These enterprises were carried on at first by individuals
trading on their own capital of skill and courage; but when the French
laws came into more active operation in the seat of their exploits,
the desperadoes formed themselves, for mutual protection, into
copartnerships, which were the terror of the country. Men soon arose
among them whose talents, or prowess, attracted the confidence of
their comrades, and chiefs were elected, and laws and institutions
established. Different places of settlement were chosen by different
societies; the famous Pickard carried his band into Belgium and Holland;
while on the confines of Germany, where the wild provinces of Kirn,
Simmerm, and Birkenfield offered a congenial field, the banditti were
concentrated, whose last and most celebrated chief, the redoubted
Schinderhannes, is the subject of this brief notice.
His predecessors, indeed, Finck, Peter the Black, Zughetto, and Seibert
were long before renowned among those who square their conduct by the
good old rule of clubs; they were brave men, and stout and pitiless
robbers. But Schinderhannes, the boldest of the bold, young, active
and subtle, converted the obscure exploits of banditti into the
comparatively magnificent ravages of "the outlaw and his men;" and
sometimes marched at the head of sixty or eighty of his troop to the
attack of whole villages. Devoted to pleasure, no fear ever crossed him
in its pursuit; he walked publicly with his mistress, a beautiful girl
of nineteen, in the very place which the evening before had been the
scene of one of his criminal exploits; he frequented the fairs and
taverns, which were crowded with his victims; and such was the terror
he had inspired, that these audacious exposures were made with perfect
impunity.
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