Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. III, No. XVII, October 1851

ARREST AND MURDER OF THE DUKE D'ENGHIEN

"Ordener set out on the same night, that of the 10th and 11th of March, and arrived on the 12th at Strassburg. He held a council on his arrival with General Leval, Charlot, the colonel of gendarmes, and the commissary of police, and they resolved to precede and facilitate the nocturnal expedition by a minute reconnoitring of the scene of action. An agent of police named Stahl, and a non-commissioned officer of the gendarmerie, named Pfersdoff, were dispatched on the instant, and marching all night, arrived at eight o'clock in the morning at Ettenheim. They strolled with an affectation of indifference about the house of the Prince, in order to make themselves well acquainted with the approaches to it. The Prince's valet-de-chambre, concealed behind a window, observed these two strangers walking round the walls, and intently noting the objects of their mission. He called another of the servants, named Cannone, and communicated his anxieties to him. Cannone was an old soldier and companion of the Prince from his earliest infancy. He had fought with him in all his campaigns, and had saved his life in Poland, by covering him with his sabre and his person. He fancied that he remembered having somewhere seen the face of Pfersdoff, and thought he recognized in him a gendarme in disguise. He hastened to inform the Prince, who, with the thoughtlessness of his age, disdained to pay any attention to these symptoms of espionage. Nevertheless, an officer of his army, named Schmidt, went out and accosted Stahl and Pfersdoff, and questioned them with an appearance of unconcern, pretending that he was going their way, and accompanied them for more than a league; but at last seeing them take a road which led into the interior of Germany, instead of returning toward the Rhine, he felt re-assured, and returned to tranquilize the servants and retainers at Ettenheim. But the anxieties of love are not so easily set at rest as those of friendship. The Princess Charlotte de Rohan was filled with a presentiment of danger, and begged the Prince would absent himself for a few days from a residence where he was so evidently watched, and possibly with a criminal intention. Out of affection for her, rather than from uneasiness on his own account, the duke consented to absent himself for two or three days, and it was settled that he should set out the third morning after, on a long hunting excursion in the forests of the Grand Duke of Baden, during which the suspicions of his betrothed would be either dissipated or verified; but it was fated that, the third morning should not dawn on him in Germany… On the evening of the 14th, General Ordener, accompanied by General Fririon, chief of General Leval's staff, and by Charlot, colonel of gendarmes, set out in the dark toward the ferry of Rheinau on the Rhine, and found there, at the appointed hour, the 300 dragoons of the 26th, 15 ferrymen, the five large boats, and, lastly, the 30 mounted gendarmes destined to be employed in the violation of dwellings and seizure of persons, in an expedition more worthy of lictors than of soldiers. The Rhine was crossed in silence at midnight, and the column, unperceived during the sleep of the German peasants on the right bank, and guided by different roads, arrived, as the day was breaking, at Ettenheim. The spies, whom Ordener and Charlot had brought with them, pointed out to the gendarmes the houses which were to be invested… The Duke d'Enghien, who had spent the evening before at the house of the Prince Rohan-Rochefort, with the Princess Charlotte, had promised her to absent himself for a few days, to allow time for the plots against his safety, of which she was apprehensive, either to evaporate or be unraveled. He was accordingly about to start at sunrise, with Colonel Grunstein, one of his friends, on his hunting