On July 5, 1720, at about four o’clock in the morning, King Augustus II of Poland—Elector of Saxony under the name of Frederick Augustus I—was fishing for sturgeon in the middle of the Vistula, near Warsaw. A single Polish page attended him. The fishermen awaited his arrival to begin their draught. According to the account in the Pitaval, a carriage speeding along the highway caught his eye. A man in German attire leaped from it, fell, scrambled to his feet, and ran across the open fields. The vehicle halted; several men clad in the Polish fashion alighted, gave chase, overtook him after a struggle, and forced him back inside. The King believed he heard a cry for help, though he could not distinguish the words. He immediately came ashore and dispatched his page ahead, following himself at a slower pace.
The page returned with an explanation that hardly satisfied his royal master: the man was said to be a lunatic whom his kinsmen were conveying to a monastery. He had exchanged a few words with the company once they had thrust the fugitive back into the carriage, but having no understanding of the German spoken by the captive, he could not report what the man had sought to convey. The King had witnessed an act of violence, not its cause, and the narrative leaves open the possibility that the men might have offered him some different pretext. The carriage had hastened away before the King could intervene. The connection between this scene and a man missing in Warsaw would not be drawn until later.
An hour earlier, at three in the morning, a familiar visitor had knocked at the door of Andreas Christian Leifching, army chaplain to the Saxon Life Guards. It was Johann Seidlitz, who had formerly warned the pastor of threats allegedly leveled against him by certain ecclesiastics, and who was now in the service of the Bishop of Posen, Count Szembek. He announced that Captain Bonafous lay dying and besought Leifching to hasten to his bedside: Bonafous was of the Reformed confession, and no minister of his faith could be found. Leifching dressed, stepped into the closed carriage Seidlitz had brought, and departed with him.
During the morning, Major von Arnstädt arrived to call upon the preacher. The servant, ignorant of Seidlitz’s name, informed him that the pastor had departed with this visitor; Arnstädt thereupon repaired to Bonafous’s quarters, finding him somewhat indisposed, but by no means at death’s door. The captain had neither sent for Leifching nor received his visit. The chaplain himself remained nowhere to be found. His disappearance astonished his comrades the more as he was widely beloved by the troops. In the talk of the town, rumors soon spread of an abduction contrived by priests in retaliation for his sermons against the Catholic Church; the accusation was abroad, yet it did not yet constitute proof.
Count von Manteuffel brought the intelligence to the King. Augustus II then recalled the man who had leaped from the carriage on the banks of the Vistula and surmised that it had been Leifching. He summoned the Grand Chancellor of Poland and demanded an inquest. The Chancellor seemingly shared the royal indignation and promised to sift the facts with care. The chronicle records, in a letter addressed by Count von Manteuffel to Field Marshal von Flemming, the King’s warning: after such an outrage, the Saxon guards might well retaliate by carrying off a Catholic priest, or the populace of Saxony might vent its fury upon the Catholics. This threat reflected the political urgency the King attached to the incident; it does not warrant the conclusion that any deliberate plan of reprisal had been resolved upon.
The Grand Chancellor first questioned Szembek, who disclaimed all knowledge of the deed. The search for the coachman soon yielded a more precise trail. With the assistance of Leifching’s servant, the driver was traced; he was in the employ of a coppersmith named Globocki. Globocki declared that the priest Spasowski had hired his carriage for an early-morning journey. The coachman, for his part, confessed that Leifching had been taken by force to the Franciscan convent. Armed with these particulars, the Grand Chancellor renewed his representations to the prelate. Szembek thereupon wrote to the prior of the monastery, bidding him release the preacher in peace and exhort him to sin no more—the Latin formula signifying: “Release the preacher in peace, and admonish him to sin no further.”
Captain de Filain presented himself at the convent gates, attended by bodyguards and bearing the letter. Entrance was at first denied him; the soldiers, bent on recovering their pastor, refused to yield, and the portal was at length unbarred. In a cell, they discovered Leifching alive though grievously bruised, and brought him home. Major von Arnstädt vowed that on the very next day he should preach again “so as to make the heavens thunder and roar.” Others counseled the minister to refrain henceforth from assailing other Christian Churches; the chapter adds that he heeded the advice. The account of his deliverance throws light on what the explanation given to the King had left in darkness. Upon entering the vehicle, he had found several armed men unknown to him, two of whom appeared to be priests. The presence of these strangers alarmed him; he attempted to alight, but Seidlitz barred the door and the carriage immediately drove off at full speed. His apprehensions deepened when he perceived that the carriage was not proceeding toward Bonafous’s lodgings, but heading out of the city. He spoke no Polish; his inquiries in German went unanswered. He attempted to flee, was overtaken, beaten with cudgels, and gagged so brutally that he bled from the nose and mouth.
The carriage halted at a postern gate of the monastery. According to his narrative, several ecclesiastics and three nobles stood beside his captors; he was thrust through a passage into a subterranean vault, his garments were torn, and he was stripped of his money, his watch, and his other effects. According to Leifching, the ecclesiastics did not strike him themselves, but remained present during the search, holding a lamp. The search lasted half an hour. The nobles who had plundered him departed with the other assailants, leaving him alone in the dungeon. After many hours of anguish, two priests came for him. In Latin, they expressed regret for what had occurred and declared that, with the bishop’s leave, they would remove him to a better chamber. They conducted him before the prior, and thence to another cell, where soup was set before him.
Augustus II continued to press for exemplary punishment. The chronicle states that Szembek threatened to answer through his spiritual authority, and that the inquiry against the remaining culprits bogged down; it records neither prosecution nor sentence against them. After remaining in concealment for some time, Seidlitz ventured into the street on August 14, clad in the bishop’s livery. A German valet accused him of having betrayed the preacher; an altercation, a stone, and the arrival of other domestics turned the confrontation into a severe beating. Seidlitz sought refuge within a monastery. Saxon soldiers were detailed to escort him home, but abandoned him to the mob when he emerged. Grievously injured, he was carried to the palace of the Bishop of Cracow. Field Marshal von Flemming saw in this retribution an act of divine vengeance on behalf of the preacher; Szembek, for his part, protested that his livery had been dishonored. The compiler notes that the soldiers were punished for failing to protect Seidlitz. The pastor had returned to his flock; the man who had lured him into the carriage became in turn the target of the populace.
This relation follows the retrospective narrative of the Neue Pitaval, published in 1862. The chapter adduces letters and depositions, but does not represent the official minutes of a judicial proceeding.