ship
to the house of Tronka had been the cause of all the mischief,
dismissed him at once with many signs of displeasure, and appointed
Heinrich von Geusau chancellor in his place.

Now it happened that the kingdom of Poland, while for some cause or
other it was in a hostile position against Saxony, made repeated and
pressing demands to the Elector of Brandenburg to unite against Saxony
in one common cause. This led the High Chancellor Geusau, who was no
novice in such matters, to hope that he could fulfil his sovereign's
wish of doing justice to Kohlhaas at any price, without placing the
general peace in a more critical position than the consideration due to
an individual would justify. Hence the high chancellor, alleging that
the proceedings had been arbitrary, and alike displeasing to God and
man, not only demanded the immediate and unconditional delivery of
Kohlhaas, that in case he was guilty he might be tried according to
Brandenburg laws, on a complaint which the court of Dresden might make
through an attorney at Berlin, but also required passports for an
attorney whom the elector wished to send to Dresden, to obtain justice
for Kohlhaas against Squire Wenzel von Tronka, on account of the wrong
which had been done the former, on Saxon soil, by the detention of his
horses and other acts of violence which cried aloud to Heaven. The
chamberlain, Herr Conrad, who on the change of office in Saxony had
been nominated president of the state chancery, and who for many
reasons did not wish to offend the court of Berlin, in the difficulty
in which he now found himself, answered in the name of his sovereign,
who was much dejected at the note he had received, that the unfriendly
and unfair spirit in which the right of the court of Dresden to try
Kohlhaas, according to law, for offences committed in the country, had
been questioned, had created great astonishment, especially when it was
well known that he held a large piece of ground in the Saxon
metropolis, and did not deny that he was a Saxon citizen.
Nevertheless, as Poland to enforce her claims had already collected an
army of 5000 men on the borders of Saxony, and the high chancellor,
Heinrich von Geusau, declared that Kohlhaasenbrueck, the place from
which the horse-dealer took his name, lay in the Brandenburg territory,
and that the execution of the sentence of death that had been declared
would be considered a violation of the law of nations, the elector, by
the a