Jaspis thereupon produced his sermon, and read it over to the wretched man but tells us that even the most touching portions of the address failed to awake any genuine compunction in his soul. Unless he could play the saint, before company, he was cold and indifferent. His great vanity, however, was hurt at the thought that his assertion was disbelieved, that Fischer was his associate in his crimes. He was always eager and inquisitive to know what rumours circulated in the town concerning him, and was gratified to think that he was the topic of the general conversation.
On the night before his execution he slept soundly for five hours, and then lit his pipe and smoked composedly. His condition was, however, not one of bluntness of sense, for he manifested considerable readiness and consciousness up to the last. He had drawn up a dying address which he handed to pastor Jaspis, and on which he evidently placed great importance, as when his first copy had caught fire when he was drying it, he set to work to compose a second. He knew his man Jaspis and was sure he would publish it after the execution. The paper was a rigmarole in which he posed to the world.
On reaching the market-place where the execution was to take place, he repeated his confession, but on this occasion without mention of a confederate. His composure gave way, and he began to sob. On reaching the scaffold, however, the sight of the vast crowd assembled to see him die restored to him some of his composure, as it pleased his vanity; but he again broke down, as he made his last confession to the Lutheran pastor. His voice trembled, and the sweat broke out on his brow. Then he sprang up and shouted, so that all could hear "Gentlemen, Fischer deserved the same punishment as myself." In another moment his head fell from his body.
The words had been audible throughout the market-place by everyone. Who could doubt that his last words were true?
Fischer happened that very day (July 12th) to be in Dresden. He had been seen, and had been recognised.
He had come to Dresden to see his counsel, and ask him to use his influence to obtain his complete discharge from police supervision, and restoration to his rights as an honest man and a soldier, with a claim to a pension.
A vast crowd of people rolled from the place of execution to the house of Eisenstück, shouting, and threatening to tear Fischer to pieces.
But Eisenstück was not the man to be terrified. He summoned a carriage, entered it along with Fischer, and drove slowly, with the utmost composure, through the angry crowd.
On August 26th, 1822, by command of the king, Fischer's name was replaced in the army list, and he received his complete discharge from all the consequences of the accusations made against him. He was guaranteed his pension for his "faithful services through 16 years, and in the campaigns of 1813, 1814, and 1815, in which he had conducted himself to the approval of all his officers."
How are we to explain the conduct of Kaltofen? The simplest way is to admit that he spoke the truth; but against this is to be opposed his denial that Fischer was guilty during the first six months that he was under arrest. And it is impossible to believe that Fischer was guilty, on the sole testimony of Kaltofen, without any confirmatory evidence.
It is rather to be supposed that the inordinate vanity of the young culprit induced him to persist in denouncing his innocent brother gunner, so as to throw off his own shoulders some of the burden of that crime, which, he felt, made him hateful in the eyes of his fellow-citizens, and perhaps to induce them to regard him as misled by an older man, more hardened and experienced in crime, thus arousing their pity and sympathy in place of their disgust.
Jaspis, the pastor, did not himself believe in the criminality of Fischer, and proposes a solution which he gives conjecturally only. He suggests that Kaltofen was misled by the confession of Fischer into the belief that he really had committed a murder or two, though not those of Winter and Kügelgen, and that when he declared on the scaffold that "Fischer deserved to die as much as himself," he spoke under this conviction. This explanation is untenable, for the miserable man had repeatedly charged Fischer with assisting him in committing these two particular crimes. The explanation must be found in his self-conceit and eagerness to present himself in the best and most affecting light before the public. And he gained his point to some extent. The mob believed him, pitied him, became sentimental over him, wept tears at his death, and cursed the unfortunate Fischer. The apparent piety, the mock heroics, the graceful attitudes, and the good looks of the murderer had won their sympathies, and the general opinion of the vulgar was that they had assisted at the sublimation of a saint to the seventh heaven, and not at the well-deserved execution of a peculiarly heartless and brutal murderer.
