The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 04

The Governor of the province, highly incensed at this defiance, placed himself with several knights at the head of a troop of one hundred and fifty men. At a written request he gave Squire Wenzel Tronka a guard to protect him from the violence of the people, who flatly insisted that he must be removed from the city. After the Governor had had guards placed in all the villages in the vicinity, and also had sentinels stationed on the city walls to prevent a surprise, he himself set out on Saint Gervaise's day to capture the dragon who was devastating the land. The horse-dealer was clever enough to keep out of the way of this troop. By skilfully executed marches he enticed the Governor five leagues away from the city, and by means of various manoeuvres he gave the other the mistaken notion that, hard pressed by superior numbers, he was going to throw himself into Brandenburg. Then, when the third night closed in, he made a forced ride back to Wittenberg, and for the third time set fire to the city. Herse, who crept into the town in disguise, carried out this horrible feat of daring, and because of a sharp north wind that was blowing, the fire proved so destructive and spread so rapidly that in less than three hours forty-two houses, two churches, several convents and schools, and the very residence of the electoral governor of the province were reduced to ruins and ashes.

The Governor who, when the day broke, believed his adversary to be in Brandenburg, returned by forced marches when informed of what had happened, and found the city in a general uproar. The people were massed by thousands around the Squire's house, which was barricaded with heavy timbers and posts, and with wild cries they demanded his expulsion from the city. Two burgomasters, Jenkens and Otto by name, who were present in their official dress at the head of the entire city council, tried in vain to explain that they absolutely must await the return of a courier who had been dispatched to the President of the Chancery of State for permission to send the Squire to Dresden, whither he himself, for many reasons, wished to go. The unreasoning crowd, armed with pikes and staves, cared nothing for these words. After handling rather roughly some councilors who were insisting upon the adoption of vigorous measures, the mob was about to storm the house where the Squire was and level it to the ground, when the Governor, Otto von Gorgas, appeared in the city at the head of his troopers. This worthy gentleman, who was wont by his mere presence to inspire people to respectful obedience, had, as though in compensation for the failure of the expedition from which he was returning, succeeded in taking prisoner three stray members of the incendiary's band, right in front of the gates of the city. While the prisoners were being loaded with chains before the eyes of the people, he made a clever speech to the city councilors, assuring them that he was on Kohlhaas' track and thought that he would soon be able to bring the incendiary himself in chains. By force of all these reassuring circumstances he succeeded in allaying the fears of the assembled crowd and in partially reconciling them to the presence of the Squire until the return of the courier from Dresden. He dismounted from his horse and, accompanied by some knights, entered the house after the posts and stockades had been cleared away. He found the Squire, who was falling from one faint into another, in the hands of two doctors, who with essences and stimulants were trying to restore him to consciousness. As Sir Otto von Gorgas realized that this was not the moment to exchange any words with him on the subject of the behavior of which he had been guilty, he merely told him, with a look of quiet contempt, to dress himself, and, for his own safety, to follow him to the apartments of the knight's prison. They put a doublet and a helmet on the Squire and when, with chest half bare on account of the difficulty he had in breathing, he appeared in the street on the arm of the Governor and his brother-in-law, the Count of Gerschau, blasphemous and horrible curses against him rose to heaven. The mob, whom the lansquenets found it very difficult to restrain, called him a bloodsucker, a miserable public pest and a tormentor of men, the curse of the city of Wittenberg, and the ruin of Saxony. After a wretched march through the devastated city, in the course of which the Squire's helmet fell off several times without his missing it and had to be replaced on his head by the knight who was behind him, they reached the prison at last, where he disappeared into a tower under the protection of a strong guard. Meanwhile the return of the courier with the decree of the Elector had aroused fresh alarm in the city. For the Saxon government, to which the citizens of Dresden had made direct application in an urgent petition, refused to permit the Squire to sojourn in the electoral capital before the incendiary had been captured. The Governor was instructed rather to use all the power at his command to protect the Squire just where he was, since he had to stay somewhere, but in order to pacify the good city of Wittenberg, the inhabitants were informed that a force of five hundred men under the command of Prince Friedrich of Meissen was already on the way to protect them from further molestation on the part of Kohlhaas.

