to have been prepared, by a gradual increase and repetition
of sufferings, to endure the load of affliction which I was afterwards
destined to bear.

Arrived at Vienna in the month of April, 1747.

And now another act of the tragedy is going to begin.

CHAPTER IX.

After having defrayed the expenses of travelling for me and my friend
Schell, for whose remarkable history I will endeavour to find a few pages
in due course, I divided the three hundred ducats which remained with
him, and, having stayed a month at Vienna, he went to join the regiment
of Pallavicini, in which he had obtained a lieutenant-colonel's
commission, and which was then in Italy.

Here I found my cousin, Baron Francis Trenck, the famous partisan and
colonel of pandours, imprisoned at the arsenal, and involved in a most
perplexing prosecution.

This Trenck was my father's brother's son. His father had been a colonel
and governor of Leitschau, and had possessed considerable lordships in
Sclavonia, those of Pleternitz, Prestowacz, and Pakratz. After the siege
of Vienna, in 1683, he had left the Prussian service for that of Austria,
in which he remained sixty years.

That I may not here interrupt my story, I shall give some account of the
life of my cousin Baron Francis Trenck, so renowned in the war of 1741,
in another part, and who fell, at last, the shameful sacrifice of envy
and avarice, and received the reward of all his great and faithful
services in the prison of the Spielberg.

The vindication of the family of the Trencks requires I should speak of
him; nor will I, in this, suffer restraint from the fear of any man,
however powerful. Those indeed who sacrificed a man most ardent in his
country's service to their own private and selfish views, are now in
their graves.

I shall insert no more of his history here than what is interwoven with
my own, and relate the rest in its proper place.

A revision of his suit was at this time instituted. Scarcely was I
arrived in Vienna before his confidential agent, M. Leber, presented me
to Prince Charles and the Emperor; both knew the services of Trenck, and
the malice of his enemies; therefore, permission for me to visit him in
his prison, and procure him such assistance as he might need, was readily
granted. On my second audience, the Emperor spoke so much in my
persecuted cousin's favour that I became highly interested; he commanded
me to have recourse to him on all occasions; and,