The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck, vol 1 | Page 4

have been engaged. Frederick von
der Trenck, after his release from imprisonment in 1763, married a
burgomaster's daughter, and went into business as a wine merchant.
Then he became adventurous again. His adventures, published in
German in 1786-7, and in his own French version in 1788, formed one
of the most popular books of its time. Seven plays were founded on
them, and ladies in Paris wore their bonnets a la Trenck. But the French
finally guillotined the author, when within a year of threescore and ten,
on the 26th of July, 1794. He had gone to Paris in 1792, and joined
there in the strife of parties. At the guillotine he struggled with the
executioner.
H.M.

THE LIFE OF BARON TRENCK.

CHAPTER I
.
I was born at Konigsberg in Prussia, February 16, 1726, of one of the
most ancient families of the country. My father, who was lord of Great
Scharlach, Schakulack, and Meichen, and major-general of cavalry,

died in 1740, after receiving eighteen wounds in the Prussian service.
My mother was daughter of the president of the high court at
Konigsberg. After my father's death she married Count Lostange,
lieutenant-colonel in the Kiow regiment of cuirassiers, with whom she
went and resided at Breslau. I had two brothers and a sister; my
youngest brother was taken by my mother into Silesia; the other was a
cornet in this last-named regiment of Kiow; and my sister was married
to the only son of the aged General Valdow.
My ancestors are famous in the Chronicles of the North, among the
ancient Teutonic knights, who conquered Courland, Prussia, and
Livonia.
By temperament I was choleric, and addicted to pleasure and
dissipation; my tutors found this last defect most difficult to overcome;
happily, they were aided by a love of knowledge inherent in me, an
emulative spirit, and a thirst for fame, which disposition it was my
father's care to cherish. A too great consciousness of innate worth gave
me a too great degree of pride, but the endeavours of my instructor to
inspire humility were not all lost; and habitual reading, well-timed
praise, and the pleasures flowing from science, made the labours of
study at length my recreation.
My memory became remarkable; I am well read in the Scriptures, the
classics, and ancient history; was acquainted with geography; could
draw; learnt fencing, riding, and other necessary exercises.
My religion was Lutheran; but morality was taught me by my father,
and by the worthy man to whose care he committed the forming of my
heart, whose memory I shall ever hold in veneration. While a boy, I
was enterprising in all the tricks of boys, and exercised my wit in crafty
excuses; the warmth of my passions gave a satiric, biting cast to my
writings, whence it has been imagined, by those who knew but little of
me, I was a dangerous man; though, I am conscious, this was a false
judgment.
A soldier himself, my father would have all his sons the same; thus,
when we quarrelled, we terminated our disputes with wooden sabres,
and, brandishing these, contested by blows for victory, while our father
sat laughing, pleased at our valour and address. This practice, and the
praises he bestowed, encouraged a disposition which ought to have
been counteracted.

Accustomed to obtain the prize, and be the hero of scholastic
contentions, I acquired the bad habit of disputation, and of imagining
myself a sage when little more than a boy. I became stubborn in
argument.; hasty to correct others, instead of patiently attentive: and, by
presumption, continually liable to incite enmity. Gentle to my inferiors,
but impatient of contradiction, and proud of resisting power, I may
hence date, the origin of all my evils.
How might a man, imbued with the heroic principles of liberty, hope
for advancement and happiness, under the despotic and iron
Government of Frederic? I was taught neither to know nor to avoid, but
to despise the whip of slavery. Had I learnt hypocrisy, craft, and
meanness, I had long since become field-marshal, had been in
possession of my Hungarian estates, and had not passed the best years
of my life in the dungeons of Magdeburg. I was addicted to no vice: I
laboured in the cause of science, honour, and virtue; kept no vicious
company; was never in the whole of my life intoxicated; was no
gamester, no consumer of time in idleness nor brutal pleasures; but
devoted many hundred laborious nights to studies that might make me
useful to my country; yet was I punished with a severity too cruel even
for the most worthless, or most villanous.
I mean, in my narrative, to make candour and veracity my guides, and
not to conceal my failings; I wish my work may remain a moral