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