he actually was. The elector, instructed
by a courier of the peril in which the city of Leipzig stood, stated
that he was collecting a force of two thousand men, and that he would
put himself at the head of it, to capture Kohlhaas. He severely
reproved Otto von Gorgas for the indiscreet stratagem he had employed
to remove the incendiary from the neighbourhood of Wittenberg, and no
one can describe the alarm which arose in Saxony in general, and in the
capital in particular, when the inhabitants learned that an unknown
hand had posted up in the villages near Leipzig, a declaration that
Squire Wenzel was with his armies at Dresden.

Under these circumstances, Dr. Martin Luther, supported by the
authority which he owed to his position in the world, took upon himself
by the force of words to call back Kohlhaas into the path of order, and
trusting to a suitable element in the heart of the incendiary, caused a
placard, worded as follows, to be set up in all the towns and villages
of the electorate:

"Kohlhaas--thou who pretendest that thou art deputed to wield the sword
of justice, what art thou doing, presumptuous one, in the madness of
thy blind passion, thou who art filled with injustice from the crown of
thy head to the sole of thy foot? Because thy sovereign, whose subject
thou art, hath refused thee justice, dost thou arise in godless man,
the cause of worldly good, with fire and sword, and break in like the
wolf of the desert upon the peaceful community that he protecteth.
Thou, who misleadest mankind by a declaration full of untruth and
craftiness, dost thou believe, sinner that thou art, the same pretext
will avail thee before God on that day when the recesses of every heart
shall be revealed? How canst thou say that justice hath been
denied--thou, whose savage heart, excited by an evil spirit of
self-revenge, entirely gave up the trouble of seeking it after the
failure of thy first trivial endeavours? Is a bench of beadles and
tipstaffs, who intercept letters, or keep to themselves the knowledge
they should communicate, the power that ruleth? Must I tell thee,
impious man, that thy ruler knoweth nothing of thy affair? What do I
say? Why that the sovereign against whom thou rebellest doth not even
know thy name, and that when thou appearest before the throne of God,
thinking to accuse him, he with a serene countenance will say: 'Lord to
this man did I no wrong, for his existence is strange unto my soul.'