The Governor saw clearly that a decree of this kind was wholly inadequate to pacify the people. For not only had several small advantages gained by the horse-dealer in skirmishes outside the city sufficed to spread extremely disquieting rumors as to the size to which his band had grown; his way of waging warfare with ruffians in disguise who slunk about under cover of darkness with pitch, straw, and sulphur, unheard of and quite without precedent as it was, would have rendered ineffectual an even larger protecting force than the one which was advancing under the Prince of Meissen. After reflecting a short time, the Governor determined therefore to suppress altogether the decree he had received; he merely posted at all the street corners a letter from the Prince of Meissen, announcing his arrival. At daybreak a covered wagon left the courtyard of the knight's prison and took the road to Leipzig, accompanied by four heavily armed troopers who, in an indefinite sort of way, let it be understood that they were bound for the Pleissenburg. The people having thus been satisfied on the subject of the ill-starred Squire, whose existence seemed identified with fire and sword, the Governor himself set out with a force of three hundred men to join Prince Friedrich of Meissen. In the mean time Kohlhaas, thanks to the strange position which he had assumed in the world, had in truth increased the numbers of his band to one hundred and nine men, and he had also collected in Jessen a store of weapons with which he had fully armed them. When informed of the two tempests that were sweeping down upon him, he decided to go to meet them with the speed of the hurricane before they should join to overwhelm him. In accordance with this plan he attacked the Prince of Meissen the very next night, surprising him near Mühlberg. In this fight, to be sure, he was greatly grieved to lose Herse, who was struck down at his side by the first shots but, embittered by this loss, in a three-hour battle he so roughly handled the Prince of Meissen, who was unable to collect his forces in the town, that at break of day the latter was obliged to take the road back to Dresden, owing to several severe wounds which he had received and the complete disorder into which his troops had been thrown. Kohlhaas, made foolhardy by this victory, turned back to attack the Governor before the latter could learn of it, fell upon him at midday in the open country near the village of Damerow, and fought him until nightfall, with murderous losses, to be sure, but with corresponding success. Indeed, the next morning he would certainly with the remnant of his band have renewed the attack on the Governor, who had thrown himself into the churchyard at Damerow, if the latter had not received through spies the news of the defeat of the Prince at Mühlberg and therefore deemed it wiser to return to Wittenberg to await a more propitious moment.

Five days after the dispersion of these two bodies of troops, Kohlhaas arrived before Leipzig and set fire to the city on three different sides. In the mandate which he scattered broadcast on this occasion he called himself "a vicegerent of the archangel Michael who had come to visit upon all who, in this controversy, should take the part of the Squire, punishment by fire and sword for the villainy into which the whole world was plunged." At the same time, having surprised the castle at Lützen and fortified himself in it, he summoned the people to join him and help establish a better order of things. With a sort of insane fanaticism the mandate was signed: "Done at the seat of our provisional world government, our ancient castle at Lützen."

As the good fortune of the inhabitants of Leipzig would have it, the fire, owing to a steady rain which was falling, did not spread, so that, thanks to the rapid action of the means at hand for extinguishing fires, only a few small shops which lay around the Pleissenburg went up in flames; nevertheless the presence of the desperate incendiary, and his erroneous impression that the Squire was in Leipzig, caused unspeakable consternation in the city. When a troop of one hundred and eighty men at arms that had been sent against him returned defeated, nothing else remained for the city councilors, who did not wish to jeopardize the wealth of the place, but to bar the gates completely and set the citizens to keep watch day and night outside the walls. In vain the city council had declarations posted in the villages of the surrounding country, with the positive assurance that the Squire was not in the Pleissenburg. The horse-dealer, in similar manifestos, insisted that he was in the Pleissenburg and declared that if the Squire were not there, he, Kohlhaas, would at any rate proceed as though he were until he should have been told the name of the place where his enemy was to be found. The Elector, notified by courier of the straits to which the city of Leipzig was reduced, declared that he was already gathering a force of two thousand men and would put himself at their head in order to capture Kohlhaas. He administered to Sir Otto von Gorgas a severe rebuke for the misleading and ill-considered artifice to which he had resorted to rid the vicinity of Wittenberg of the incendiary. Nor can any one describe the confusion which seized all Saxony, and especially the electoral capital, when it was learned there that in all the villages near Leipzig a declaration addressed to Kohlhaas had been placarded, no one knew by whom, to the effect that "Wenzel, the Squire, was with his cousins Hinz and Kunz in Dresden."