excursion for several days. He had already left his bed, and was dressing himself, and preparing his arms. Grunstein, contrary to his usual custom, had slept under the same roof with the Prince, that he might be the sooner ready to escort him. This companion of his own, on the battle-field and in the chase, was also half-dressed, when the tramp of horses and the sight of dragoons and gendarmes made the rest of the household start from their sleep. Feron, the most familiar servant of the Prince, flew to the chamber of his young master, and announced to him that the court-yard and garden were surrounded at every outlet by French soldiers, and that the officer commanding them was loudly calling on the servants to open the doors, declaring that in case of refusal, he would have them broken open with hatchets. 'Well, then, we must defend ourselves,' exclaimed the undaunted young man, and saying these words, he seized his double-barreled fowling-piece, ready loaded with ball for the chase, while Cannone, his other servant, animated with the same determination as his master, possessed himself of another fowling-piece, and Grunstein entering the chamber at that moment, armed in a like manner, the whole then darted to the windows to fire. The Prince leveled at Colonel Chariot, who threatened the door, and was about to stretch him dead on the threshold, when Grunstein, perceiving on all sides a host of helmets and sabres, and seeing another detachment of gendarmes already masters of one of the wings of the chateau, seized the barrel of the Prince's fowling-piece, and throwing the gun upward, showed the Duke d'Enghien, by signs, the uselessness of resistance against such overwhelming numbers, and prevented his firing. 'My lord,' he said, 'have you in any way committed yourself?' – 'No,' replied the duke. 'Well, then, that being the case, do not attempt a hopeless struggle. We are hemmed in by a complete wall of troops. See how their bayonets glisten on every side.' The Prince was turning round to reply to these words when he beheld Pfersdoff, whom he recognized as the spy of the day before, accompanied by gendarmes with presented carbines, rush into his room. He was followed by Col. Charlot, who, with his soldiers, seized and disarmed the Prince, together with Grunstein, Feron, and Cannone. The Duke, as we have seen, was ready to set out, and was thus lost by the delay of only a few moments. He was dressed in the costume of a Tyrolean hunter, wearing a handsome gold-laced cap, with long gaiters of chamois skin buckled at the knees; and the manly beauty and dauntless expression of his features, heightened by the excitement of the surprise, and determination to resist, struck the soldiers with astonishment. In the midst of such a scene, and the tramp of feet and clatter of arms in the house, the sound of a disturbance without for a moment inspired the Prince and his followers with a hope of deliverance. Loud cries of fire issued from the village, and these cries were re-echoed from house to house, like a tocsin of human voices. Windows were thrown open, and doorways filled with the inhabitants aroused by the invasion of the French. Half naked mechanics were seen running to the steeple to ring the bells, and summon the peasants to vengeance. Colonel Charlot, however, had them seized, and also arrested the master of the hounds of the Duke of Baden, who, on hearing of the disturbance, was hastening to the house of the Prince, and who was told by Charlot that what was taking place had been mutually agreed upon by the First Consul and his sovereign. On hearing this falsehood, the excitement of the inhabitants subsided, and they submitted, with looks of sorrow and expressions of grief, to the misfortune of a young man who had rendered himself an object of the deepest regard… The Prince was dragged away from his residence, without being permitted to take a last farewell of her whom he left swooning and in tears."

