The Marquise of O and Other Stories (15 page)

Meanwhile the return of the courier with the Electoral resolution brought the town new cause for concern. The government, to which the citizens of Dresden had appealed directly in an urgent petition, was not prepared to grant the Junker permission to reside in the capital until the incendiary had been captured; on the contrary it required the governor to use what power he had at his disposal to protect the Junker where he now was, since he had to be somewhere; on the other hand, the worthy town of Wittenberg was to take comfort from the information that a force of five hundred men under the command of Prince Friedrich of Meissen was already on its way to shield it from further onslaught by Kohlhaas. But the governor well knew that a resolution in these terms could not possibly placate the townsfolk, not only because a number of minor victories scored by the horse-dealer at various points outside Wittenberg
had started very ugly rumours about the strength to which his support had grown, but also because the kind of warfare he was waging, at dead of night, with men in disguise, using pitch, straw and sulphur, was new and without parallel and could have rendered ineffectual an even larger force than that brought by the Prince of Meissen. After brief reflection the governor therefore decided to suppress completely the resolution he had received. He simply had a letter in which the Prince of Meissen informed him of his impending arrival posted up all over the town. A covered carriage drove out of the prison-yard at dawn and took the road for Leipzig, accompanied by four heavily armed cavalrymen who intimated, in an equivocal manner, that their destination was the fortress of Pleissenburg. Having thus reassured the townsfolk as to the presence of the ill-starred Junker which had brought fire and the sword upon them, the governor himself set out with a troop of three hundred men to join forces with Prince Friedrich of Meissen. Meanwhile Kohlhaas, thanks to the peculiar role he had assumed in the world, had indeed grown in strength to a hundred and nine men. As he had also laid hands on an arsenal of weapons in Jassen and had armed his band to the teeth with them, he resolved to strike with lightning speed at the double storm he now knew to be approaching, before it could break over him. The very next night he accordingly attacked the Prince of Meissen after dark near Mühlberg. This fight, to his great grief, cost him the life of Herse, who fell at his side in the first exchange of shots; but in his bitter rage at this loss he inflicted, in an engagement lasting three hours, such damage on the Prince, who was unable to marshal his troops in the village, that by daybreak Meissen, badly wounded in several places and with his men in utter disarray, was forced to retreat towards Dresden. Emboldened to madness by this victory, Kohlhaas wheeled upon the governor before the latter could get wind of what had happened, engaging him in broad daylight and in open
countryside near the village of Damerow. The battle raged until dusk and, though his losses were appalling, Kohlhaas gained even advantages. Indeed, the next morning he would undoubtedly with his remaining troops have renewed his attack on the governor, who had fallen back into the churchyard at Damerow, had von Gorgas not been informed of the Prince of Meissen's defeat at Mühlberg and considered it more prudent to retreat similarly to Wittenberg and await a more favourable opportunity. Five days after he had routed both these forces, Kohlhaas reached Leipzig and set three sides of the city on fire.

In the writ which he distributed on this occasion he styled himself ‘an emissary of the Archangel Michael, who has come to punish with fire and sword all those who shall stand on the Junker's side in this quarrel, and to chastise in them the deceitfulness which now engulfs the whole world'. From the castle at Lützen, which he had captured and where he had entrenched himself, he appealed to the people to join him in establishing a better order of things; and the writ was signed, with a touch of madness, ‘Given at the seat of our Provisional World Government, Lützen Castle'. It was fortunate for the inhabitants of Leipzig that steady rain kept the flames from spreading and that consequently, by speedy application of the existing fire-fighting arrangements, it was possible to confine the blaze to a few shops round the Pleissenburg. Nevertheless there was inexpressible panic in the city at the presence of the mad incendiary with his delusion that the Junker was in Leipzig; and when a troop of a hundred and eighty horse sent into the field against him returned in rout, the city council, not wishing to jeopardize the wealth of Leipzig, had no choice but to barricade all the gates and put the citizens on day and night guard outside the walls. It was in vain that the council had proclamations put up in the surrounding villages declaring categorically that the Junker was not in the Pleissenburg; the horse-dealer posted similar notices insisting that he
was, and announcing that even if he were not in the fortress he, Kohlhaas, would continue to act as if he were until told where he really was. The Elector, informed by a courier of Leipzig's peril, declared that he was already assembling an army of two thousand men, which he would personally command, to capture Kohlhaas. He sternly rebuked Otto von Gorgas for the ambiguous and ill-considered subterfuge which he had used in order to get rid of the incendiary from the neighbourhood of Wittenberg; and there was indescribable confusion throughout Saxony and particularly in the capital when it was discovered that a notice addressed to Kohlhaas from an unknown person had been put up in the villages round Leipzig, stating: ‘Junker Wenzel is with his cousins Hinz and Kunz in Dresden'.

