f several wounds, and
likewise of the total disorder of his men, he was forced to retreat to
Dresden. Emboldened by this advantage Kohlhaas turned back upon the
governor, before he could have received intelligence of the event, fell
upon him in an open field near the village of Damerow in broad
daylight, and fought with fury till nightfall, suffering terrible loss,
but still with equal advantage. The next morning unquestionably, with
the remainder of his force, he would have again attacked the governor,
who had thrown himself into the church-yard at Damerow, if the latter
had not been informed of the prince's defeat by Muehlberg, and therefore
held it advisable once more to return to Wittenberg, and await a better
opportunity. Five days after the dispersion of these two forces,
Kohlhaas was before Leipzig, and fired the city on three sides. In the
mandate which he distributed on this occasion he called himself,
"Vicegerent of Michael the Archangel who had come to avenge, with fire
and sword, the villany into which the whole world had fallen, on all
who had taken the squire's part in this struggle." At the same time
from the Luetzen Castle, of which he had taken possession, and in which
he had established himself, he called upon the people to join him, and
bring about a better order of things. The mandate was signed, as if by
a sort of madness: "Given at the suit of our provisional
world-government,--the Castle of Luetzen." Fortunately for the
inhabitants of Leipzig, the fire did not catch on account of the
continual rain, and moreover the means of extinguishing being used with
great promptness, only a few shops about the Pleissenburg burst into
flames. Nevertheless the alarm of the city at the presence of the
violent incendiary, and his notion that the squire was at Leipzig, was
indescribable; and when a body of a hundred and eighty troopers, who
had been sent out against him, returned to the city in confusion, the
magistracy, who did not wish to endanger the property of the place, had
no other course left them but to close the gates, and set the citizens
to watch day and night outside the walls. In vain did they post up
declarations in the surrounding villages, that the squire was not in
the Pleissenburg; the horse-dealer in similar papers affirmed the
contrary, and declared that even if the squire was not in the
Pleissenburg, he would nevertheless proceed just in the same manner,
until they informed him where