herse's old mother will bring in an account of medical expenses, and a specification of what her son lost at Tronkenburg, while for the damage which I sustained by not selling my horses, the government can settle that by a competent arbitrator."