JEAN DEBRY.
As soon as the report of the dreadful occurrence had been circulated, a
dense crowd gathered in the streets of Rastadt, and for the first time
for two years the ambassadors of all the German powers were animated by
one and the same idea, and acting in concord and harmony. They repaired
in a solemn procession to the Ettlinger gate, headed by Count Goertz and
Baron Dohm; the others followed in pairs, Count Lehrbach, the Austrian
ambassador, being the only one who had not joined the procession.
But the guard at the gate refused to let them pass, and when they
had finally succeeded, after long and tedious negotiations, in being
permitted to leave the city, they were met outside of the gate by the
Austrian Captain Burkhard and his hussars.
Count Goertz went to meet him with intrepid courage. “Did you hear that
an infamous murder has been perpetrated on the French ambassadors not
far from the city?”
“I have heard of it,” said the captain, shrugging his shoulders.
“And what steps have you taken in order to save the unfortunate victims,
if possible?”
“I have sent an officer and two hussars for the purpose of ascertaining
the particulars.”
“That is not sufficient, sir!” exclaimed Count Goertz. “You must do more
than that, you must strain every nerve on this occasion, for this is
not an ordinary murder, but your honor, sir, is at stake, as well as the
honor of your monarch and the honor of the German nation!”
“The honor of the German nation is at stake,” shouted the ambassadors,
unanimously. “Our honor has been sullied by the assassination!”
But the captain remained cold and indifferent. “It is a deplorable
misunderstanding,” he said. “It is true, the patrols were going the
rounds at night, and such things may occur at this time. The French
ministers should not have set out by night. The crime has been
committed, and who is to blame for it? It was not done by anybody’s
order.” [Footnote: The literal reply of Captain Burkhard.--Vide “Report
of the German Ambassadors concerning the Assassination of the French
Ministers near Rastadt.”]
“Who would deem it possible that such an outrage should have been
committed by order of any commanding officer?” exclaimed Count Goertz,
indignantly.
“Ah, yes, an outrage indeed!” said Burkhard, shrugging his shoulders.
“A few ambassadors have been killed. A few of our generals, too, were
killed during the last few years.”[Footnote: Ibid.]
Count Goertz turned to the other ambassadors with an air of profound
indignation. “You see,” he said, “we need not hope for much assistance
here; let us seek it elsewhere. Let some of us repair in person to
Colonel Barbaczy’s headquarters at Gernsbach, while the rest of us will
go to the spot where the murders were committed. If the captain here
declines giving us an escort for that purpose, we shall repair thither
without one; and if we should lose our lives by so doing, Germany will
know how to avenge us!”
“I will give you an escort,” said Burkhard, somewhat abashed by the
energetic bearing of the count.
While the ambassadors were negotiating with the captain at the Ettlinger
gate, the hussars were incessantly engaged in plundering the six
carriages. After finishing the first three carriages, they ordered the
ladies and servants to reenter them and to await quietly and silently
what further would be done in relation to them. No one dared to offer
any resistance--no one was strong enough to oppose them. Dismay had
perfectly paralyzed and stupefied all of them. Madame Debry lay in her
carriage with open, tearless eyes, and neither the lamentations nor the
kisses of her daughters were able to arouse her from her stupor. Madame
Roberjot was wringing her hands, and amidst heart-rending sobs she was
wailing all the time, “They have hacked him to pieces before my eyes!”
[Footnote: “I ls l’ont hache devant mes yeux!”--Lodiacus, vol. iii., p.
195.]
No one paid any attention to the corpses lying with their gaping wounds
in the adjoining ditch. Night alone covered them with its black pall;
night alone saw that Jean Debry all at once commenced stirring slightly,
that he opened his eyes and raised his head in order to find out what
was going on around him. With the courage of despair he had been playing
the role of a motionless corpse as long as the hussars were in his
neighborhood; and now that he no longer heard any noise in his vicinity,
it was time for him to think of saving himself.
