Baron Friedrich von der TrenckAfter the painting by MarcklA 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.
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 broughtin, 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 extendedin 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 quicklytore 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 prisonerto 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 accustomedto 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 youplease. 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. Themore 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 endeavouredto 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 awkwardshape 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 bedespatched 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 hundredflorins 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 theother 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 mydeath 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 planof 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 everythingin 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 wasnow 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; yetthis 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 ofFrederick. 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 prisonersof 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 presentlydiscovered 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 MariaTheresa, 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 entitledThe Friend of Men, and he amassed a handsome fortune.
After the death of Frederick, Trenck was allowed to return to Berlin and his confiscated goodswere 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.
Famous female poisoners—This crime not so prevalent in Germany as in southern countries—Frau Ursinus—Her early history—Mysterious deaths of her husband and aunt—Attempted murder of her man-servant—Arrested and sentenced to imprisonment for life in the fortress of Glatz—Anna Schönleben or Zwanziger—Deaths followed her advent into different families—Arrested at Bayreuth, confessed her guilt and was condemned to death.
In the early decades of the nineteenth century, when the Napoleonic wars caused constant conflict and change, crime flourished with rank growth in most European countries and nowhere more than in the German states,—both those that remained more or less independent and those brought into subjection to the French Empire. Whole provinces were ravaged by organised bands of brigands, such as that which obeyed the notorious Schinderhannes; travelling was unsafe by all ordinary roads and communications; thieves and depredators abounded; murderers stalked rampant through the land; the most atrocious homicides, open and secret, were constantly planned and perpetrated; swindling and imposture on a large scale were frequently practised, and crimes of every kind were committed by all kinds of people in all classes of society.
Poisoning was not unknown as a means of removal, although it never prevailed to the same extent as among people of warmer blood. It never grew into an epidemic affecting whole groups and associations, but it occurred in individual cases, exhibiting the same features as elsewhere. This form of feloniously doing to death has ever commended itself to the female sex. Women are so circumstanced as wives, nurses and in domestic service that they possess peculiar facilities for the administration of poison, and so the most prominent poisoners in criminal history have been women.
A curious instance is to be found in the German records, and the story may be told in this place as belonging to this period. The murderess was a certain Frau Ursinus, widow of a privy counsellor who was also president of a government board. Ursinus was a highly esteemed member of the upper classes of Berlin. Deep interest attached to this case of Frau Ursinus from the prominent position occupied by her late husband, her considerable fortune, her prepossessing person and spotless reputation, as well as her cultured mind which made her conspicuous in the society of the Prussian capital. The news, therefore, of her sudden and unexpected arrest on a criminal charge, caused great consternation and surprise.
Early in May, Frau Ursinus was at a party, playing whist, when a footman, evidently greatly perturbed, came in and said that several police officialswere in the anteroom and wished to speak to her. She rose without manifesting any emotion, put down her cards, excused herself to her fellow-players for this slight interruption, doubtless caused by a mistake which would soon be accounted for, and adding that she hoped soon to return, left the room. She did not, however, come back to resume her game, and after a few moments of strained expectation it became known that she had been arrested and taken to prison on a criminal charge.
Her servant, Benjamin Klein, had complained of not feeling well one day toward the end of the previous February. His mistress had accordingly given him a cup of broth and a few days later some currants. These remedies were of no avail, and he became worse. When, on February 28th, Frau Ursinus offered him some rice, he refused it, whereupon she threw it away, a singular proceeding on her part, as he thought, and his suspicions were aroused that the food she had previously administered to him had contained something deleterious. He made a strict search in consequence through his mistress’s apartments, and presently discovered a powder labelled arsenic in one of the cupboards. This happened on March 21st. On the following day, Frau Ursinus offered him some plums, which he accepted but prudently did not taste. Then he confided the result of his search and his fears to his mistress’s maid, Schley, who took the plums to her brother, an apprentice in a chemist’s shop, wherethey were analysed. The plums were found to contain arsenic and the master of the establishment immediately laid the information before the authorities; an inquiry was set on foot, the principal witnesses were examined, and in the end Frau Ursinus was taken into custody. These facts came out after the arrest and a good deal more was assumed. It was rumoured that she had not only poisoned her deceased husband three years previously, but also her aunt, a spinster called Witte as well, and a Dutch officer of the name of Rogay. These deaths had occurred in sequence after that of the privy counsellor.
