Therefore the Arch-Chancellor did not content himself with demanding, on the score of wholly arbitrary procedure, displeasing to God and man, that Kohlhaas should be unconditionally and immediately surrendered, so that, if guilty of a crime, he might be tried according to the laws of Brandenburg on charges which the Dresden Court might bring against him through an attorney at Berlin; but Sir Heinrich von Geusau even went so far as himself to demand passports for an attorney whom the Elector of Brandenburg wished to send to Dresden in order to secure justice for Kohlhaas against Squire Wenzel Tronka on account of the black horses which had been taken from him on Saxon territory and other flagrant instances of ill-usage and acts of violence.  The Chamberlain, Sir Kunz, in the shifting of public offices in Saxony, had been appointed President of the State Chancery, and, hard pressed as he was, desired, for a variety of reasons, not to offend the Court of Berlin.  He therefore answered in the name of his sovereign, who had been very greatly cast down by the note he had received, that they wondered at the unfriendliness and unreasonableness which had prompted the government of Brandenburg to contest the right of the Dresden Court to judge Kohlhaas according to their laws for the crimes which he had committed in the land, as it was known to all the world that the latter owned a considerable piece of property in the capital, and he did not himself dispute his qualification as a Saxon citizen.

But as the King of Poland was already assembling an army of five thousand men on the frontier of Saxony to fight for his claims, and as the Arch-Chancellor, Sir Heinrich von Geusau, declared that Kohlhaasenbrueck, the place after which the horse-dealer was named, was situated in Brandenburg, and that they would consider the execution of the sentence of death which had been pronounced upon him to be a violation of international law, the Elector of Saxony, upon the advice of the Chamberlain, Sir Kunz himself, who wished to back out of the affair, summoned Prince Christiern of Meissen from his estate, and decided, after a few words with this sagacious nobleman, to surrender Kohlhaas to the Court of Berlin in accordance with their demand.

The Prince, who, although very much displeased with the unseemly blunders which had been committed, was forced to take over the conduct of the Kohlhaas affair at the wish of his hard-pressed master, asked the Elector what charge he now wished to have lodged against the horse-dealer in the Supreme Court at Berlin.  As they could not refer to Kohlhaas’ fatal letter to Nagelschmidt because of the questionable and obscure circumstances under which it had been written, nor mention the former plundering and burning because of the edict in which the same had been pardoned, the Elector determined to lay before the Emperor’s Majesty at Vienna a report concerning the armed invasion of Saxony by Kohlhaas, to make complaint concerning the violation of the public peace established by the Emperor, and to solicit His Majesty, since he was of course not bound by any amnesty, to call Kohlhaas to account therefor before the Court Tribunal at Berlin through an attorney of the Empire.