The night was dark and rainy,
which favoured him, and he reached the bottom of the rampart in safety.
Unluckily, he met here with an obstacle on which he had never counted.
There was a large drain, opening into one of the trenches, which Trenck
had neither seen nor heard of, and into this he fell. In spite of his
struggles, he was held fast, and his strength being at last exhausted,
he was forced to call the sentinel, and at midday, having been left in
the drain for hours to make sport for the town, he was carried back to
his cell.
Henceforth he was still more strictly watched than before, though,
curiously enough, his money never seems to have been taken from him, and
at this time he had about eighty louis left, which he always kept hidden
about him. Eight days after his last attempt, Fouquet, the commandant of
Glatz, who hated Trenck and all his family, sent a deputation consisting
of the adjutant, an officer, and a certain Major Doo, to speak to the
unfortunate man, and exhort him to patience and submission. Trenck
entered into conversation with them for the purpose of throwing them off
their guard, when suddenly he snatched away Doo's sword, rushed from his
cell, knocked down the sentinel and lieutenant who were standing
outside, and striking right and left at the soldiers who came flying to
bar his progress, he dashed down the stairs and leapt from the ramparts.
Though the height was great, he fell into the fosse without injury, and
still grasping his sword. He scrambled quickly to his feet and jumped
easily over the second rampart, which was much lower than the first, and
then began to breathe freely, as he thought he was safe from being
overtaken by the soldiers, who would have to come a long way round. At
this moment, however, he saw a sentinel making for him a short distance
off, and he rushed for the palisades which divided the fortifications
from the open country, from which the mountains and Bohemia were easily
reached. In the act of scaling them, his foot was caught tight between
the bars, and he was trapped till the sentinel came up, and after a
sharp fight got him back to prison.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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