Frau Ursinus persistently denied all the earlier charges of administering poison, but admitted the attempts upon her servant, Klein. A thorough investigation followed, and a number of damning facts in her past and present life were brought to light.
Sophie Charlotte Elizabeth, the widow Ursinus, was born on May 5, 1760, and was the daughter of the secretary of the Austrian legation, Weingarten, afterward called Von Weiss. Contemporary historians call him Baron von Weingarten. He was supposed to have turned traitor to the Austrian government, and this led to his settling in Prussia and to his change of name. According to common belief, he had really refused a tempting offer made to him by the Prussian government to hand over some important papers, very muchwanted. But he was in love, and the mother of his betrothed, an enthusiastic partisan of Frederick the Great, managed to abstract the papers from a cupboard. He had to bear the brunt of this misdeed and voluntarily accepted exile. Charlotte lived with her parents until her twelfth year, and was then committed to the care of a married sister in Spandau to be educated. Her parents were Catholics but she declared herself a Lutheran. Later, the father and mother being unwilling to countenance a love affair into which their daughter had been drawn, took up their residence in Stendal. Here Charlotte became acquainted with her future husband, at that time counsellor of the Supreme Court, who after a year’s acquaintance, sought her hand. She did not precisely love this grave, sickly, elderly man, but she confessed to a sincere liking and was willing to marry him on account of his many excellent qualities, his position and his prospects. She was then in her nineteenth year. The pair, after moving to and fro a great deal, finally settled in Berlin, where Privy Counsellor Ursinus died on September 11, 1800.
The match had not been happy; husband and wife lived separately; they were childless and Frau Ursinus was inclined to flirtation, having taken a strong fancy to a Dutch officer named Rogay. The aged husband did not seem to disapprove of the attachment, which his wife always maintained was perfectly platonic, and it was generally believed thatthe phlegmatic Dutchman was incapable of the “grand passion.” After leaving Berlin, probably to escape her influence, Rogay returned and died there three years before the privy counsellor. When the propensity of Frau Ursinus to secret poisoning was discovered, the making away with this Dutch officer was laid to her charge, but she was acquitted of the crime, and it was indeed sworn by two competent physicians that Rogay had died of consumption.
Privy Counsellor Ursinus died very suddenly and mysteriously, his death being in no wise attributed at the time to his chronic ailments. But when, three years later, the widow came under suspicion, serious doubts were entertained as to whether she had not poisoned her husband. Her own account as to the manner of his death only strengthened the presumption of her guilt. According to her statement, she had given a small party on September 10th, her husband’s birthday. He was in fairly good spirits, but had remarked more than once that he feared he was not long for this life. On retiring to rest, his wife saw nothing wrong with him, but in the middle of the night his moans and groans awakened her. An emetic stood handy by the bedside, kept thus in readiness by the doctor’s order (which the doctor subsequently denied), and Frau Ursinus wished him to take it, but gave him an elixir instead. As he did not improve, she tried the emetic and rang up the servants, but none came;then she sought the porter, desiring him to call them, but still no one appeared. So she remained alone with her suffering husband through the entire night. The following morning he was in a very weak and feeble condition and he died on the afternoon of the same day.
Grave suspicion of foul play was now aroused and Frau Ursinus was arrested. It was urged against her that she had shown no real desire to summon the servants; that she made no attempt to call in the doctor; that the family physician had never prescribed the emetic; why, then, was it there? A worse charge against the wife was her volunteering the statement that she kept arsenic to kill rats, a conventional excuse often made in such cases. And in this case it was put forward quite unnecessarily, for there were no rats in the house.
