“On our return from dining with the Prestowitz family, Rossworm, thinking to oblige me, engaged me in a rather unfortunate affair. He had bargained with an innkeeper of the New Town that, for two hundred ducats, he should surrender to him his two daughters, who were very beautiful. I am of opinion, as will appear from the sequel, that he had taken advantage of this poor man when he was drunk to obtain such a promise from him. When we had arrived within some two hundred paces of this inn, we alighted from our coach, which we ordered to turn round and await our return; and Rossworm and I, with a page of his, who was to act as interpreter, went the rest of the way on foot.
“We found the father in the room where the stove stood, and with him his two daughters, who were going about their work. He was very astonished to see us, and still more so when Rossworm made him understand that each of us had brought him a hundred ducats for what the innkeeper had promised him. Thereupon the man cried out that he had never promised any such thing, and, opening the window, shouted twice: ‘Mortriau! Mortriau!’ that is to say, ‘Murder!’ Then Rossworm held his poniard to the innkeeper’s throat, and directed the page to tell him that if he spoke to the neighbours or did not order his daughters to do our will, he was a dead man, and told me to take away one of the girls.... But I, who had been at first under the impression that I was engaged in an affair in which all the parties were in accord, answered that I did not intend to touch the girls. Rossworm then said that, if I did not wish to do so, I must come and hold my poniard to the father’s throat, and that he would take one of the girls away.... This I did very reluctantly; and the poor girls wept.”
The odious Rossworm had already seized upon one of the unfortunate girls to drag her away, when a great shouting reached their ears, and looking out of the window, he saw a large and threatening crowd, which had come in response to the innkeeper’s cries for help, gathered before the house. Thereupon he let his intended victim go, and told Bassompierre that they were in grave danger, and would need all their courage and presence of mind if they wanted to leave that house alive. Then, turning to the innkeeper, he told him—or rather made the page do so—that he would kill him, if he did not contrive their escape from the mob. Now, the innkeeper was wearing a long smock, under which Rossworm placed his poniard, pressing the point against the man’s flesh, and told Bassompierre to give his dagger to the page, that he might do likewise. In this fashion they went out of the room and along the passage to the door of the inn, where the trembling Boniface gave some apparently satisfactory explanation to his neighbours, for the latter, who, of course, could not see the poniards pressed against his back, began to disperse.
Then Rossworm and the page, imagining that the danger was over, sheathed their poniards, and they and Bassompierre began to walk away in the direction of their coach. But they had gone but a few paces, when the innkeeper, recovering from his alarm, began to shout: “Murder! Murder!” again with all the strength of his lungs. They took to their heels and ran for their lives, pursued by an infuriated mob, who pelted them with volleys of stones, which they had apparently collected at the first alarm.
“Then Rossworm cried out to me: ‘Brother, sauve qui peut! If you fall, do not expect me to pick you up, for each of us must look to his own safety.’ We ran pretty fast, but the rain of stones incommoded us greatly, and one of them, striking Rossworm in the back, brought him to the ground. I, who did not wish to treat him in the manner in which he had just announced his intention of treating me, raised him up and helped him along for some twenty paces, when, happily, we reached our coach. Into this we threw ourselves, and were soon in safety in the Old Town, having escaped from the paws of more than four hundred people.”
Next day, Rossworm, presumably out of gratitude to Bassompierre for having saved his life at the risk of his own, secured for him the high privilege of admission to the Emperor’s ante-chamber, which was usually only accorded to princes and very great nobles. Here he appears to have met the Count von Wallenstein, the great captain of the Thirty Years’ War, then a youth of twenty, who, a few days later, challenged him to a match at tennis. During the game the Emperor appeared at a window of the palace which overlooked the tennis-court, and remained there for some time, an interested spectator. The following morning his Majesty gave orders that Bassompierre should be presented to him, and received him very graciously indeed, observing that his family had always been faithful servants of the Imperial House, and that he had heard that he had conducted himself very well in Hungary. He added that, if he wished to enter his service and would inform him of what post he desired, he would be very pleased to appoint him to it. Maximilian spoke in Spanish and requested Bassompierre to reply in the same language.
