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. Free, generous, handsome, and jovial, it may even be conceived
that sometime he gained the protection from love which could not have
been extorted by force.

It is scarcely a wonder that with the admirable regulations of the
robbers, they should have succeeded even to so great an extent as they
did in that unsettled country. Not more than two or three of them were
allowed to reside in the same town or village; they were scattered over
the whole face of the district, and apparently connected with each other
only by some mysterious free-masonry of their craft. When a blow was
to be struck, a messenger was sent round by the chief to warn his
followers; and at the mustering place the united band rose up, like the
clan of Roderick Dhu from the heather, to disappear as suddenly again