Yet there was no definite charge against Frau Ursinus. No motive for murder could be ascertained. They were by no means bad friends, this wedded pair. Frau Ursinus might in her secret heart desire to be freed from the bond that tied her to an infirm old man, and marry another husband, but she had always appeared grateful to the privy counsellor and treated him kindly. On the other hand, it was proved that she had purchased a quantity of arsenic for the purpose of destroying the fictitious rats. Sufficient doubt existed to justify the exhumation of the body and proceed to a postmortem examination. No definitely incriminatingevidence was, however, forthcoming. The autopsy was conducted by two eminent doctors, who could find no positive traces of arsenic, but there was a presumption from the general condition of the vital organs and convulsive contraction of the limbs that it had been used. Three physicians who had attended Herr Ursinus in his last illness testified that his death resulted from a natural cause, that of apoplexy of the nerves, and repudiated all idea of arsenic. At this stage there was a foregone conclusion that Frau Ursinus would be quite exonerated from the felonious charge.
Suddenly the situation entered upon a new phase. Frau Ursinus was accused of another and entirely new murder, that of her aunt, a maiden lady named Witte, who had died at Charlottenburg on the 23d January, 1801, after a short illness. No suspicious circumstances were noted at the time of her death, but after the arrest of Frau Ursinus, the possibility of her complicity in this deed took definite shape. A careful inquiry ensued and the inculpation, amounting to little less than certainty, was soon established. Again the process of exhumation was set afoot and there was not the smallest doubt that the deceased had died from arsenical poisoning. It was equally certain that Frau Ursinus had administered it.
On her own confession she admitted her arrival at her aunt’s house on January the 16th. Fräulein Witte was sick and complaining, and her niece, whoprofessed great affection for her, decided to spend some little time with her. On the day following the arrival of her niece, Fräulein Witte’s disorder increased, and she had other disquieting symptoms. Frau Ursinus now summoned a doctor, stating that she herself felt so low and depressed that she contemplated suicide and had made up her mind to take poison. In the meantime, her aunt became more and more seriously ill. On the 23d of January Frau Ursinus persuaded her to let another physician be called in, who pronounced the illness to be unimportant, but when he left it increased. Frau Ursinus watched by her aunt all night, during the course of which the poor woman died. She was quite alone with her expiring victim and must have been a witness of her terrible convulsions. It came out at the trial that on the occasion of a previous visit to Charlottenburg, Frau Ursinus had written to a chemist in Berlin for a good dose of poison to destroy the rats in her aunt’s house. Here again the rats were non-existent.
This pretence was as false as was her insistence on the fact that she had been in a great state of depression since her husband’s death. This mental condition and her consequent desire to commit suicide came up prominently at her trial. She had always affected great sensibility, wishing to pose as a fragile, delicate person, as she considered robust health to be vulgar. Yet she was naturally strong and well. No proof could ever be found that shemeant to take her own life. When really she had most ground for depression, being burdened with a terrible accusation, and the scaffold loomed threateningly before her, the undaunted spirit of the woman rose to the occasion and her real and powerful nature asserted itself. She did not exhibit the smallest sign of low spirits, but fought on with desperate courage and self-reliance, disputing every point, lying freely and recklessly in her unshaken resolve to save life and honour. Her adroitness in defence was greatly aided by her extraordinary knowledge of the Prussian criminal code. Very rarely her fortitude deserted her, and she was betrayed into a strange admission, that if she had really handed poison to her aunt she must have been out of her mind. The object of this particular murder was plainly indicated in the fact that she expected a considerable inheritance from Fräulein Witte. Conviction in this case followed almost as a matter of course.
Her guilt in attempting the life of the man-servant Klein was never in doubt, but the motive remained obscure to the very end. One explanation was offered by Frau Ursinus herself. She denied all wish to kill him but admitted that she was making an experiment in the operation of lethal drugs with the idea of ascertaining their effect on herself. A more plausible reason was that she had at one time made him her confidant and wished to use him as a go-between in negotiating a second marriage.They had quarrelled, and Klein was about to leave her service, which she dreaded, lest he might tell tales and make her appear ridiculous before the world. She owed him a deep grudge also for having presumed upon the favour she had shown him. To get rid of so presumptuous and dangerous a person was enough to move this truculent poisoner to seek to compass his death. Klein eventually recovered his health and survived for twenty-three years, living comfortably on a pension forcibly extracted from Frau Ursinus.
