It has been said that the empress-queen of Austria had been moved to compassion for Trenck by the engraving on the pewter cup that came into her hands. His beloved Princess Amelia had also been active in trying to obtain his release. She employed a clever business man in Vienna, who at her bidding and for a sum of two thousand ducats won over a confidential servant of Maria Theresa, and caused him to intercede for the wretched prisoner at Magdeburg, who after all was still an Austrian officer. The kind-hearted Hapsburg sovereign wrote a personal letter to Frederick, her great antagonist, and the king of Prussia at last pardoned the miserable man who had dwelt for ten years in a living tomb. Like all political prisoners, he was obliged to bind himself by oath to the following conditions, which were not exactly performed by him:--that he would take no revenge on anyone; that he would not cross the Saxon or the Prussian frontiers to re-enter those states; that he would neither speak nor write of what had happened to him; that he would not, so long as the king lived, serve in any army either in a civil or military capacity. After his liberation, he first lived in Vienna, where he came into personal contact with Maria Theresa and the emperors Francis and Joseph II. Later he settled at Aix-la-Chapelle, where he married the daughter of Burgomaster de Broe, and conducted a flourishing wine business. He undertook long journeys, and published his poems and autobiography, which had an immense success and were translated into almost every European language; he was also the editor of a newspaper and another periodical entitled _The Friend of Men_, and he amassed a handsome fortune. After the death of Frederick, Trenck was allowed to return to Berlin and his confiscated goods were restored to him. His first visit was to his liberator and earliest love, the Princess Amelia; the interview was most affecting and heartrending. They were both greatly changed in appearance and more like the ghosts of their former brilliant selves. She inquired for his numerous children, for whom she assured him she would do all in her power, and he parted from her full of gratitude and greatly moved. It is a creditable trait in Trenck’s character that in spite of all his sufferings he did not hate the Prussian king, Frederick the Great. One would think this aged adventurer would now seek rest, but far from it. He was attracted to Paris by the outbreak of the French Revolution, and he felt the necessity for playing an active part. He finally fell into the hands of Robespierre, and was tried and guillotined at the age of sixty-nine. On the scaffold his great stature, for he was much above the average height, towered over his fellow-sufferers. He looked quietly at the crowd and said, “Why do you stare? This is but a comedy à la Robespierre!”