Chapter XI: Letter I: "Neuland, Feb 12th, 1787

"I thought I had so satisfactorily answered you by my last, that you
would have left me in peaceful possession of my sorrows! but your
remarks, entreaties, and remonstrances, succeed each other with such
rapidity, that I am induced to renew the contest. Cowardice, I
believe, you are convinced, is not a native in my heart, and should I
now yield, you might suppose that age and the miseries I have
suffered, had weakened my powers of mind as well as body; and that I
ought to have been classed among the unhappy multitudes whose
sufferings have sunk them to despondency.

"Baron Trenck, that man of many woes, once so despised, but who now is
held in admiration, where he was before so much the object of hatred;
who now speaks so loudly in his own defence, where, formerly, the man
who had but whispered his name would have lived suspected; Baron
Trenck you propose as an example of salvation for me. You are wrong.
Have you considered how dissimilar our past lives have been; how
different, too, are our circumstances? Or, omitting these, have you
considered to whom you would have me appeal?

"In 1767, I became acquainted, in Vienna, with this sufferer of
fortitude, this agreeable companion. We are taught that a noble
aspect bespeaks a corresponding mind; this I believe him to possess.
But what expectations can I form from Baron Trenck?

"I will briefly answer the questions you have put. Baron Trenck was a
man born to inherit great estates; this and the fire of his youth,
fanned by flattering hopes from his famous kinsman, rendered him too
haughty to his King; and this alone was the origin of all his future
sufferings. I, on the contrary, though the son of a Silesian nobleman
of property, did not inherit so much as the pay of a common soldier;
the family having been robbed by the hand of power, after being
accused by wickedness under the mask of virtue. You know my father's
fate, the esteem in which he was held by the Empress Theresa; and that
a pretended miracle was the occasion of his fall. Suddenly was he
plunged from the height to which industry, talents, and virtue had
raised him, to the depth of poverty. At length, at the beginning of
the seven years' war, one of the King of Prussia's subjects
represented him to the Austrian court as a dangerous correspondent of
Marshal Schwerin's. Then at sixty years of age, my father was seized
at Jagerndorf, and imprisoned in the fortress of Gratz, in Styria. He
had an allowance just sufficient to keep him alive in his dungeon;
but, for the space of seven years, never beheld the sun rise or set. I
was a boy when this happened, however, I was not heard. I only
received some pecuniary relief from the Empress, with permission to
shed my blood in her defence. In this situation we first vowed
eternal friendship; but from this I soon was snatched by my father's
enemies. What the Empress had bestowed, her ministers tore from me. I
was seized at midnight, and was brought, in company with two other
officers, to the fortress of Gratz. Here I remained immured six
years. My true name was concealed, and another given me.

"Peace being restored, Trenck, I, and my father were released; but the
mode of our release was very different. The first obtained his
freedom at the intercession of Theresa, she, too, afforded him a
provision. We, on the contrary, according to the amnesty, stipulated
in the treaty of peace, were led from our dungeons as state prisoners,
without inquiry concerning the verity or falsehood of our crimes.
Extreme poverty, wretchedness, and misery, were our reward for the
sufferings we had endured.

"Not only was my health destroyed, but my jawbone was lost, eaten away
by the scurvy. I laid before Frederic the Great the proofs of the
calamities I had undergone, and the dismal state to which I was
reduced, by his foe, and for his sake; entreated bread to preserve me
and my father from starving, but his ear was deaf to my prayer, his
heart insensible to my sighs.

"Providence, however, raised me up a saviour,--Count Gellhorn was the
man. After the taking of Breslau, he had been also sent a state
prisoner to Gratz. During his imprisonment, he had heard the report
of my sufferings and my innocence. No sooner did he learn I was
released, than he became my benefactor, my friend, and restored me to
the converse of men, to which I had so long been dead.

"I defer the continuance of my narrative to the next post. The
remembrance of past woes inflict new ones. I am eternally."