Bonaparte had determined on the duke's death, and his ministers and judges received their instructions to that effect. The midnight trial, the despicable meanness of the tribunal, the heroic attitude of the young Condé, are vividly depicted in this volume: but we pass on to the dénouement of the plot.

"As soon as the judgment was pronounced, and even before it was drawn up, Hullin sent to inform Savary and the Judge Advocate of the sentence of death, in order that they might take their measures for its execution. It seemed as if the time was equally pressing to the tribunal as to those who awaited their decision, and as if an invisible genius was hurrying along the acts, formalities, and hours, in order that the morning's sun might not witness the deeds of the night. Hullin and his colleagues remained in the hall of council, and drew up at random the judgment they had just given; and this short and unskillfully prepared document (summing up a whole examination in two questions and two answers) terminated with the order to execute the sentence forthwith. Savary had not waited for this order to be written before he prepared for its execution, and had already marked out the spot. The court and the esplanade being encumbered with troops, by the presence of the brigade of infantry, and the legion of gendarmes d'élite, no safe place could be found there in which the fire of a platoon did not run the risk of striking a soldier or a spectator. No doubt it was also feared that too great publicity would thus be given to the murder in the midst of an army; that the scene of the execution was too distant from the place of sepulture; and that feelings of pity and horror would pervade the ranks at the sight of this young man's mangled corpse. The moat of the chateau, however, offered the means of avoiding all these dangers, as it would conceal the murder as well as the victim. This place was accordingly chosen. Harel received orders to give up the keys of the steps and iron gateways, which descended from the towers and opened on the foundation of the chateau to point out the different outlets and sites, and to procure a gravedigger to commence digging a grave while the man for whom it was intended still breathed. A poor working gardener of the chateau, named Bontemps, was awakened, and his work pointed out to him. He was furnished with a lantern to guide him through the labyrinth of the moat, and light him while he dug it up. Bontemps descended with his shovel and pickax to the bottom of the moat, and finding the ground all about dry and hard, he recollected that they had begun to dig a trench the evening before, at the foot of the Queen's Pavilion, in the angle formed by the tower and a little wall breast-high, for the purpose, it was said, of depositing rubbish in it. He accordingly went to the foot of the tower, marked out in paces the measure of a man's body extended at length, and dug in the earth that had been already moved a grave for the corpse they were preparing for it. The Duke d'Enghien could have heard from his window, over the humming noise of the troops below, the dull and regular sound of the pickax which was digging his last couch. Savary, at the same time, marched down and arranged slowly in the moat the detachments of troops who were to witness this military death, and ordered the firing party to load their muskets. The Prince was far from suspecting either so much rigor or so much haste on the part of his judges. He did not doubt that even a sentence of death, if awarded by the commission, would give occasion for an exhibition of magnanimity on the part of the First Consul. He had granted an amnesty to emigrants taken with arms in their hands; how could it be doubted, then, that he who pardoned obscure and culpable exiles, would not honor himself by an act of justice or clemency toward an illustrious prince, beloved by all Europe, and innocent of all crime? He had been taken back, after his interrogatories and his appearance before the military commission, into the room where he had slept. He entered it without exhibiting any of that fright which prisoners experience in the anxiety and uncertainty of their sentence. With a serene countenance and unoccupied mind, he conversed with his gendarmes, and played with his dog. Lieutenant Noirot who was on guard over him, had formerly served in a regiment of cavalry commanded by a colonel who was a friend of the Prince of Condé. He had also seen the Duke d'Enghien, when a child, sometimes accompany his father to reviews and field days of the regiment; and he reminded the Prince of that period and these circumstances of his youth. The duke smiled at these reminiscences, and renewed them himself by other recollections of his infancy, which mingled with those of Noirot. He inquired, with a curiosity full of interest, about the career of this officer since that epoch; of the campaigns he had made; of the battles in which he had been engaged; of the promotion he had received; of his present rank, his expectations, and his partiality for the service. He seemed to find a lively pleasure in this conversation on the past with a brave officer, who spoke to him with the accent and the heart of a man who would gladly indulge in pity, were it not for the severity of duty. A noise of footsteps, advancing slowly toward the chamber, interrupted this agreeable and last indulgence of captivity. It was the commandant of Vincennes, Harel, accompanied by the brigadier of the gendarmerie of the village, Aufort. This friend of Harel's had been permitted to remain in one of the commandant's rooms, after having ordered the Prince's supper, and from thence he had heard or seen all the events of the night. Harel, agitated and trembling at the mission he had to fulfill, had permitted Aufort to follow and assist him in his message to the prisoner. They saluted the Prince respectfully; but neither of them had the firmness to acquaint him with the truth. The dejected attitude and trembling voice of Harel alone revealed to the eye and to the heart of the Prince a fatal presentiment of the rigor of his judges. He thought they now came for him only to hear his sentence read. Harel desired him, on the part of the tribunal, to follow him, and he went before with a lantern in his hand, through the corridors, the passages, and the