ttack a place like Wittenberg, he drew up a second mandate, in
which, after strictly narrating what had happened to him, he called, to
use his own words, "Upon every good Christian to espouse his cause
against Squire von Tronka, the common enemy of all Christians, with the
promise of a sum of money down, and other advantages of war." In a
third mandate he called himself a "Sovereign, free from the empire and
the world, subject to God alone;" a morbid and disgusting piece of
fanaticism, which nevertheless accompanied as it was with the chink of
money and the hope of prey, procured an accession to his numbers from
the rabble, whom the peace with Poland had deprived of a livelihood.
Indeed his band amounted to upwards of thirty, when he turned back to
the left bank of the Elbe to lay Wittenberg in ashes. With his men and
horses he took shelter under the roof of an old ruined shed in the
depth of a gloomy wood, that in those days surrounded the place, and he
no sooner learned from Sternbald, that the mandate, with which he had
sent him into the town disguised, had been made known, than he set off
with his band--it was Whitsun eve,--and while the inhabitants lay fast
asleep, set a-light to the place at many corners. He then, with his
men, plundered the suburbs, affixed a paper to the door-post of a
church, in which he said that "He, Kohlhaas, had set the city on fire,
and that if the squire was not given up to him, he would lay it in
ashes in such sort, that he would not have to look behind a wall to
find him." The terror of the inhabitants at this unparalleled atrocity
was indescribable, and the flames, which in a particularly calm
summer's night, had not consumed more than nineteen houses, including a
church, being extinguished in some measure about day-break, the old
governor (Landvoigt), Otto von Gorgas, sent out a company of about
fifty men, to capture the fearful invader. The captain of this
company, whose name was Gerstenberg, managed so badly, that the
expedition, instead of defeating Kohlhaas, rather helped him to a very
dangerous military reputation; for while he separated his men into
several divisions, that he might, as he thought, surround and curb
Kohlhaas, he was attacked by the latter, who kept his men close
together at the different isolated points, and was so beaten, that on
the evening of the following day, not a single man of the whole band
was left to face the aggressor, although on that band rested a