Under these circumstances Dr Martin Luther, relying on the power of persuasive words and on the prestige which his position in the world had given him, undertook the task of inducing Kohlhaas to return within the confines of ordered human society; and in the belief that there was an element of integrity in the incendiary's heart, he had a proclamation in the following terms posted up in every town and village of the Electorate:

In the castle at Lützen Kohlhaas, who did not believe the notice that had gone up in the villages saying that Junker Wenzel was in Dresden (for it bore no signature at all, let alone that of the city council as he had demanded), was just turning over in his tormented heart a new plan for setting fire to Leipzig, when to their great dismay Sternbald and Waldmann saw Luther's proclamation, which had been nailed to the castle gate during the night. Not wanting to approach him about it themselves, they waited several days in vain for Kohlhaas to notice it. He was gloomy and turned in upon himself, and although he would appear in the evenings it was only to give brief instructions, and he saw nothing. So when, one morning, he was about to hang two men who had been out plundering in the district in violation of his orders, they resolved to draw his attention to it. He was just returning from the place of execution in the ceremonious manner which had become customary with him since he had issued his latest writ: a great archangelic sword on a red leather cushion, decorated with gold tassels, was borne in front of him, twelve men with burning torches followed, and the crowd timorously made way for him on either side. At that moment Sternbald and Waldmann, carrying their swords under their arms in a manner intended
to attract his attention, stepped round the pillar to which the proclamation was nailed. As Kohlhaas came through the gateway, deep in thought and with his hands clasped behind his back, he raised his eyes and stopped short; the two men deferentially stood aside on seeing him, and he, glancing at them with a preoccupied air, strode quickly up to the pillar. But who shall describe the tumult of his mind when he saw the proclamation, its text accusing him of injustice, and its signature the dearest and most venerable name known to him, that of Martin Luther! His face flushed deep crimson and, removing his helmet, he read it through twice from beginning to end. Turning back to his men with a look of uncertainty on his face, he made as if to speak but said nothing; he removed the notice from the pillar, perused it yet again, then shouted: ‘Waldmann! saddle my horse!' and ‘Sternbald, come with me to the castle!' and vanished. Those few words had sufficed to disarm him in an instant, so low had he sunk. He quickly disguised himself as a Thuringian farmer, informed Sternbald that a matter of great importance obliged him to go to Wittenberg, entrusted him in the presence of some of his best men with the command of the forces he was to leave behind in Lützen, and assuring them that he would be back in three days, during which time there was no fear of an attack, he left for Wittenberg.

He put up at an inn under an assumed name and as soon as night fell, wearing a cloak and carrying a pair of pistols he had taken as booty from Tronka Castle, he entered Luther's room. Luther, who was sitting at his desk over papers and books when he saw this unknown and strange-looking man open the door and bolt it behind him, asked who he was and what he wanted. No sooner had the man, holding his hat respectfully in his hand and diffidently sensing the alarm he was about to cause, answered that he was Michael Kohlhaas, the horse-dealer, than Luther shouted: ‘Leave this place!', adding, as he hastily rose from
his desk to ring the bell, ‘Your breath is pestilent and your presence perdition!' Without stirring from the spot Kohlhaas drew his pistol and said, ‘Your Reverence, if you touch that bell this pistol will stretch me lifeless at your feet! Be seated and listen to me. You are as safe with me as with the angels whose psalms you write down.' Returning to his chair, Luther asked, ‘What do you want?' Kohlhaas replied: ‘To prove that you are wrong in thinking me an unjust man! In your proclamation you say that my sovereign knows nothing of my case: very well then, get me a safe conduct to Dresden and I shall go there and put my case before him.' ‘You impious and terrible man!' cried Luther, whom these words had both bewildered and reassured, ‘who gave you the right to attack Junker von Tronka in pursuance of decrees issued on no authority but your own, and when you could not find him in his castle to come down with fire and sword on the whole community that gave him shelter?' ‘No one, your Reverence,' replied Kohlhaas, ‘from this moment on! Information I received from Dresden deceived me and led me astray! The war I am waging against human society becomes a crime if this assurance you give me is true and society had not cast me out!' ‘Cast you out!' cried Luther, staring at him. ‘What mad idea has taken possession of you? Who do you say has cast you out from the community of the state in which you have lived? Has there ever, so long as states have existed, been a case of anyone, no matter who, becoming an outcast from society?' ‘I call that man an outcast,' answered Kohlhaas, clenching his fist, ‘who is denied the protection of the law! For I need that protection if my peaceful trade is to prosper; indeed it is for the sake of that protection that I take refuge, with all the goods I have acquired, in that community. Whoever withholds it from me drives me out into the wilderness among savages. It is he – how can you deny it? – who puts into my hands the club I am wielding to defend myself.' ‘Who refused you the protection of the law?' cried Luther.
