One of the grenadiers was hung, the other cruelly tortured. Trenck’s sister was condemned to pay a heavy fine, and the expenses of building a new cell for her brother. Trenck did not know at first what had happened, but he was soon informed of it by Gefhardt, who told him that his new prison would be finished in a month. Frederic, who had come to Magdebourg to hold a review, himself designed the chains for the limbs of his victim. Meanwhile Trenck was still in hopes of regaining his liberty. As yet nothing had been discovered of his subterranean operations. His preparations were at length finished, and he was getting ready to fly during the night, when suddenly the doors were opened; he was seized, and bound hand and foot; a bandage was placed over his eyes, and he was dragged away to his new cell. His feelings are best described in his own words:--
“The bandage was taken from my eyes. The dungeon was lighted by a few torches. Great heaven! what were my feelings when I beheld the floor covered with chains, a fire pan, and two grim men standing with their smiths’ hammers.
“These engines of despotism went to work at once: enormous chains were fixed to my ancles at one end, and at the other to a ring which was fixed in the wall. This ring was three feet from the ground, and only allowed me to move about two or three feet to the right and left. They next riveted another huge iron ring of a hand’s breadth round my naked body, to which hung a chain fixed into an iron bar as thick as a man’s arm. This bar was two feet in length, and at each end of it was a handcuff. The iron collar round my neck was not added till the year 1756.
“No soul bade me good-night. All retired in dreadful silence, and I heard the horrible grating of four doors that were successively locked and bolted upon me.
“Thus does man act by his fellow, knowing him to be innocent, in blind obedience to the commands of another man.
“O God! Thou alone knowest how my heart, void as it was of guilt, beat at this moment. There I sat, destitute, alone, in thick darkness, upon the bare earth, with a weight of fetters insupportable to nature, thanking Thee that these cruel men had not discovered my knife by which my miseries might yet find an end. Death is a last certain refuge that can indeed bid defiance to the rage of tyranny. What shall I say. How shall I make the reader feel as I then felt? How describe my despondency, and yet account for that latent impulse that withheld my hand on this fatal, this miserable night?