The confession of the accomplices, save Vratz, did not affect the count. _His_ defence took a high Protestant turn--made allusion to his Protestant ancestors and their deeds in behalf of Protestantism, lauded Protestant England, alluded to his younger brother, brought expressly here to be educated in Protestant principles, and altogether was exceedingly clever, but in no wise convincing. It was known that the King would learn with pleasure that the count had been acquitted. As this knowledge was possessed by judges who were removable at the King’s pleasure, it had a strong influence; and the arch-murderer, the most cowardly of the infamous company, was acquitted accordingly. In his case, the verdict, as regarded him, was given in, last. The other three persons were indicted for the actual commission of the fact, Königsmark as accessory before the fact, hiring them, and instigating them to the crime. Thrice he had heard the word ‘Guilty’ pronounced, and, despite his recklessness, was somewhat moved when the jury were asked as to their verdict respecting _him_. ‘Not Guilty,’ murmured the foreman; and then the noble count, mindful only of himself, and forgetful of the three unhappy men whom he had dragged to death, exclaimed in his unmanly joy, ‘God bless the King, and this honourable bench!’ The meaner assassins were flung to the gallows. Vratz went to his fate, like Pierre; declared that the murder was the result of a mistake, that he had no hand in it, and that as he was a gentleman, God would assuredly deal with him _as_ such! This ‘gentleman’ accounted for his presence at the murder as having arisen by his entertaining a quarrel with Mr. Thynne, whom he was about to challenge, when the Pole, mistaking his orders and inclinations, discharged his carbine into the carriage, and slew the occupant. The other two confessed to the murder, as the hired instruments of Vratz. Count Charles John repaired to the Court of France, where he was received in that sort of gentlemanly fashion which Vratz looked for in Paradise. His sword gleamed in many an action fought in various battle-fields of Europe during the next few years, at the head of a French regiment, of which he was colonel. Finally, in 1686, he was in the service of the Venetians in the Morea. On the 29th of August he was before Argos, when a sortie was made by the garrison, and in the bloody struggle which ensued he was mortally wounded. For Thynne’s monument in Westminster Abbey a Latin inscription was prepared, which more than merely hinted that Königsmark was the murderer of Tom of Ten Thousand. ‘Small, servile, Spratt,’ then Dean of Westminster, would not allow the inscription to be set up; and his apologists, who advance in his behalf that he would have done wrong had he allowed a man, cleared by a jury from the charge of murder, to be permanently set down in hard record of marble as an assassin, have much reason in what they advance.