A review by briancrandall
Michael Kohlhaas by Heinrich von Kleist

5.0

While his men were plundering the outskirts, he made fast a notice to a pillar of the church to the effect that "he, Kohlhaas, had lit the town, and, if the Junker be not surrendered to me, I will proceed to demolish it," as he put it, "so that there be not two stones upon one another for him to hide behind."

The horror of the inhabitants about this awful crime was indescribable; and the flames that, in what was fortunately a calm summer night, destroyed no more than nineteen houses, admittedly including a church, were not quite put out towards break of day when the old Governor, Otto von Gorgas, sent out a detachment of fifty men to arrest the rabid aggressor. [39]