The verdict pronounced upon her was one of “not guilty” as regards her husband and the Dutch officer Rogay. But she was fully convicted of having murdered her aunt, Christina Regina Witte, and of several felonious attempts to poison her servant, Benjamin Klein. Her sentence was imprisonment for life in a fortress and she endured it in Glatz, on the frontier of Silesia and Bohemia. From the first she was treated with excessive leniency and in a way to prove that prison discipline was then a mere farce in Prussia. She was permitted to furnish and arrange the quarters allotted to her according to her own taste, and she spent much time at a comfortable writing table under a well lighted window. She engaged a lady companion to be with her constantly, and passing travellers curious to make the acquaintance of a murderess were allowed to call on her and to listen to her unending protestations of innocence. She did not alwaysevoke sympathy, and the government was much abused for its favouritism. A cutting comparison was drawn between this aristocratic criminal parading the ramparts of Glatz in silks and satins, and humble offenders who had been condemned for succumbing weakly to ungovernable rage and who were driven to toilsome labour in deep ditches, heavily chained and grossly ill-used. Here she acted the lady of quality, and being possessed of a considerable income, was able to give parties which were largely attended. At one of these receptions, it is said that a lady guest on noticing some grains of sugar sparkling in a salad involuntarily started back. Frau Ursinus remarking this, said, smiling sarcastically, “Don’t be afraid, it is not arsenic!”
Her companion who was with her until her death on April 4, 1836, and never left her, bore witness to her religious resignation in bearing her physical suffering caused chiefly by a chest complaint. She remained more or less unconscious for some months, but on the night before her end her mental faculties returned and she passed away peacefully. She was the first person to be buried in the Protestant cemetery which King Frederick William III had given to the evangelical congregation at Glatz.
A year before her death she had ordered a costly oak coffin. Clad in a white petticoat, a cap trimmed with pale blue ribbon on her head, her hands encased in white gloves, on one finger a ring which had belonged to her late husband and with his portraiton her breast, she lay as if asleep, an expression of peace upon her unchanged face. Several carriages, filled with her friends and acquaintances, followed the body to the grave, which was decorated with moss and flowers, and when the clergyman had finished his discourse, six poor boys and the same number of girls, to whom she had shown great kindness, sang a hymn in her honour. Instead of the sexton, the hands of friends and poor recipients of the dead woman’s charity filled in the grave and shaped the mound above it. It was a bitterly cold morning, and yet the cemetery could hardly contain the people who thronged it.
Thus Frau “Geheimräthin” Ursinus died in the odour of sanctity. Her many relatives, who greatly needed money, only received one-half of her fortune; the other half she parcelled out into various bequests and several pious institutions benefited; and we may thus fairly conclude that she desired to rehabilitate her accursed name by ostentatious deeds of charity. She left her gaoler, who had treated her considerately, five hundred thalers and his daughter a piano. Doctor Friedham, who had procured the royal favour through which she was liberated from the fortress, received a substantial legacy.