It was under these circumstances that Doctor Martin Luther, supported by the authority which his position in the world gave him, undertook the task of forcing Kohlhaas, by the power of kindly words, back within the limits set by the social order of the day. Building upon an element of good in the breast of the incendiary, he had posted in all the cities and market-towns of the Electorate a placard addressed to him, which read as follows:

"Kohlhaas, thou who claimest to be sent to wield the sword of justice, what is it that thou, presumptuous man, art making bold to attempt in the madness of thy stone-blind passion—thou who art filled from head to foot with injustice? Because the sovereign, to whom thou art subject, has denied thee thy rights—thy rights in the struggle for a paltry trifle—thou arisest, godless man, with fire and sword, and like a wolf of the wilderness dost burst upon the peaceful community which he protects. Thou, who misleadest men with this declaration full of untruthfulness and guile, dost thou think, sinner, to satisfy God therewith in that future day which shall shine into the recesses of every heart? How canst thou say that thy rights have been denied thee—thou, whose savage breast, animated by the inordinate desire for base revenge, completely gave up the endeavor to procure justice after the first half-hearted attempts, which came to naught? Is a bench full of constables and beadles who suppress a letter that is presented, or who withhold a judgment that they should deliver—is this thy supreme authority? And must I tell thee, impious man, that the supreme authority of the land knows nothing whatever about thine affair—nay, more, that the sovereign against whom thou art rebelling does not even know thy name, so that when thou shalt one day come before the throne of God thinking to accuse him, he will be able to say with a serene countenance, 'I have done no wrong to this man, Lord, for my soul is ignorant of his existence.' Know that the sword which thou wieldest is the sword of robbery and bloodthirstiness. A rebel art thou, and no warrior of the righteous God; wheel and gallows are thy goal on earth—gallows and, in the life to come, damnation which is ordained for crime and godlessness.

Wittenberg, etc. MARTIN LUTHER."

When Sternbald and Waldmann, to their great consternation, discovered the placard which had been affixed to the gateway of the castle at Lützen during the night, Kohlhaas within the castle was just revolving in his distracted mind a new plan for the burning of Leipzig—for he placed no faith in the notices posted in the villages announcing that Squire Wenzel was in Dresden, since they were not signed by any one, let alone by the municipal council, as he had required. For several days the two men hoped in vain that Kohlhaas would perceive Luther's placard, for they did not care to approach him on the subject. Gloomy and absorbed in thought, he did indeed, in the evening, appear, but only to give his brief commands, and he noticed nothing. Finally one morning, when he was about to have two of his followers strung up for plundering in the vicinity against his express orders, Sternbald and Waldmann determined to call his attention to it. With the pomp which he had adopted since his last manifesto—a large cherubim's sword on a red leather cushion, ornamented with golden tassels, borne before him, and twelve men with burning torches following him—Kohlhaas was just returning from the place of execution, while the people on both sides timidly made way for him. At that moment the two men, with their swords under their arms, walked, in a way that could not fail to excite his surprise, around the pillar to which the placard was attached.

When Kohlhaas, sunk in thought and with his hands folded behind his back, came under the portal, he raised his eyes and started back in surprise, and as the two men at sight of him drew back respectfully, he advanced with rapid steps to the pillar, watching them absent-mindedly. But who can describe the storm of emotion in his soul when he beheld there the paper accusing him of injustice, signed by the most beloved and honored name he knew—the name of Martin Luther! A dark flush spread over his face; taking off his helmet he read the document through twice from beginning to end, then walked back among his men with irresolute glances as though he were about to speak, yet said nothing. He unfastened the paper from the pillar, read it through once again, and cried, "Waldmann! have my horse saddled!"—then, "Sternbald, follow me into the castle!" and with that he disappeared. It had needed but these few words of that godly man to disarm him suddenly in the midst of all the dire destruction that he was plotting.

