The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck, Volume 1

From the opening

There were two cousins Von der Trenck, who were barons descended from an ancient house in East Prussia, and were adventurous soldiers, to whom, as to the adventurous, there were adventures that lost nothing in the telling, for they were told by the authors' most admiring friends--themselves. Franz, the elder, was born in 1711, the son of an Austrian general; and Frederick, whose adventures are here told, was the son of a Prussian major-general. Franz, at the age of seventeen, fought duels, and cut off the head of a man who refused to lend him money. He stood six feet three inches in his shoes, knocked down his commanding officer, was put under arrest, offered to pay for his release by bringing in three Turks' heads within an hour, was released on that condition, and actually brought in four Turks' heads. When afterwards cashiered, he settled on his estates in Croatia, and drilled a thousand of his tenantry to act as "Pandours" against the banditti. In 1740, he served with his Pandours under Maria Theresa, and behaved himself as one of the more brutal sort of banditti. He offered to capture Frederick of Prussia, and did capture his tent. Many more of his adventures are vaingloriously recounted by himself in the Memoires du Baron Franz de Trenck, published at Paris in 1787. This Trenck took poison when imprisoned at Gratz, and died in October, 1747, at the age of thirty-six.

His cousin Frederick is the Trenck who here tells a story of himself that abounds in lively illustration of the days of Frederick the Great. He professes that Frederick the King owed him a grudge, because Frederick the Trenck had, when eighteen years old, fascinated the Princess Amalie at a ball. But as Frederick the Greater was in correspondence with his cousin Franz at the time when that redoubtable personage was planning the seizure of Frederick the Great, there may have been better ground for the Trenck's arrest than he allows us to imagine. Mr.

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