A month had hardly passed since Kaltofen's execution before Dresden was shocked to hear of another murder on this occasion by a young woman. On August 12th, 1821, this person, who had been in a state of excitement ever since the edifying death of Kaltofen, invited to her house a young girl, just engaged to be married, and deliberately murdered her; then marched off to the police and confessed her crime the nature of which she did not disguise. She desired to make the same affecting and edifying end as Kaltofen. Above all, she wanted to get herself talked about by all the mouths in Dresden. The police on visiting her house found the murdered girl lying on the bed. On the door in large letters the murderer had inscribed the date of Kaltofen's martyrdom, July 12th, and she had committed her crime on the same day one month after, desirous to share his glory.
Such was one consequence of this execution. A small farce also succeeded it. Influenced by the general excitement provoked by the murder of Kügelgen, the Jews had assembled and agreed, should any of them be able to discover the murderer, that they would decline the £150 offered by Government for information that might lead to the apprehension of the guilty. But Hirschel Mendel, the Jew who had produced the watch, put in his claim; whereupon Löbel Graff, who had produced the coat, put in a counter claim. This occasioned a lawsuit between the two Jews for the money. A compromise was finally patched up, by which each received half.
Gerhard von Kügelgen had been buried in the Catholic cemetery at Dresden on Maundy Thursday evening by moonlight. A great procession of art students attended the funeral cortège with lighted torches, and an oration was pronounced over his grave by his friend Councillor Böttiger.
His tomb may still be seen in the cemetery; on it is inscribed:
Franz Gerhard von kügelgenBorn 6 Feb., 1772Died 27 March, 1820On the other side is the text, St. John xiv. 27.
Kügelgen left behind him two sons and a daughter. The eldest son, Wilhelm, pursued his father's profession as an artist, and the Emperor of Russia sent an annual grant of money to assist him in his studies. There is a pleasant book, published anonymously by him, "An Old Man's Youthful Reminiscences," the first edition of which was issued in 1870, and which had reached its eighth edition in 1876.
Kügelgen's twin brother, Karl Ferdinand, after spending some years in St. Petersburg and in Livonia, settled at Reval, and died in 1832. He was the author of a "Picturesque Journey in the Crimea," published in 1823.
Authority: F. Ch. A. Hasse: Das Leben Gerhards von Kügelgen. Leipzig, 1824. He gives in the Supplement an excerpt from the records of the trial. As frontispiece is a portrait of the artist by himself, very Raphaelesque.
Authority: F. Ch. A. Hasse: Das Leben Gerhards von Kügelgen. Leipzig, 1824. He gives in the Supplement an excerpt from the records of the trial. As frontispiece is a portrait of the artist by himself, very Raphaelesque.
The Poisoned Parsnips
At the time when the banished Bourbons were wandering about Europe seeking temporary asylums, during the period of Napoleon's supremacy, a story circulated in 1804 relative to an attempt made in Warsaw, which then belonged to Prussia, upon the life of the Royal Family then residing there. It was said that a plot had been formed, that was well nigh successful, to kill Louis XVIII., his wife, the Duke and Duchess of Angoulême, and such of the Court as sat at the Royal table, with a dish of poisoned parsnips. It was, moreover, whispered that at the bottom of the plot was no other than Napoleon himself, who sought to remove out of his way the legitimate claimants to the Gallic throne.
The article in which the account of the attempt was made public was in the London Courier for August 20th, 1804, from which we will now take the leading facts.
The Royal Family was living in Warsaw. Napoleon Bonaparte employed an agent of the name of Galon Boyer at Warsaw to keep an eye on them, and this man, it was reported, had engaged assassins at the instigation of Napoleon to poison Louis XVIII. and the rest of the Royal Family. The Courier of August 21st, 1804, says: "Some of the daily papers, which were not over anxious to discredit the conspiracy imputed to Mr. Drake,1 affect to throw some doubt upon the account of the attempt upon the lives of the Royal Family at Warsaw. They seem to think that had Bonaparte desired such a plan, he could have executed it with more secrecy and effect. Undoubtedly his plans of assassination have hitherto been more successful, because his hapless victims were within his power his wounded soldiers at Jaffa, Toussaint L'Ouverture, Pichegru, and the Duke D'Enghien. He could send his bloodhounds into Germany to seize his prey; but Warsaw was too remote for him; he was under the necessity of having recourse to less open means of sending his assassins to act secretly. But it is deemed extraordinary that the diabolical attempt should have failed. Why is it extraordinary that a beneficent Providence should interpose to save the life of a just prince? Have we not had signal instances of that interposition in this country? For the accuracy of the account we published yesterday, we pledge ourselves2 that the fullest details, authenticated by all Louis XVIII.'s Ministers by the venerable Archbishop of Rheims by the Abbé Edgeworth, who administered the last consolation of religion to Louis the XVI., have been received in this country. All those persons were present when the poisoned preparation was analysed by very eminent physicians, who are the subjects of the King of Prussia.