courts it was necessary to cross, to arrive at the building called the 'Devil's Tower.' The interior of this tower contained the only staircase and the only door descending to, and opening into, the lowest moat. The Prince appeared to hesitate two or three times on going into this suspicious tower, like a victim which smells the blood, and which resists and turns back its head on crossing the threshold of a slaughter-house. Harel and Aufort preceded the duke in silence down the steps of the narrow winding staircase, which descended to a postern through the massy walls of this tower. The Prince, with an instinctive horror of the place, and of the depth beneath the soil to which the steps were leading him, began to think they were not conducting him before the judges, but into the hands of murderers, or to the gloom of a prison. He trembled in all his limbs, and convulsively drew back his foot as he addressed his guides in front: 'Where are you conducting me?' he demanded, with a stifled voice. 'If it is to bury me alive in a dungeon, I would rather die this instant.' 'Sir,' replied Harel, turning round, 'follow me, and summon up all your courage.' The Prince partly comprehended him, and followed. They at length issued from the winding staircase, through a low postern which opened on the bottom of the moat, and continued walking for some time in the dark, along the foot of the lofty walls of the fortress, as far as the basement of the Queen's Pavilion. When they had turned the angle of this pavilion, which concealed another part of the moat behind its walls, the Prince suddenly found himself in front of the detachment of the troops drawn up to witness his death. The firing party selected for the execution was separated from the rest; and the barrels of their muskets, reflecting the dull light of some lanterns carried by a few of the attendants, threw a sinister glare on the moat, the massy walls, and the newly-dug grave. The Prince stopped at a sign from his guides, within a few paces of the firing party. He saw his fate at a glance, but he neither trembled nor turned pale. A slight and chilling rain was falling from a gloomy sky, and a melancholy silence reigned throughout the moat. Nothing disturbed the horror of the scene but the whispering and shuffling feet of a few groups of officers and soldiers who had collected upon the parapets above, and on the drawbridge which led into the forest of Vincennes. Adjutant Pelle, who commanded the detachment, advanced, with his eyes lowered, toward the Prince. He held in his hand the sentence of the military commission, which he read in a low, dull voice, but perfectly intelligible. The Prince, listened without making an observation or losing his firmness. He seemed to have collected in an instant all his courage, and all the military heroism of his race, to show his enemies that he knew how to die. Two feelings alone seemed to occupy him during the moment of intense silence which followed the reading of his sentence; one was to invoke the aid of religion to soothe his last struggle, and the other to communicate his dying thoughts to her he was going to leave desolate on the earth. He accordingly asked if he could have the assistance of a priest, but there was none in the castle; and though a few minutes would suffice to call the curé of Vincennes, they were too much pressed for time, and too anxious to avail themselves of the night which was to cover every thing. The officers nearest to him made a sign that he must renounce this consolation; and one brutal fellow from the midst of a group called out in a tone of irony, 'Do you wish, then, to die like a Capuchin?' The Prince raised his head with an air of indignation, and turning toward the group of officers and gendarmes who had accompanied him to the ground, he asked, in a loud voice, if there was any one among them willing to do him one last service. Lieutenant Noirot advanced from the group, and approached him, thus sufficiently evincing his intention. The Prince said a few words to him in a low voice, and Noirot, turning toward the side occupied by the troops, said, 'Gendarmes, have any of you got a pair of scissors about you?' The gendarmes searched their cartridge-boxes, and a pair of scissors was passed from hand to hand to the Prince. He took off his cap, cut off one of the locks of his hair, drew a letter from his pocket, and a ring from his finger, then folding the hair, the letter, and the ring in a sheet of paper, he gave the little packet, his sole inheritance, to Lieutenant Noirot, charging him, in the name of pity for his situation and his death, to send them to the young Princess Charlotte de Rohan, at Ettenheim. This love message being thus confided, he collected himself for a moment, with his hands joined, to offer up a last prayer, and in a low voice commended his soul to God. He then made five or six paces to place himself in front of the firing party, whose loaded muskets he saw glimmering at a short distance. The light of a large lantern containing several candles, placed upon the little wall that stood over the open grave, gleamed full upon him, and lighted the aim of the soldiers. The firing party retired a few paces to a proper distance, the adjutant gave the word to fire, and the young Prince, as if struck by a thunderbolt, fell upon the earth, without a cry and without a struggle. At that moment the clock of the castle struck the hour of three. Hullin and his colleagues were waiting in the vestibule of Harel's quarters for their carriage to convey them back to Paris, and were talking with some bitterness of Savary's refusal to transmit their letter to his master, when an unexpected explosion, resounding from the moat of the forest gate, made them start and tremble, and taught them that judges should never reckon upon any thing but justice and their own conscience. This still small voice pursued them through their lives. The Duke d'Enghien was no more. His dog, which had followed him into the moat, yelled when he saw him fall, and threw himself on the body of his master. It was with difficulty the poor animal could be torn away from the spot, and given to one of the Prince's servants, who took him to the Princess Charlotte – the only messenger from that tomb where slept the hapless victim whom she never ceased to deplore."

