I will now show how I have been deprived of this valuable inheritance, while I have been obliged to pay above sixty thousand florins, to defray legacies he had left; and when this narrative is read, it will no longer be affirmed at Vienna, that by the favours of the court I inherited seventy-six thousand florins, or the lordship of Zwerbach from Trenck, I shall proceed to my proofs.
The father of Baron Trenck, who died in the year 1743, governor of Leitschau, in Hungary, named me in his will the successor of his son, should he die without heirs male.
This will was sent to be proved, according to form, at Vienna, after having been authenticated in the most legal manner in Hungary. The court called Hofkriegsrath, at Vienna, neglected to provide a curator for the security of the next heir; yet this could not annul my right of succession. When Trenck succeeded his father, he entered no protest to this, his father’s will; therefore, dying without children, in the year 1749, my claim was indisputable. I was heir had he made no will: and even in case of confiscation, my title to his father’s estates still remained valid.
Trenck knew this but too well: he, as I have before related, was my worst enemy, and even attempted my life. I will therefore proceed to show the real intent of this his crafty testament.
Determined no longer to live in confinement, or to ask forgiveness, by which, it is well known, he might have obtained his freedom, having lost all hopes of reimbursing his losses, his avarice was reduced to despair. His desire of fame was unbounded, and this could no way be gratified but by having himself canonized for a saint, after spending his life in committing all the ravages of a pandour. Hence originated the following facts:—
He knew I was the legal claimant to his father’s estates. His father had bought with the family money, remitted from Prussia, the lordships of Prestowacz and Pleternitz, in Sclavonia, and he himself, during his father’s life, and with his father’s money, had purchased the lordship of Pakratz, for forty thousand florins: this must therefore descend also to me, he having no more power to will this from me, than he had the remainder of his paternal inheritance. The property he himself had gained was consigned to administrators, but a hundred thousand florins had been expended in lawsuits, and sixty-three suits continued actually pending against him in court; the legacies he bequeathed amounted to eighty thousand florins. These, he saw, could not be paid, should I claim nothing more than the paternal inheritance; he, therefore, to render me unfortunate after his death, craftily named me his universal heir, without mentioning his father’s will, but endeavoured, by his mysterious death, and the following conditions, to enforce the execution of his own will.
First,—I was to become a Catholic.
Secondly,—I was to serve only the house of Austria; and,
Lastly,—He made his whole estate, without excepting the paternal inheritance, a Fidei commissum.
Hence arose all my misfortunes, as indeed was his intention; for, but a short time before his death, he said to the Governor, Baron Kottulinsky, “I shall now die contented, since I have been able to trick my cousin, and render him wretched.”