He threw on the disguise of a Thuringian farmer and told Sternbald that a matter of the greatest importance obliged him to go to Wittenberg. In the presence of some of his most trustworthy men he turned over to Sternbald the command of the band remaining in Lützen, and with the assurance that he would be back in three days, during which time no attack was to be feared, he departed for Wittenberg. He put up at an inn under an assumed name, and at nightfall, wrapped in his cloak and provided with a brace of pistols which he had taken at the sack of Tronka Castle, entered Luther's room. When Luther, who was sitting at his desk with a mass of books and papers before him, saw the extraordinary stranger enter his room and bolt the door behind him, he asked who he was and what he wanted. The man, who was holding his hat respectfully in his hand, had no sooner, with a diffident presentiment of the terror that he would cause, made answer that he was Michael Kohlhaas, the horse-dealer, than Luther cried out, "Stand far back from me!" and rising from the desk added, as he hurried toward a bell, "Your breath is pestilence, your presence destruction!"

Without stirring from the spot Kohlhaas drew his pistol and said, "Most reverend Sir, if you touch the bell this pistol will stretch me lifeless at your feet! Sit down and hear me. You are not safer among the angels, whose psalms you are writing down, than you are with me."

Luther sat down and asked, "What do you want?" Kohlhaas answered, "I wish to refute the opinion you have of me, that I am an unjust man! You told me in your placard that my sovereign knows nothing about my case. Very well; procure me a safe-conduct and I will go to Dresden and lay it before him."

"Impious and terrible man!" cried Luther, puzzled and, at the same time, reassured by these words. "Who gave you the right to attack Squire Tronka in pursuance of a decree issued on your own authority, and, when you did not find him in his castle, to visit with fire and sword the whole community which protects him?"

Kohlhaas answered, "Reverend Sir, no one, henceforth. Information which I received from Dresden deceived and misled me! The war which I am waging against society is a crime, so long as I haven't been cast out—and you have assured me that I have not."

"Cast out!" cried Luther, looking at him. "What mad thoughts have taken possession of you? Who could have cast you out from the community of the state in which you lived? Indeed where, as long as states have existed, has there ever been a case of any one, no matter who, being cast out of such a community?"

"I call that man cast out," answered Kohlhaas, clenching his fist, "who is denied the protection of the laws. For I need this protection, if my peaceable business is to prosper. Yes, it is for this that, with all my possessions, I take refuge in this community, and he who denies me this protection casts me out among the savages of the desert; he places in my hand—how can you try to deny it?—the club with which to protect myself."

"Who has denied you the protection of the laws?" cried Luther. "Did I not write you that your sovereign, to whom you addressed your complaint, has never heard of it? If state-servants behind his back suppress lawsuits or otherwise trifle with his sacred name without his knowledge, who but God has the right to call him to account for choosing such servants, and are you, lost and terrible man, entitled to judge him therefor?"

"Very well," answered Kohlhaas, "if the sovereign does not cast me out I will return again to the community which he protects. Procure for me, I repeat it, safe-conduct to Dresden; then I will disperse the band of men that I have collected in the castle at Lützen and I will once again lay my complaint, which was rejected, before the courts of the land."

With an expression of vexation, Luther tossed in a heap the papers that were lying on his desk, and was silent. The attitude of defiance which this singular man had assumed toward the state irritated him, and reflecting upon the judgment which Kohlhaas had issued at Kohlhaasenbrück against the Squire, he asked what it was that he demanded of the tribunal at Dresden. Kohlhaas answered, "The punishment of the Squire according to the law; restoration of the horses to their former condition; and compensation for the damages which I, as well as my groom Herse, who fell at Mühlberg, have suffered from the outrage perpetrated upon us."

Luther cried, "Compensation for damages! Money by the thousands, from Jews and Christians, on notes and securities, you have borrowed to defray the expenses of your wild revenge! Shall you put that amount also on the bill when it comes to reckoning up the costs?"