THE CAPTAIN'S SELF-DEVOTION.9

Some twenty years ago my father had a new ship launched from the stocks. A large company had assembled at our house to witness the ceremony of christening the vessel, and afterward to celebrate the marriage of the captain who was to take command of her. He had been for a long time in my father's service, had been uniformly successful in his voyages, and was just the man to take charge of a new enterprise on the western coast of Africa.

Captain Jan Evers, from the time when he first went to sea as cabin-boy, had lived but little at home, with the exception of the time which he subsequently passed with his parents, while he was attending his course at the Navigation School of Hamburg, in order to prepare for his examination as pilot. His parents owned a bit of ground in the village of Neumühlen, the long rows of houses of which stretch along the mouth of the Elbe, beyond Altona. After the death of the old people, the house stood for a long while uninhabited; until, in the year of which I now speak, the captain, who had returned from a voyage, concluded, at the desire of my father, not to go to sea again, until his new ship should be ready. This induced him to have the long-closed shutters of his house opened, in order to take up his own residence there; for he had never rented it.

You must be aware of the extraordinary cleanliness of the northern sea-ports, and must have seen how the sailors love to have their houses as neat as their ships; and how in Neumühlen, where many captains and pilots have their little estates, the houses seem to shine with the incessant care bestowed upon them, in order to comprehend how vexed Jan Evers was when he found his long-deserted house to have suffered sadly from neglect. The little garden-plot before the door, which is never wanting, was full of weeds; the boughs of the fine linden had run wild all about, and shaded the chambers, which had thereby grown mouldy, so that the green paint on the walls had contracted ugly yellow stains. The whole aspect of the house made a melancholy impression, and even the Chinese mandarin which was still standing upon the walnut buffet, where Jan used to see it when a child, seemed to nod its head gloomily when Jan once more took possession of his paternal abode.

The captain, who was a fresh jolly fellow of some forty years old, was no longer the same man after he had passed a couple of weeks there. He grew moody, peevish, and barely civil; and my father often lamented the impatience with which he awaited the completion of the ship, in order to be off again.

One day Evers came to our house at an unusual hour, and desired to see my father, who at that time of day was not usually in his counting-room, but with his family. The captain was shown in, and after we children had been sent away, at his desire, he said:

"I have something to say to you which it is best your good lady should hear, too. I have just come from the dock-yard, where I have been looking at the ship. It will be two months before she will be off the stocks. Then it will be too late to go to sea, even if you should have her rigged upon the stocks. I can't get off till spring; and I can't hold out so long as that. If I only had my fellows of the Fortune here" – (this was the name of the vessel he had last commanded) – "if I only had them with me in Neumühlen, it would be all right: but I grow down in the mouth there, it is so quiet. I'd rather be on a sand-island, alone with the seals and the sea-mews, under the open heavens, than among all those nicknacks of my little house, which must be used, and which I can't use. And so, I thought I'd ask you – "

"If you couldn't be off!" interrupted my father. "Surely, Evers, you are not thinking of that in earnest, are you?"

"No, I am not thinking of that. I have agreed to take command of the new ship; and I am in the habit of keeping my word. But I thought I would ask – " here he stopped, twirled his hat about in his hand, turned to my mother, and continued – "what you think about it – whether I hadn't better get married?"

It seemed as though a great load was taken from his mind, when he had got out these words. He had his house, a pretty little property, and was a good-looking, noble fellow, and bid fair to make an excellent husband; and so my mother advised him earnestly to carry his design into execution; asking him whether he had yet found a girl whom he could wish to marry.