Another female poisoner in a lower sphere of life, whose lethal propensities were more strongly developed and more widespread, belongs to this period and the neighbouring kingdom of Bavaria. The woman, Anna Schönleben or Zwanziger—hermarried name—known in criminal history as the German Brinvilliers, was as noxious as a pestilence, and death followed everywhere in her footsteps. Never did any human being hunger more to kill, and revel more wantonly in the reckless and unscrupulous employment of the means that secret poisoning put at her disposal. Her extravagant fondness for it was “based upon the proud consciousness of possessing a power which enabled her to break through every restraint, to attain every object, to gratify every inclination and to determine the very existence of others. Poison was the magic wand with which she ruled those whom she outwardly obeyed, and which opened the way to her fondest hopes. Poison enabled her to deal out death, sickness and torture to all who offended her or stood in her way; it punished every slight; it prevented the return of unwelcome guests; it disturbed those social pleasures which it galled her not to share; it afforded her amusement by the contortions of the victims, and an opportunity of ingratiating herself by affected sympathy with their sufferings; it was the means of throwing suspicion upon innocent persons and of getting fellow servants into trouble. Mixing and giving poison became her constant occupation; she practised it in jest and in earnest, and at last with real passion for poison itself, without reference to the object for which it was given. She grew to love it from long habit, and from gratitude for its faithful services; she looked upon it as hertruest friend and made it her constant companion. Upon her apprehension, arsenic was found in her pocket, and when it was laid before her at Culmbach to be identified, she seemed to tremble with pleasure and gazed upon the white powder with eyes beaming with rapture.”
We will take up her story when she was a widow of about fifty years old, resident at Pegnitz and bearing the name of Anna Schönleben. In 1808 she was received as housekeeper into the family of Justice Glaser, who had for some time previous been living apart from his wife. Shortly after the beginning of her service, however, a partial reconciliation took place, in a great measure effected through the exertions of Schönleben, and the wife returned to her husband’s house. But their reunion was of short duration, for in the course of four weeks after her return, she was seized with a sudden and violent illness, of which, in a day or two, she expired.
After this event, Schönleben quitted the service of Glaser and was received in the same capacity into the household of Justice Grohmann, who was then unmarried. Although only thirty-eight years of age, he was in delicate health and had suffered severely from gout, so that Schönleben soon gained his favour by the kindly attentions she bestowed upon his health. Her cares, however, were unavailing; her master fell sick in the spring of 1809, his disease being accompanied with violent internal pains of the stomach, dryness of the skin, vomiting,etc., and he died on the 8th of May after an illness of eleven days. Schönleben, who had nursed him with unremitting anxiety and solicitude during his illness and administered all his medicines with her own hand, appeared inconsolable for his loss and that of her situation. The high character, however, which she had acquired for her unflagging devotion and tenderness as a sick nurse, immediately procured her another post in the family of Herr Gebhard, whose wife was at that time on the point of being confined. This event took place on the 13th of May, shortly after the arrival of the new housekeeper, who made herself particularly useful. Mother and child were thought to be progressing extremely well when, on the third day after the birth, the lady was seized with spasms, high temperature, violent thirst, vomiting, etc. In the extremity of her agony, she frequently exclaimed that they had given her poison. Seven days after her confinement she expired.
Gebhard, the widower, bereaved and helpless in managing household affairs, thought it would be prudent to retain the housekeeper in his service who had been so zealous and assiduous during his wife’s illness. Some of his friends sought to dissuade him from keeping a servant who seemed by some fatality to bring death into every family with which she became connected. The objection arose from mere superstitious dread, for as yet no accusation had been hinted at, and Gebhard, a very matter of factperson, laughed at their apprehensions. Schönleben, who was very obliging, with a great air of honesty, humility and kindliness, remained in his house and was invested with almost unlimited authority.
During her residence in the Gebhard household, there were many circumstances which, although they excited little attention at the time, were subsequently remembered against her. They will be mentioned hereafter; for the present, let us follow the course of events and the gradual growth of suspicion. Gebhard had at last, by the importunity of his friends, been persuaded to part with his housekeeper and did so with many regrets. Schönleben received her dismissal without any remark beyond an expression of surprise at the suddenness of his decision. Her departure for Bayreuth was fixed for the next day, and she busied herself with arranging the rooms, and filled the salt box in the kitchen, remarking that it was the custom for one who went away to do this for her successor. On the next morning, as a token of her good-will, she made coffee for the maids, supplying them with sugar from a paper of her own. The coach which her master had been good-natured enough to procure for her was already at the door. She took his child, now twenty weeks old, in her arms, gave it a biscuit soaked in milk, caressed it and took her leave. Scarcely had she been gone half an hour when both the child and servants were seized with violent retching, whichlasted some hours and left them extremely weak and ill. Suspicion being now at last fairly awakened, Gebhard had the salt box examined, which Schönleben had so officiously filled. The salt was found strongly impregnated with arsenic; in the salt barrel also, from which it had been taken, thirty grains of arsenic were found mixed with about three pounds of salt.