He remained in a sitting position in the ditch and listened. His head
was so heavy that he had not sufficient strength to hold it erect, it
dropped again upon his breast; from a burning, painful wound the blood
was running over his face into his mouth, and it was the only cooling
draught for his parched lips. He wanted to raise his arm in order to
close this wound and to stanch the blood, but the arm fell down by his
side, heavy and lame, and he then felt that it was likewise severely
injured.
And yet, bleeding and hacked as he was, he was alive, and it was
time for him to think of preserving his life. For over yonder, in the
carriage, there resounded the wail of his children, and the lamentations
of his servants. His wife’s voice, however, he did not hear. Was she not
there? Had she also been assassinated?
He dared not inquire for her at this moment. He had to save himself, and
he was determined to do it.
He arose slowly, and heedless of the pain it caused him. Every thing
around him remained silent. No one had seen him rise; night with its
black pall protected him. It protected him now as he walked a few steps
toward the forest, closely adjoining the highway. At length he reached
the forest, and the shades of darkness and of the woods covered the
tall, black form that now disappeared in the thicket.
But his enemies might be lurking for him in this thicket. Every step
forward might involve him in fresh dangers. Exhausted and in despair,
Jean Debry supported his tottering body against a tree, the sturdy
trunk of which he encircled with his arms. This tree was now his only
protector, the only friend on whom he could rely. To this tree alone he
determined to intrust his life.
Heedless of his wounded arm and the racking pains of his other injuries,
Jean Debry climbed the knotty trunk; seizing a large branch, he raised
himself from bough to bough. A few birds, aroused from their slumbers,
arose from the foliage and flitted away. Jean Debry followed them with
his eyes, and whispered, “You will not betray me!”
On the highest bough, in the densest foliage, he sat down, gasping with
exhaustion, and groaning with pain. In his utter prostration after the
extraordinary effort he had just made, he leaned his head against the
trunk of the tree, the dense branches of which closely enveloped him,
and gave a roof to his head and a resting-place to his feet.
“Here I am safe--here no one will look for me!” he muttered, and he fell
asleep, prostrated by his sufferings and loss of blood.
Night with its dark mantle covered him up and fanned his feverish brow
with its cooling air: the foliage of the tree laid itself soft and fresh
around his burning cheeks, and delightful dreams descended from heaven
to comfort this poor, tormented human soul.
After several hours of invigorating sleep, Jean Debry was awakened, not,
however, by the rude hands of men, but heaven itself aroused him by the
torrents of a heavy shower.
Oh, how refreshing were these cold drops for his parched lips! How
gently did this soft and tepid water wash the blood and dust from his
wounds! How delightfully did it bathe his poor benumbed limbs!
He felt greatly invigorated, and courageously determined to make further
efforts for the preservation of his life. He slowly glided down from the
tree and stood once more on the ground.
The shower was constantly on the increase, and the rain became now, at
daybreak, Jean Debry’s protector. When men forsake their poor, tormented
fellow-beings, Nature takes pity on them and encircles them with her
saving and protecting maternal arms.
The rain protected Jean Debry; it washed the dust and blood from his
garments, and made him resemble the other men who had gathered in a
large crowd on the road, not far from where he emerged from the forest.
All of them were looking with pale faces and expressions of unbounded
horror at some objects lying in their midst. What was it that rendered
this crowd, generally so noisy and turbulent, to-day so silent and
grave?
Jean Debry penetrated further into their midst, and he discovered now
with a shudder what riveted the attention of the vast gathering on the
road.
He beheld the bloody and mutilated corpses of his two friends--the dead
bodies of Roberjot and Bonnier.
Jean Debry closely compressed his lips in order to keep back the cry
that forced itself from his breast; with the whole energy of his will he
suppressed the tears that started from his eyes, and he turned away in
order to return to Rastadt.
The rain protected Jean Debry. The rain had driven the soldiers at the
gate into the guard-room, and the sentinel into the sentry-box. No one
took any notice of this wet and dripping man when he entered the gate.
He quietly walked up the street, directly toward the house inhabited by
Count Goertz, the Prussian ambassador. He entered the house with firm
steps, and hastened into the anteroom which, as he formerly used to do,
he wanted to cross in order to walk to the count’s room without sending
in his name.