‘Did I not write to you that the petition you delivered has not been seen by the sovereign to whom you delivered it? If state officials suppress lawsuits behind his back or make a mockery of his otherwise sacred name without his knowledge, who but God can call him to account for appointing such servants? Is a cursed wretch like you entitled to judge him for it?' ‘Very well,' replied Kohlhaas, ‘if my sovereign has not cast me out from the community he protects, then I will return to it. I say again, get me a safe conduct to Dresden and I will disperse the troops I have assembled at Lützen Castle; then I shall go to the Saxon High Court and reopen my case which it dismissed.' Luther, with an expression of annoyance, pushed papers to and fro on his desk and said nothing. He was angered by the defiant attitude this strange man adopted towards the state, and thinking of the writ which he had served on the Junker from Kohlhaasenbrück, he asked him what he expected of the Dresden court. Kohlhaas answered: ‘Punishment of the Junker according to the law; the restoration of the horses to their former state; and damages for what I and my groom Herse, who fell at Mühlberg, suffered from the violence that was done to us.' ‘Damages!' cried Luther. ‘You have borrowed sums running into thousands, against bills and securities, from Jews and Christians alike, to pay for your savage personal revenge. Will you add them to your account as well when the reckoning is made?' ‘God forbid!' retorted Kohlhaas, ‘I do not ask for the return of my home and estate and the wealth I enjoyed, any more than the cost of my wife's funeral! Herse's old mother will claim the expenses of his medical treatment and produce an itemized statement of the property her son lost at Tronka Castle; and as for the loss I suffered through not selling the blacks, the government can have that valued by a qualified person.' ‘You insane, incomprehensible, terrible man!' exclaimed Luther, staring at him. ‘You have already taken with your sword the grimmest imaginable revenge on the Junker; what
then still makes you insist on a court judgement against him which, even when it is finally pronounced, will only be of quite trivial severity?' With a tear rolling down his cheek Kohlhaas answered: ‘Your Reverence, that judgement will have cost me my wife; Kohlhaas means to prove to the world that she did not die in an unjust cause. Let me have my will thus far and let the court deliver judgement; in all other points of dispute that may arise I will defer to you.'

‘Well then,' said Luther, ‘if the circumstances really are as public opinion has it, then what you demand is just. If you had succeeded in presenting your case to the sovereign for his decision before you arbitrarily took revenge into your own hands, I do not doubt that your demands would have been met point by point. But would you not, all things considered, have done better to forgive the Junker for your Redeemer's sake, and take the horses away, thin and scraggy as they were, and ride back with them to Kohlhaasenbrück for fattening in your stables?' ‘Maybe,' said Kohlhaas, walking to the window, ‘maybe, or maybe not! If I had known that it would take the heart's blood of my beloved wife to get them on their feet again, I might have done as your Reverence suggests, and not made a fuss of a bushel of oats! But now that they have come to cost me so dear, I think the matter should take its course. Let judgement be passed, as is my due, and let the Junker fatten my blacks for me.' With many thoughts passing through his mind, Luther picked up his papers again and told Kohlhaas that he would negotiate on his behalf with the Elector. In the meantime he should remain quietly in the castle at Lützen. If the sovereign granted him safe conduct he would be told of it by public proclamation. ‘But,' he continued as Kohlhaas bent to kiss his hand, ‘I do not know whether the Elector will show mercy. I have heard that he has assembled an army and is on the point of joining battle with you at Lützen Castle. However, as I have said, I shall spare no efforts.' With these words he stood up as if to dismiss him.
