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Updated: May 14, 2025
Two extracts from letters to his wife give the best picture of his personal character at this time: "On Saturday I drove with Rochow to Rüdesheim; there I took a boat and rowed out on the Rhine, and bathed in the moonlight only nose and eyes above the water, and floated down to the Rat Tower at Bingen, where the wicked Bishop met his end.
"No, we will not allow ourselves to be disturbed!" cried Herr von Rochow. "In one hour expect us here again, and you shall see, most gracious sir, that we have brought with us our cheerfulness, our fine appetites, and our thirst." "Yes, yes, your excellency, guard well your keys and bottles; we shall take the field against them." "Do so, gentlemen," said the count.
Upon the Colonels von Kracht and von Rochow he has bestowed good positions, making them commandants of Berlin and Spandow, with double salaries, but me, whom he knows to be the faithful servant of the Electoral family, he has banished from court and sent to Küstrin with only half as high a salary as the other two have.
Yet that just King to whom he accused Herdegen gave a hearing to von Rochow and the other witnesses; they could but declare that all had been done by rule, and that Rochow had said from the first that of a certainty the devil himself guided Herdegen's sword. Muschwitz, indeed, was sure that he had seen his blade flash forth fire.
"Yes, sir, I am strongly of that opinion, and would venture to lay a wager that Colonel von Rochow at Spandow, and Goldacker and Kracht in Berlin, will not take oath to your Electoral Highness." "Woe to them if they do it not!" cried the Elector, with flashing eyes.
Thus a light word, spoken at first as a figure of speech by the Knight von Rochow, had grown into a charge against him, heavy enough to wreck the honor and freedom of a man who had no friends, and even to bring him to the stake; and I know full well that many an one rejoiced beforehand to think that he should see that lordly youth with all his bravery standing in the pointed cap with the Devil's tongue hung round his neck, and gasping out his life amid the licking flames.
Rochow, ignorant of Haddick's force, marched off thereupon for Spandau with the Royal Family and effects; leaving Haddick master of the suburb, and Berlin to make its own bargain with him. Royal Family and effects returned from Spandau the day following; but in a day or two more, removed to Magdeburg till the Capital were safe from such affronts. Much grumbling against Rochow. "What could I do?
The witnesses saw what he could do with amazement, and Sir Apitz von Rochow avowed that at my brother's first thrust he foresaw his cousin's evil plight; and they said that during the combat the supple blade of the Nuremberger's bedizened sword was changed into a raging serpent, which wound in everywhere, and bit through iron and steel.
Majesty has been a little out of health lately; perceptibly worse the last two days. "I never saw such a scene as this evening. Derschau, Schwerin, Buddenbrock, Rochow, Flanz were present. ES STOSSET MIR DAS HERZ AB, cried he, breaking into German: 'It crushes the heart out of me; to make me do a bit of scoundrelism, me, me! I say; no, never! Those damned intrigues; may the Devil take them!
"If they attempt to murder me, I shall not stand on the defensive," murmurs Count Schwarzenberg to himself, as he retires from the window, slowly traverses the apartment, and again sinks down upon the chair by his writing table. The door of the cabinet is violently torn open, and in rush the Commandants von Kracht and von Rochow, followed by the captains of their regiments.
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