to
overwhelm him. In accordance with this plan he attacked the Prince of
Meissen the very next night, surprising him near Muehlberg. 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 Muehlberg 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 Luetzen 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 Luetzen."

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