Kohlhaas remarked that he felt no apprehensions on that score with Luther as his advocate, whereupon the latter held out his hand; but the horse-dealer fell on one knee before him and said that he had another favour to beg. At Whitsun, when he usually received Communion, he had failed to go to church, owing to his military activities. Would Luther do him the kindness, without further preparation, of hearing his confession and in return granting him the benefit of the holy sacrament? Luther, after a moment of reflection, looked at him sharply and said: ‘Yes, Kohlhaas, I will. But the Lord, of whose body you wish to partake, forgave his enemy.' And when Kohlhaas, taken aback, stared at him, he added: ‘Will you likewise forgive the Junker who wronged you, go to Tronka Castle, mount your two blacks and ride them back to Kohlhaasenbrück for fattening?' ‘Your Reverence,' said Kohlhaas, flushing and grasping his hand. ‘Well?' ‘– even the Lord did not forgive all his enemies. Let me forgive the Electors, my two sovereigns, the warden and the steward, the lords Hinz and Kunz and whoever else has done me wrong in this affair; but, if it is possible, let the Junker be compelled to fatten my blacks for me again.' At these words Luther turned his back on him with a look of displeasure, and rang the bell. Kohlhaas stood up in confusion, wiping his eyes, as an assistant entered the anteroom with a lamp in response to this summons; and since Luther had sat down again to his papers and the assistant was trying vainly to open the bolted door, Kohlhaas opened it for him. Luther glanced across at the stranger and told his assistant to light him out; whereupon the man, somewhat disconcerted by the sight of the visitor, unhooked a house-key from the wall and, waiting for him to follow, moved back towards the half-open door of the room. Kohlhaas, holding his hat in both hands, said with some emotion: ‘Then, your Reverence, am I not to have the comfort of making my peace, as I asked of you?' Luther replied curtly: ‘With your Saviour, no; with your
sovereign – that depends on the efforts I have promised you to make!' And with that he motioned to the assistant to carry out his duty without further delay. With a look of sorrow Kohlhaas crossed both his hands over his heart, followed the man who lighted him down the stair, and disappeared.

The next morning Luther sent off a letter to the Elector of Saxony. After a caustic passing allusion to the lords Hinz and Kunz von Tronka, the Chamberlain and Cupbearer who attended on His Highness's person and who, as was generally known, had suppressed Kohlhaas's lawsuit, he advised the Elector with characteristic candour that under such unfortunate circumstances there was no other course open but to accept the horse-dealer's proposal and grant him an amnesty for what had occurred so that he might reopen his case. Public opinion, he noted, was on the man's side in a highly dangerous degree, so that even in Wittenberg, which he had set on fire three times, there were those who spoke in his favour; and since if this present proposal were rejected he would undoubtedly, with malevolent animadversions, make it known to the people, the latter might easily be so far won over that the authority of the state would become powerless against him. He concluded that in so extraordinary a case any scruples about entering into negotiation with a subject who had taken up arms must be set aside; that the means used against him had in fact, in a certain sense, placed him outside society and its laws; and in short, that the situation would best be remedied if Kohlhaas were treated not so much as a rebel in revolt against the crown but rather as a foreign invading power, for which status, indeed, the fact that he was not a Saxon subject to some extent qualified him.

