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 awkward shape 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 be despatched 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 hundred florins 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 the other 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 my death 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 plan of 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 everything in 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 was now 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.