It was now clear to every one that the series of sudden deaths which had occurred in the families in which Schönleben had resided, had been due to arsenical poison, and it seemed extraordinary that this circumstance had been so long overlooked. It came to light now that while she was with Gebhard two friends who had dined with her master in August, 1809, were seized after dinner with the same symptoms of vomiting, convulsions, spasms and so forth, which had attacked the servants on the day of Schönleben’s departure, and again, had shown themselves in the condition of the unfortunate mistress when she died. Also Schönleben had on one occasion given a glass of white wine to a servant who had called with a message, which had produced similar effects; the attack was indeed so violent as to oblige him to remain in bed for several days. On another occasion she had taken a lad of nineteen, Johann Kraus, into the cellar, where she had offered him a glass of brandy which he tasted, but perceiving a white sediment in it, declined to swallow. And again, one of her fellow servants, BarbaraWaldmann, with whom Schönleben had had frequent quarrels, after drinking a cup of coffee was seized with exactly the same symptoms as the others. Last of all, it was remembered that at a party which Judge Grohmann gave, he sent her to the cellar for some jugs of beer, and after partaking of it, he and all his guests—five in number—were almost immediately seized with the usual spasms.
The long interval which had elapsed since the death of most of these individuals rendered it improbable that an examination of the bodies would throw any light upon these dark transactions. It was resolved, however, to put the matter to the test, and the result of this tardy inspection was more decisive than might have been expected; all the bodies exhibited in a greater or less degree traces of arsenic. On the whole, the medical authorities felt themselves justified in stating that the deaths of at least two of the three individuals had been occasioned by poison.
Meantime Schönleben had been living quietly at Bayreuth, quite unconscious of the storm gathering round her. Her finished hypocrisy even led her, while on the way there, to write a letter to her late master reproaching him with his ingratitude at dismissing one who had been a protecting angel to his child; and in passing through Nürnberg, she dared to take up her residence with the mother of her victim, Gebhard’s wife. On reaching Bayreuth, she again wrote to Gebhard vainly hoping he would takeher back into his service, and she made a similar unsuccessful attempt on her former master Glaser. While thus engaged, the warrant for her arrest arrived and she was taken into custody on October 19th. When searched, three packets were found in her pocket, two of them containing fly powder and the third arsenic.
For a long time she would confess nothing; it was not till April 16, 1810, that her courage gave way, when she learned the result of the examination of the body of Frau Glaser. Then, weeping and wringing her hands, she confessed she had on two occasions administered poison to her. No sooner had she admitted this than she fell to the ground in convulsions “as if struck by lightning,” and was removed from the court. Strange to say, although she knew that by her confession she had more than justified her condemnation to death, she laboured to the very last to gloss over and explain the worst features of her chief crimes, and in spite of ample evidence, denied all her lesser offences. It was impossible for her false and distorted nature to be quite sincere, and when she told a truth she at once associated with it a lie.
When Anna Schönleben fell into the hands of justice, she had already reached her fiftieth year; she was of small stature, thin and deformed; her sallow and meagre face was deeply furrowed by passion as well as by age, and bore no trace of former beauty. Her eyes were expressive of envyand malice and her brow was perpetually clouded, even when her lips moved to smile. Her manner, however, was cringing, servile and affected, and age and ugliness had not diminished her craving for admiration. Even in prison and under sentence of death, her imagination was still occupied with the pleasing recollections of her youth. One day when her judge visited her in prison, she begged him not to infer what she had been from what she was; that she was “once beautiful, exceedingly beautiful.”
