Republican Herald

Baron Trenck.—The famous Baron Trenck it is known, had an amour with the youngest sister of Frederic the Great; and to this the unrelenting barbarity of the king is commonly attributed. He escaped from Glatz, and took service successively, with the Russians and Austrians. Many years afterwards, in 1754, as he was passing through Dantzic, he was treacherously given up to the Prussian government, and was sent to the fortress of Magdeburg. Here he was confined for nearly ten years, with circumstances of the most aggravated cruelty. He was placed in a dark dungeon, loaded with irons of sixty pounds weight, almost starved to death, and, finally, tortured, by being waked during his slumbers every half hour. This overwhelming misery did not, however, break his spirit: assisted by the pity of the soldiers who guarded him, he contrived to send letters to the Princess Amelia, and to others of his friends. By these means he obtained money, with which he bribed the soldiers to procure him files and other tools, as well as lights, pen and paper. His various attempts to escape are very curious, as well as the herculean labors he went through in the progress of them.

Suffice it to say, not one of them was successful; but that he was finally released towards the end of the year 1763, partly from the representation to her brother of the Princess Amelia, and partly in consequence of his having succeeded in bribing the imperial minister at Berlin, who demanded his liberty as an officer in the Austrian service. He afterwards passed a turbulent and discontented life; always engaged in lawsuits and discussions respecting the succession of his cousin, Francis Trenck; which ought to have descended to him, but was, by treachery and chicanery, usurped by others. He became at different times, a wine merchant, an editor of a newspaper, and an author of German poetry.—At the commencement of the French revolution he came to Paris, where he was guillotined during the reign of terror.—Lord Dover's Life of Frederick the Second.