his book of Icelandic travel, "only twelve
men were employed, not a life was lost, not a
drop of blood was shed, not a gun fired, nor a
sabre unsheathed."

On a Sunday afternoon, the captain of the
Margaret and Anne landed with twelve men,
who are described as mere "invalids," for "it
is sufficiently known that, in time of war, the
crews of merchant ships consist of such men
only as are unfit for the service of his
Majesty." The twelve men marched
unopposed to the governor's house, took him
prisoner; were opposed only by protest that their
conduct was illegal; and marched back with
him in sight of the inhabitants; of whose
"long poles in their hands spiked with iron,
which they used for walking upon the snow,"
and which they did not use for the rescue of
the governor, much was said by way of
suggesting that the Icelanders were glad to be
delivered from oppression. At the same
time, there is nothing at all hinted of the
guns of the Margaret and Anne within range
of the little wooden town.

The Danish authority having been thus
put down by a proceeding for which no
Englishman in the party cared to make
himself prominently responsible, "it was
determined that Mr. Jorgenson, not being a
subject of the crown of Great Britain, or
responsible to it for his actions, should assume
for the present the chief command." Jorgen
Jorgenson, Esquire, accordingly took whole
and sole possession of Count Tramp's house,
under the title of Protector of Iceland, and
issued a proclamation by which—good son of
Denmark!—he declared all Danish authority
over the island to be at an end, ordered all
Danes to be imprisoned in their houses, and
decreed that all who opposed the authority
of J. J. should be brought before a military
court and shot. The army, out of which
this military court was to be raised,
consisted of eight men. With that army (and
the guns of the ship) Iceland was coerced.

A second proclamation decreed a
commonwealth and a protectorate. It annulled
also all debts due to Danish merchants, and
prohibited clandestine payment of them,
"under pain of the individual being compelled
to pay the same amount again to the new
governor." It also took off, for a season,
half the taxes upon Icelanders.

The limitation of the protector's army to
eight men was matter of necessity. The
houses at Reikiavik had been searched, and no
arms found, except twenty or thirty old
fowling-pieces—most of them useless—and a few
swords and pistols. Eight natives dressed
in green uniform, furnished with pistols
and swords, and mounted upon good ponies,
were sent to scour the country; intimidating
the Danes, and making themselves highly
useful to the new governor in securing the
goods and property that were to be
confiscated. In plain truth, they were not an army
but a band of robbers; having the protector
for their captain. We can take Count
Tramp's word for the character of Mr.
Jorgenson's Icelandic court, that it was a
contemptible band of idle persons and men of
ruined fortunes, attracted by his being
beyond measure lavish of the sums of money
amassed by his plunders, and by the pompous
promises that he daily retailed on paper, or held
forth in his harangues. All the goods in shops
and warehouses belonging to such of his
countrymen, the Danes, as were not resident in
Iceland, Jorgenson seized and made his own on
the first day of his authority, and he sent
out his troops on the same errand of
robbery to each of the distinct towns. All this
was done by "We, Jorgen Jorgenson," under
the style and title of "His Excellency, the
Protector of Iceland, Commander-in-Chief
by sea and land." In the meantime it was a
great joy to him to produce proclamations.
On the eleventh of July—proclaiming that
"We, Jorgen Jorgenson, have taken upon
ourselves the government of the country
until a regular constitution can be
established, with power to make war and
conclude peace with foreign potentates"—he
stated magnificently that the soldiery (meaning
the eight natives in green) had chosen
him to be their leader and to conduct the
whole military department; that a new flag
was appointed for Iceland, which J. J.
promised to defend with his life and blood; and
the ancient seal of the country was abolished,
his own private one being substituted until
the representatives of the people fixed upon
another. The old Icelandic flag was a split
cod-fish surrounded by a garland. The
protector substituted for it something obviously
finer—three split cod-fish instead of one. To
say nothing of confiscations that were
robberies, and seizures of vessels that were
cunningly excused acts of piracy, the sum
of public money seized by Jorgenson, and
disbursed in part as salaries to his associates,
amounted to about nineteen thousand dollars.
It was all spent in two months.

The commander of the next British sloop-
of-war that touched at Iceland, received in
the August of the same summer at Havnfiord
such information as brought the sloop
round promptly to Reikiavik; where, all
parties having been heard, it was ordered by
Captain Jones that Mr. Jorgenson should
cease to govern until the will of the English
government was known; that the battery
which Mr. Jorgenson and Mr. Phelps had
set up should be destroyed, and the guns
re-shipped; that the army of eight should
be disbanded, and accounts of the whole
matter laid by the several persons concerned
in it before the British government. Count
Tramp and Mr. Jorgenson were both taken
to England.

Having arrived in London, Mr. Jorgenson
went to the Spread Eagle Inn, Gracechurch
Street; where he was soon afterwards arrested
as a prisoner of war who had twice broken