Their appointed hour of meeting was nine in the morning, but they seldom assembled before eleven. The president then told his beads, and muttered his prayers. Someone got up and harangued, while the remainder, in pairs, amused themselves with talking instead of listening, after which the news of the day became the common topic of conversation, and the council broke up, the court being first adjourned some three weeks, without coming to any determination. This was called judicium delegatum in causis Trenkiansis; and when at last they came to a conclusion, the sentence was such as I shall ever shudder at and abhor.
The real estates of Trenck consisted in the great Sclavonian manors, called the lordships of Pakratz, Prestowatz, and Pleternitz, which he had inherited from his father, and were the family property, together with Velika and Nustak, which he himself had purchased: the annual income of these was 60,000 florins, and they contained more than two hundred villages and hamlets. The laws of Hungary require—
1st. That those who purchase estates shall obtain the consensus regius (royal consent).
2nd. That the seller shall possess, and make over the right of property, together with that of transferring or alienating, and
3dly. That the purchaser shall be a native born, or have bought his naturalisation.
In default of all, or any of these, the Fiscus, on the death of the purchaser, takes possession, repaying the summa emptitia, or purchase-money, together within what can be shown to have been laid out in improvements, or the summa inscriptitia, the sum at which it stands rated in the fiscal register.
Without form or notice, the Hungarian Fiscal President, Count Grassalkowitz, took possession of all the Trenck estates on his decease, in the name of the Fiscus. The prize was great, not so much because of the estates themselves, as of the personal property upon them. Trenck had sent loads of merchandise to his estates, of linen, ingots of gold and silver from Bavaria, Alsatia, and Silesia. He had a vast storehouse of arms, and of saddles; also the great silver service of the Emperor Charles VII., which he had brought from Munich, with the service of plate of the King of Prussia; and the personal property on these estates was affirmed considerably to exceed in value the estates themselves.
I was not long since informed by one of the first generals, whose honour is undoubted, that several waggons were laden with these rich effects and sent to Mihalefze. His testimony was indubitable; he knew the two pandours, who were the confidants of Trenck, and the keepers of his treasures; and these, during the general plunder, each seized a bag of pearls, and fled to Turkey, where they became wealthy merchants. His rich stud of horses were taken, and the very cows driven off the farms. His stand of arms consisted of more than three thousand rare pieces. Trenck had affirmed he had sent linen to the amount of fifty thousand florins, in chests from Dunnhausen and Cersdorf, in the county of Glatz, to his estates. The pillage was general; and when orders came to send all the property of Trenck and deliver it to his universal heir, nothing remained that any person would accept. I have myself seen, in a certain Hungarian nobleman’s house, some valuable arms, which I knew I had been robbed of! and I bought at Esseck some silver plates on which were the arms of Prussia, that had been sold by Counsellor D-n, who had been empowered to take possession of these estates, and had thus rendered himself rich. Of this I procured an attestation, and proved the theft: I complained aloud at Vienna, but received an order from the court to be silent, under pain of displeasure, and also to go no more into Sclavonia. The principal reason of my loss of the landed property in Hungary was my having dared to make inquiries concerning the personal, not one guinea of which was ever brought to account. I then proved my right to the family estates, left by my uncle, beyond all dispute, and also of those purchased by my cousin. The commissions appointed to inquire into these rights even confirmed them; yet after they had been thus established, I received the following order from the court, in the hand of the Empress herself:—“The president, Count Grassalkowitz, takes it upon his conscience that the Sclavonian estates do not descend to Trenck, in natura; he must therefore receive the summa emptitia et inscriptitia, together with the money he can show to have been expended in improvements.”
CHAPTER XIV.
And herewith ended my pleadings and my hopes. I had sacrificed my property, laboured through sixty-three inferior suits, and lost this great cause without a trial. I could have remained satisfied with the loss of the personal property: the booty of a soldier, like the wealth amassed by a minister, appears to me little better than a public robbery; but the acquirements of my ancestors, my birth-right by descent, of these I could not be deprived without excessive cruelty. Oh patience! patience!—Yet shall my children never become the footmen, nor grooms, of those who have robbed them of their inheritance; and to them I bequeathed my rights in all their power: nor shall any man prevent my crying aloud, so long as justice shall not be done.