412 jUlEDERICK B^RON TRENCK. 
In 1742 he entered into the Prussian guards, which at that time 
formed only one squadron, and were quartered at Potsdam. Next 
year, when the guards quitted the capital, to accompany as far as 
Stettin the sister of Frederick II. who had married the king of Swe- 
den, Trenck’s figure made a strong impression upon a lady whom 
he does not name, but who, from the manner in which he speaks of 
her, could be no other than a princess of the royal family. In 1744, 
on the commencement of the second Silesian war, he attended the king 
as an aid-de-camp ; but suspicions being excited by some intercepted 
letters, that he maintained a traitorous correspondence with this cou- 
sin, who was chief of the Austrian Pandours, he was accordingly 
arrested, and confined in the fortress of Glatz, the commander of which 
at that time was General Fouquet. Trenck attempted to escape, but 
was caught on the ramparts, and subjected to still harsher treatment. 
He, however, found means to bribe some of the officers, and, quitting 
the fortress with a person named Schnell, got safe to Bohemia, whence 
he proceeded to Elbing, in Polish Prussia, where he arrived in the 
month of March 1747. He then went to Vienna and Nuremberg, 
and entering the Russian service, after various adventures reached 
Moscow, at which the empress then resided with her court, and where 
he gained the good graces of the lady of the chancellor Bestuchef, 
the favourite of Elizabeth. From Moscow he travelled to Petersburg, 
and having visited Stockholn, Copenhagen, and Holland, returned 
again to Vienna, with a view to recover the property of his cousin 
Baron Trenck, which was contested with him. 
Dissatisfied with the treatment he received from the Austrian 
court, he set out once more for Russia ; but while passing through 
Dantzic, he was arrested at the request of the Prussian resident, 
and conducted to Magdeburg, where he suffered a rigorous impri- 
sonment of ten years. During this tedious confinement, the instruc- 
tions he had received from Kowalewsky and Christiana served him 
as a resource to beguile the time, and he amused himself with writing 
verses. Being set at liberty after the war of 1763, he published the 
poems he had composed in his prison at Frankfort on the Mayne. 
He afterwards published some other works at Aix-la-Chapelle, w^here 
he became editor of a Gazette, which was conducted for some time 
with considerable success, and where he married a lady of respect- 
able character and connexions, descended from a Dutch family. 
The office of gazette-writing becoming tiresome or less lucrative, 
Trenck began business as a wine merchant ; and, according to Denina, 
was assisted in his undertaking by the liberality of a Prussian minis- 
ter at Aix-la-Chapelle, who enabled him to extend his commercial 
speculations to England. But the wine trade did not succeed as 
expected ; and Trenck, about the year 1783, disappeared. Of his 
subsequent history little is known. In 1792 he was editor of a jour- 
nal published at Hamburgh and Altona, from the latter of which he 
went the year following to France, where, like many other adventu- 
rers, he lost his life by the guillotine in the month of July, 1794. 
Trenck’s Memoirs of his own life appeared at Berlin in 1787, in two 
parts, 8vo. ** It was not,” says Denina, “ till after the death of Frede- 
rick II. that his name began to make a noise in Germany, and to 