Shortly after this, the Emperor sent the Count von Fürstenberg to inform Bassompierre that he proposed making certain changes in the cavalry of the Imperial Army, and that if he were willing to go to Lorraine and raise three new companies of light horse and three of musketeers for service in Hungary, he would appoint him colonel of a thousand horse. This offer Bassompierre accepted, “foreseeing,” says he, “that France would remain at peace for a long while, and urged thereto by the intense love with which Madame Esther had inspired me.”
His attachment to this young lady, however, made him far from anxious to hasten his departure for Lorraine, and he therefore decided to postpone it until after the Carnival, which “Madame Esther,” who had returned to Karlstein, intended to pass at Prague. But, to his great disappointment, her father, the burgrave, fell ill and she was obliged to remain at Karlstein. However, notwithstanding the absence of his inamorata, he contrived to spend a very pleasant time, “with continual feasts and festivities and very high play at prime between five or six of us, to wit, Count von Stahrenberg, President of the Kingdom of Bohemia, Adam Galpopel, Grand Prior of Bohemia, Kinsky, Rossworm and myself. And there was not an evening in which I did not win or lose two or three thousand thalers.”
On the occasion of the marriage of the Emperor’s Grand Equerry, which took place during the Carnival, and the festivities in connection with which lasted several days, Bassompierre arranged with Rossworm and six other nobles to parade the town on horseback, masked and splendidly dressed. As they were passing the Town Hall, some constables came up to Bassompierre and Rossworm, who, preceded by their pages bearing their swords aloft, were riding at the head of the party, and informed them that the Emperor had forbidden anyone to pass through the town masked. They, however, pretended that they did not understand Sclavonic, and rode on. No attempt was made to stop them, but, on their return, they found chains stretched across all the streets leading to the square in which the Town Hall stood, except the one by which they entered, and, so soon as they had passed, chains were stretched across that also. Then a whole company of constables appeared upon the scene, and, beginning with the hindmost of the party, seized their companions, who, not having brought their swords with them, were unable to offer any resistance, and haled them off to prison. Meanwhile, Bassompierre and Rossworm had taken their swords from their pages, but they did not draw them. However, when one of the constables attempted to seize the bridle of Bassompierre’s horse, Rossworm struck him on the hand with his sheathed sword, and, the blade, breaking through the scabbard, wounded the man somewhat severely. They were immediately surrounded by more than two hundred police, but, drawing their swords, they contrived to prevent them from closing with them and dragging them off their horses, though not without receiving a volley of blows on their backs and arms.
“This went on for some time,” continues Bassompierre, “until a chief justice came out of the Town Hall and raised his bâton (which they call regimentstock). Upon this, all the constables laid their halberds on the ground; and Rossworm (who knew the custom) threw down his sword and called out to me to do the same instantly. I did so, otherwise I should have been declared a rebel to the Emperor and punished as such. Rossworm asked me to answer when the judge began to question us, as he did not wish to be recognised. The judge inquired who I was, and I told him without disguising anything. He then asked the name of my companion, and I answered that it was Rossworm, whereupon he offered us the most profuse apologies. Rossworm, annoyed that I had given his name, when he saw that it was useless to deny it, fell into a rage and threatened the judge and the constables that he would complain to the Emperor and the Chancellor and have them severely punished. They tried every means to appease him, but he, as well as myself, had been too well beaten to be satisfied with words. They delivered up to us our six companions, who were more fortunate than ourselves, since they had suffered nothing worse than a fright, and we rode away. In the evening we attended the wedding festivities as though nothing had happened. But, next morning, Rossworm went to the Chancellor, to whom he spoke very arrogantly, and the Chancellor, to satisfy us, threw more than 150 constables into prison. Their wives were every day at my door to obtain a pardon for them, and I solicited Rossworm very earnestly to grant it. But he was inexorable, and made them lie a fortnight in prison during the rigour of winter, from the effects of which two of them died. Finally, with great difficulty, I contrived to get the rest set at liberty.”