When the Elector received this letter there were present at the palace Prince Christiern of Meissen, the Imperial Marshal and an uncle of Prince Friedrich of Meissen who had been defeated at Mühlberg and was still laid up with his
wounds; the Grand Chancellor of the High Court, Count Wrede; Count Kallheim, President of the State Chancellery; and the lords Hinz and Kunz von Tronka, respectively Cupbearer and Chamberlain, both of them childhood friends and intimates of the sovereign. The Chamberlain, Lord Kunz, who, in his capacity as a privy councillor looked after the Elector's privy correspondence and had authority to use his name and seal, was the first to speak. He explained at length that he would never have decided on his own responsibility to dismiss the case brought to the High Court by the horse-dealer against his cousin the Junker, had he not been deceived by false information into regarding it as a wholly groundless and idle piece of trouble-making. Coming to the present situation, he observed that no law either of God or of man authorized the horse-dealer to exact, as he was presuming to do, such monstrous personal vengeance for this judicial error. It would, he insisted, lend prestige to this accursed reprobate if they were to treat with him as with a lawful belligerent. The disgrace that would thereby be reflected upon the sacred person of the Elector was, he added in a burst of eloquence, so intolerable to him that he would rather bear the worst and see his cousin the Junker taken to Kohlhaasenbrück to fatten the blacks, in accordance with the mad rebel's decree, than have Dr Luther's proposal accepted. The Grand Chancellor of the High Court, Count Wrede, half turning to him, expressed his regret that the Chamberlain had not shown the same delicate solicitude for his sovereign's reputation when this unquestionably embarrassing matter first arose as he was now showing when it had become necessary to clear it up. He indicated to the Elector the reservations he felt about invoking the power of the state to enforce an obvious injustice. He alluded significantly to the horse-dealer's ever-increasing following in Saxony, pointed out that this thread of violence threatened to spin itself out indefinitely, and declared that there was no way to sever it and extricate the government
from this ugly situation except plain fair dealing: they must immediately and without further scruple make good the wrong that had been done. When asked by the Elector what he thought of this, Prince Christiern of Meissen turned deferentially to the Chancellor and submitted that while the latter's attitude filled him with all due respect, his suggestion that Kohlhaas's wrongs should be righted left out of account the interests of Wittenberg and Leipzig and indeed the whole of the country ravaged by the horse-dealer, and prejudiced its just claim for compensation or at least for retribution. The order of the state had, he considered, been so disrupted on account of this man that it could hardly now be set to rights by principles of jurisprudence. He therefore supported the Chamberlain's view that they should employ the means appropriate in such cases, assemble an army of sufficient size, attack Kohlhaas in his entrenchment at Lützen and either capture or destroy him. The Chamberlain, bringing over two chairs from the wall and politely placing them in the room for the Prince and the Elector, said he was glad to find that a man of the Prince's integrity and perspicacity agreed with him on the question of how best to settle this perplexing affair. Holding the chair without sitting down, the Prince looked straight at him and said that he had no reason at all to be glad, since the proposed course of action inevitably entailed that as a preliminary measure he, Kunz von Tronka, should be arrested and put on trial for misuse of the sovereign's name. For although it might be necessary to draw a veil, before the seat of justice, over a whole series of crimes which had proliferated until they were simply too numerous to be called to account, this did not apply to the first of them, which had led to all the rest; and not until the Chamberlain was arraigned on this capital charge would the state be entitled to suppress the horse-dealer, whose grievances, as they well knew, were perfectly just; they themselves had put into his hand the sword he was now wielding. At these words the Junker looked in
dismay at the Elector, who turned away, blushing deeply, and moved over to the window. After an embarrassed silence on all sides, Count Kallheim remarked that by such means they would never break out of the charmed circle in which they were caught. On such grounds it would be equally justifiable to put the Prince's nephew Friedrich on trial, for during the special expedition that he had led against Kohlhaas he had exceeded his instructions in a number of ways; thus if there was to be a reckoning with all those who had caused the present embarrassment, Prince Friedrich would also have to be included among them and called upon by the sovereign to answer for what had happened at Mühlberg. At this point, as the Elector crossed to his desk with a look of perplexity, the Cupbearer Hinz von Tronka spoke in his turn, saying that he could not understand how the decision that should be taken could have escaped men of such wisdom as were assembled here. As he understood it, the horse-dealer had undertaken to disband his men and cease his attacks in return merely for a safe-conduct to Dresden and a renewed examination of his case. But it did not follow that he would have to be granted an amnesty for his criminal acts of vengeance: there were two legal concepts which both Dr Luther and this council of state seemed to have confused. ‘When,' he continued, placing his finger along his nose, ‘the High Court in Dresden has passed judgement in the matter of the horses, then whichever way that judgement falls there is nothing to prevent us locking up Kohlhaas on charges of arson and robbery. This would be a politically expedient solution, combining the advantages of both the views expressed in our council, and it would I am sure commend itself both to present public opinion and to posterity.'