"God forbid!" answered Kohlhaas. "House and farm and the means that I possessed I do not demand back, any more than the expenses of my wife's funeral! Herse's old mother will present the bill for her son's medical treatment, as well as a list of those things which he lost at Tronka Castle; and the loss which I suffered on account of not selling the black horses the government may have estimated by an expert."

Luther exclaimed, as he gazed at him, "Mad, incomprehensible, and amazing man! After your sword has taken the most ferocious revenge upon the Squire which could well be imagined, what impels you to insist upon a judgment against him, the severity of which, when it is finally pronounced, will fall so lightly upon him?"

Kohlhaas answered, while a tear rolled down his cheek, "Most reverend Sir! It has cost me my wife; Kohlhaas intends to prove to the world that she did not perish in an unjust quarrel. Do you, in these particulars, yield to my will and let the court of justice speak; in all other points that may be contested I will yield to you."

Luther said, "See here, what you demand is just, if indeed the circumstances are such as is commonly reported; and if you had only succeeded in having your suit decided by the sovereign before you arbitrarily proceeded to avenge yourself, I do not doubt that your demands would have been granted, point for point. But, all things considered, would it not have been better for you to pardon the Squire for your Redeemer's sake, take back the black horses, thin and worn-out as they were, and mount and ride home to Kohlhaasenbrück to fatten them in your own stable?"

Kohlhaas answered, "Perhaps!" Then, stepping to the window, "Perhaps not, either! Had I known that I should be obliged to set them on their feet again with blood from the heart of my dear wife, I might, reverend Sir, perhaps have done as you say and not have considered a bushel of oats! But since they have now cost me so dear, let the matter run its course, say I; have judgment be pronounced as is due me, and have the Squire fatten my horses for me."

Turning back to his papers with conflicting thoughts, Luther said that he would enter into negotiations with the Elector on his behalf; in the mean time let him remain quietly in the castle at Lützen. If the sovereign would consent to accord him free-conduct, they would make the fact known to him by posting it publicly. "To be sure," he continued, as Kohlhaas bent to kiss his hand, "whether the Elector will be lenient, I do not know, for I have heard that he has collected an army and is about to start out to apprehend you in the castle at Lützen; however, as I have already told you, there shall be no lack of effort on my part"—and, as he spoke, he got up from his chair prepared to dismiss him. Kohlhaas declared that Luther's intercession completely reassured him on that point, whereupon Luther bowed to him with a sweep of his hand. Kohlhaas, however, suddenly sank down on one knee before him and said he had still another favor to ask of him—the fact was, that at Whitsuntide, when it was his custom to receive the Holy Communion, he had failed to go to church on account of this warlike expedition of his. Would Luther have the goodness to receive his confession without further preparation and, in exchange, administer to him the blessed Holy Sacrament? Luther, after reflecting a short time, scanned his face, and said, "Yes, Kohlhaas, I will do so. But the Lord, whose body you desire, forgave his enemy. Will you likewise," he added, as the other looked at him disconcerted, "forgive the Squire who has offended you? Will you go to Tronka Castle, mount your black horses, ride them back to Kohlhaasenbrück and fatten them there?"

"Your Reverence!" said Kohlhaas flushing, and seized his hand—

"Well?"

"Even the Lord did not forgive all his enemies. Let me forgive the Elector, my two gentlemen the castellan and the steward, the lords Hinz and Kunz, and whoever else may have injured me in this affair; but, if it is possible, suffer me to force the Squire to fatten my black horses again for me."

At these words Luther turned his back on him, with a displeased glance, and rang the bell. In answer to the summons an amanuensis came into the anteroom with a light, and Kohlhaas, wiping his eyes, rose from his knees disconcerted; and since the amanuensis was working in vain at the door, which was bolted, and Luther had sat down again to his papers, Kohlhaas opened the door for the man. Luther glanced for an instant over his shoulder at the stranger, and said to the amanuensis, "Light the way!" whereupon the latter, somewhat surprised at the sight of the visitor, took down from the wall the key to the outside door and stepped back to the half-opened door of the room, waiting for the stranger to take his departure. Kohlhaas, holding his hat nervously in both hands, said, "And so, most reverend Sir, I cannot partake of the benefit of reconciliation, which I solicited of you?"