"The two wretches who attempted to corrupt the poor Frenchman were openly protected by the French Consul or Commercial Agent.
"The Prussian Governor would not suffer them to be arrested in order that their guilt or innocence might be legally investigated. Is it to be believed that had there been no foundation for the charge against them, the French agent would have afforded them less open protection, and thereby strengthened the charge brought against them? If they were protected and paid by the French agent, is it probable that he paid them out of his own pocket, employed them in such a plot of his own accord, and without order and instructions from his own Government, from Bonaparte? Besides, did not the President Hoym acknowledge his fears that some attempt would be made upon the life of Louis the XVIII.?
"The accounts transmitted to this country were sent from Warsaw one hour after the king had set out for Grodno."
The Courier for August 24th, 1804, has the following note: "We have another strong fact which is no slight evidence in our minds of Bonaparte's guilt. The plot against Louis the XVIII. was to be executed at the end of July it would be known about the beginning of August. At that very period Bonaparte prohibits the importation of all foreign journals without exception that is, of all the means by which the people could be informed of the diabolical deed. Why does he issue this prohibition at the present moment, or why does he issue it at all? Fouché says in his justification of it that it is to prevent our knowing when the expedition sails. Have we ever received any news about the expedition from the French papers? No, no! the prohibition was with a view to the bloody scene to be acted at Warsaw."
The Courier of August 22nd contained full particulars. We will now tell the whole story, from beginning to end, first of all as dressed out by the fancy of Legitimists, and then according to the real facts of the case as far as known.
Napoleon, it will be remembered, had been appointed First Consul for life on August 2nd, 1802, but the Republic came to an end, and the French Empire was established by the Senate on May 18th, 1804.
It was supposed and we can excuse the excitement and intoxication of wrath in the minds of all adherents of the Bourbons which could suppose it that Napoleon, who was thus refounding the Empire of Charlemagne, desired to secure the stability of this new throne by sweeping out of his way the legitimate claimants to that of France. The whole legend of the attempt to assassinate Louis XVIII. by means of a dish of poisoned parsnips is given us in complete form by the author of a life of that prince twenty years after the event.3 It is to this effect:
When the King (Louis XVIII.) was preparing for his journey from Warsaw to Grodno an atrocious attempt to assassinate him was brought to light, which leaves no manner of doubt that it was the purpose of those who were the secret movers in the plot to remove by poison both the King and Queen and also the Duke of Angoulême and his wife. Two delegates of Napoleon had been in Warsaw seeking for a man who could execute the plan. A certain Coulon appeared most adapted to their purpose, a man indigent and eager for money. He had previously been in the service of one of the emigré nobles, and had access to the kitchen of the Royal Family.
The agents of Napoleon gave Coulon drink, and as he became friendly and lively under the influence of punch, they communicated to him their scheme, and promised him money, the payment of his debts, and to effect his escape if he would be their faithful servant in the intrigue. Coulon pretended to yield to their solicitations, and a rendezvous was appointed where the plans were to be matured. But no sooner was Coulon at liberty than he went to his former master, the Baron de Milleville, master of horse to the Queen, and told him all. The Baron sought the Duc de Pienne, first gentleman of the Royal household, and he on receiving the information communicated it to the Count d'Avaray, Minister of Louis XVIII. Coulon received orders to pretend to be ready to carry on the plot. He did this with reluctance, but he did it. He told the agents of Napoleon that he was in their hands and would blindly execute their orders. They treated him now to champagne, and revealed to him the details of the attempt. He was to get into the kitchen of the Royal household, and was to pour the contents of a packet they gave him into one of the pots in which the dinner for the Royal table was being cooked. Coulon then demanded an instalment of his pay, and asked to be given 400 louis d'or. One of the agents then turned to the other and asked if he thought Boyer would be disposed to advance so much this was Galon Boyer, the head agent sent purposely to Warsaw as spy on the Royal Family, and the principal mover in the attempt.