“As for me, I suffered myself to be led, as if half dead, into the house. A peasant was dispatched to the village.
“An old woman and a pretty girl seemed to take great pity on me, and gave me some bread and milk; but how great was our astonishment when the aged peasant called Schell by his name, and told him he well knew we were deserters, he having the night before been at a neighbouring alehouse, where the officer in pursuit of us came, named and described us, and related the whole history of our flight. The peasant knew Schell, because his son served in his company, and had often spoken of him when he was quartered at Habelschwert.
“Presence of mind and resolution were all that were now left. I instantly ran to the stable, while Schell detained the peasant in the chamber. He, however, was a worthy man, and directed him to the road towards Bohemia. We were still about seven miles from Glatz, having lost ourselves among the mountains, where we had wandered many miles. The daughter followed me. I found three horses in the stable but no bridles. I conjured her in the most passionate manner possible to assist me. She was affected, seemed half willing to follow me, and gave me two bridles. I led the horses to the door, called Schell, and helped him, with his lame leg, on horseback. The old peasant then began to weep, and begged I would not take his horses; but he luckily wanted courage, and perhaps the will to impede us, for with nothing more than a dung fork, in our then feeble condition, he might have stopped us long enough to have called in assistance from the village.
“And now behold us on horseback, without hats or saddles—Schell with his uniform scarf and gorget, and I in my red regimental coat. Still we were in danger of seeing all our hopes vanish, for my horse would not stir from the stable. However, at last, good horseman-like, I made him move. Schell led the way, and we had scarcely gone a hundred paces before we perceived the peasants coming in crowds from the village. As kind fortune would have it, the people were all at church, it being a festival. It was nine in the morning, and had the peasants been at home we had been lost without redemption. We were obliged to take the road to Wunshelburg, and pass through the town where Schell had been quartered a month before, and in which he was known by everybody. Our dress, without hats or saddles, sufficiently proclaimed we were deserters; our horses, however, continued to go tolerably well, and we had the good luck to get through the town, although there was a garrison of one hundred and eighty infantry and twelve horse purposely to arrest deserters. Schell knew the road to Brummen, where we arrived at eleven o’clock, and from thence we went to Braunau, where we were safe.”
During the first few months following his escape, Trenck
wandered about miserably, pursued everywhere by the vengeance of Frederick, and being obliged sometimes to resist sword in hand persons sent in pursuit of him. Proscribed in his own country, he had taken service with Austria. At length, after a series of adventures, of which he gives an account in his “Memoirs” that bears all the impress of sincerity, notwithstanding the extraordinary events to which it refers, he found himself at Dantzic, where he was delivered up to the King of Prussia by the treachery of the imperial resident and the authorities of the city. He was then taken to Magdeburg, and imprisoned in the citadel.
“My dungeon,” he says, “was in a casemate, the fore part of which, six feet wide and ten feet long, was divided by a party wall. In the inner wall were two doors, and a third at the entrance of the casemate itself. The window in the outer wall, which was seven feet thick, was so situated, that though I had light, I could see neither heaven nor earth, but only the roof of the magazine within, and outside this window were iron bars, and in the space between, an iron grating, so narrow and with such small interstices that it was impossible I should see any person without the prison or that any person should see me. On the outside was a wooden palisado six feet from the wall, by which the sentinels were prevented conveying anything to me. I had a mattress, and a bedstead, fastened to the floor by iron cramps so firmly that it was impossible to move it up to the window. Beside the door was a small iron stove and a table, in like manner fixed to the floor. I was not yet put in irons, and my allowance was a pound and a half per day of ammunition bread, and a jug of water. From my youth I always had a good appetite, and my bread was so mouldy I could at first scarcely eat the half of it. This was one result of the commandant’s avarice, who endeavoured to profit even by the food supplies of the unfortunate prisoners. It is impossible for me to describe to my reader the excess of tortures that during eleven months I endured from ravenous hunger. I could easily have devoured six pounds of bread every day; and every twenty-four hours, after having received and swallowed my small portion I continued as hungry as before I began, yet I was obliged to wait another twenty-four hours for a new morsel. How willingly would I have signed a bill of exchange for a thousand ducats, on my property at Vienna, only to have satiated my hunger on dry bread. Scarcely had I dropped into a sweet sleep before I dreamed I was feasting at some table, luxuriously loaded, where the whole company were astonished to see me, eating like a glutton, to such an extent was my imagination heated by the sensation of famine.