Page:Life and surprising adventures of Frederick Baron Trenck.pdf/17

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OF FREDERICK BARON TRENCK.
17

"we will go ourselves, and take Hungarian horses." Here the conversation dropped. I cannot help making the following observations on the subject.

1st. I had not observed, that the date of the letter was four months anterior to its receipt: this my Colonel did not fail to do.

2d. It was probably a snare laid by Iaschinzki. The sending back of my horses, in the proceeding campaign had made a noise. Perhaps I had been persuaded to write, that I might be entrapped by a forged answer; for it is certain, that my cousin, maintained, till his death, that he had never received a letter from me, and that consequently he had sent no answer. I still think (and shall always condone in the same mind,) the letter was forged.

Without the liberty of making any defence or of being tried by a court-martial, was confined as a criminal, in the citadel or Glatz; I was not in a dungeon, but in the officer's guard-room, I was permitted to walk upon the ramparts, and was waited on by my own servants.

I wrote to the King, and demanded a court-martial, offering to summit to any punishment whatever, if found guilty. So determined a style in so young a man, did not please him, and I received not answer.

From my female friend at Berlin, I received some consolation, and a thousand ducats.


"Here the Baron enlarges on the different schemes he tried to effect his escape from the prison of Glatz, his adventures in Bohemia and Poland, with Lieutenant Schell, who deserted along with him; the barbarous treatment he received from the Austria Trenck at Vienna; and gives a recital of the causes of that General's disgrace and imprisonment, which endswith