Her life history antecedent to the events just recorded has been constructed from trustworthy sources and her own autobiography which fills eighteen closely written folio sheets. Born in Nürnberg in 1760, she had lost her parents before she reached her fifth year. Her father had possessed some property and until her nineteenth year she remained under the charge of her guardian, who was warmly attached to her and bestowed much care upon her education. At the age of nineteen she married, rather against her inclination, the notary Zwanziger, for that was her real name. The loneliness and dulness of her matrimonial life contrasted very disagreeably with the gaieties of her guardian’s house, and in the many absences of her husband, who divided his time between business and the bottle, she passed her time in reading sentimental novels such as the “Sorrows of Werther,” “Pamela” and “Emilia Galeotti.” Her husband, with her help,soon ran through her small fortune, which was wasted in extravagant entertaining and in keeping up an establishment beyond their means. They sank into wretched impecuniosity, with a family to support and without even the consolation of common esteem. She took to vicious methods and presently her husband died, leaving his widow to follow the career of an adventuress.
During the years that intervened between the death of her husband and the date on which she first entered Glaser’s service, her life had been one long course of unbridled misconduct. Absolutely devoid of principle, she associated with others as vicious as herself; she became a wanderer on the face of the earth and for twenty years never found a permanent resting place or a sincere friend. Fiercely resenting the evil fortune that had constantly befallen her, she chafed with bitter hatred against all mankind; her heart hardened; all that was good in her nature died out and she became a prey to the worst passions, consumed always with uncontrollable yearning to better her condition by defying all divine and human laws. When and how the idea of poison first dawned on her, her confessions did not explain, but there is every reason to believe that it was before she entered Glaser’s service. Determined as she was to advance her own interests, poison seemed to furnish her at once with the talisman she was in search of; it would punish her enemies and remove those who stood in her way. From the moment shemet Glaser, she resolved to secure him as her husband. That he was already married was immaterial, for poison would be a speedy form of divorce. To bring her victim within range of her power, she schemed to effect the reconciliation so successfully accomplished, and directly after Frau Glaser returned home, Zwanziger began her operations. Two successful doses were administered, of which the last was effectual. While she was mixing it, she confessed, she encouraged herself with the notion that she was preparing for herself a comfortable establishment in her old age. This prospect having been defeated by her dismissal from Glaser’s service, she entered that of Grohmann. Here she sought to revenge herself upon such of her fellow servants as she happened to dislike by mixing fly powder with the beer,—enough to cause illness but not death. While at Grohmann’s home she had also indulged in matrimonial hopes; but all at once these were defeated by his intended marriage with another. She tried to break this engagement off, but ineffectually, and Grohmann, provoked by her pertinacity, decided to send her away. The wedding day was fixed; nothing now remained for Zwanziger but revenge, and Grohmann fell a victim to poison.
From his service Zwanziger passed into that of Gebhard, whose wife shared the fate of Grohmann, for no other reason, according to her own account, than because that lady had treated herharshly. Even this wretched apology was proved false by the testimony of the other inmates of the house. The true motive, as in the preceding cases, was that she had formed designs upon Gebhard similar to those which had failed in the case of Glaser, and that the unfortunate lady stood in the way. Her death was accomplished by poisoning two jugs of beer from which Zwanziger from time to time supplied her with drink. Even while confessing that she had poisoned the beer, she persisted in maintaining that she had no intention of destroying her mistress; if she could have foreseen that such a consequence would follow, she would rather have died herself.
During the remaining period from the death of Gebhard’s wife to that of her quitting his service, she admitted having frequently administered poisoned wine, beer, coffee and other liquors to such guests as she disliked or to her fellow servants when any of them had the bad luck to fall under her displeasure. The poisoning of the salt box she also admitted; but with the strange and inveterate hypocrisy which ran through all her confessions, she maintained that the arsenic in the salt barrel must have been put in by some other person.
The fate of such a wretch could not, of course, be doubtful. She was condemned to be beheaded, and listened to the sentence apparently without emotion. She told the judge that her death was a fortunate thing for others, for she felt that she could not havediscontinued poisoning had she lived. On the scaffold, she bowed courteously to the judge and assistants, walked calmly up to the block and received the blow without shrinking.