But the footmen kept him back; they refused to admit this pale man with
the lacerated face and tattered clothes to their master’s private room.
“Don’t you know me any longer, my friends?” he asked, sadly. “Am I so
disfigured that no one of you is able to recognize Jean Debry?”
The footmen now recognized his voice, and the valet de chambre hastened
to open the door of the count’s study, and to shout, in a loud voice,
“His excellency, the French ambassador Debry!”
Count Goertz uttered a joyful cry, and hastily rose from the sofa on
which, exhausted by the efforts of the terrible night, he had sought a
little rest.
Jean Debry entered the room. He made a truly lamentable appearance as he
approached the count, and fixed his dimmed, bloodshot eyes upon him with
an expression of unutterable anguish.
“Are my wife and children safe?” he asked, breathlessly.
“Yes, they are safe!” exclaimed the count.
And Jean Debry, the austere republican, the scoffing infidel, Jean Debry
fell upon his knees! Lifting up his arms toward heaven, his eyes filled
with tears, he exclaimed: “Divine Providence, if I have hitherto refused
to acknowledge thy benefits, oh, forgive me!” [Footnote: He exclaimed:
“Divine providence, si j’ai meconnu tes bien faits jusqu’ici,
pardonne!”--Lodiacus, iii., p. 195.]
“And punish those who have perpetrated this horrible crime!” added Count
Goertz, folding his hands, and uttering a fervent prayer. “O God, reveal
the authors of this misdeed; let us find those who have committed this
outrage, lest it may remain a bloody stigma on the fame of our country!
Have mercy on poor Germany, on whose brow this mark of infamy is now
burning, and who will be obliged to pour out rivers of her best blood
in order to atone for this crime, and to clear her sullied honor! Have
mercy on all of us, and give us courage to bravo the storms which this
horrible event will assuredly call down! Have mercy, O God; punish only
the assassins, but not our native land!”
This prayer of Count Goertz was not fulfilled. The real instigators
of the murder were never detected and punished, although the Austrian
court, in a public manifesto to the German nation, promised a searching
investigation of the whole affair, and a rigorous chastisement of the
assassins. But the investigation was but a very superficial proceeding,
and its results were never published. The Sczekler hussars publicly
sold, on the following day, the watches, snuff-boxes, and valuables they
had stolen from the French ambassadors. Some of them even acknowledged
openly that they had perpetrated the murder, at the instigation of
their officers. But nobody thought of arresting them, or calling them
to account for their crime. It is true, after a while some of them were
imprisoned and tried. But the proceedings instituted against them were
never published, although the Austrian court had expressly promised to
lay the minutes of the commission trying the prisoners, and the results
of the whole investigation, before the public. In reality, however,
the Austrian authorities tried to hush up the whole affair, so that the
world might forget it. And it was forgotten, and remained unpunished.
In diplomatic circles, however, the real instigators of the outrage
were well known. “It was,” says the author of the “Memoirs of a German
Statesman” (Count Schlitz), “it was a man who, owing to his exalted
position, played a very prominent part at Rastadt; not a very noble one,
however. He was actuated by vindictiveness, and he was determined
to seize the most secret papers of the ambassadors at any price. The
general archives, however, had been forwarded to Strasburg several days
before. He had found willing tools in the brutal hussars. These wretches
believed that what a man of high standing asked them to do was agreeable
to the will of their imperial master. Baseness is easily able to mislead
stupidity, and soldiers thus became the assassins of unarmed men, who
stood under the sacred protection of international law.”
The excitement and indignation produced by this horrible crime were
general throughout Europe, and every one recognized in it the bloody
seeds of a time of horrors and untold evils; every one was satisfied
that France would take bloody revenge for the assassination of her
ambassadors. In fact, as soon as the tidings from Rastadt penetrated
beyond the Rhine, there arose throughout the whole of France a terrible
cry of rage and revenge. The intelligence reached Mentz in the evening,
when the theatre was densely crowded. The commander ordered the news
to be read from the stage, and the furious public shouted, “Vengeance!
vengeance! et la mort aux Allemands!” [Footnote: “Vengeance! vengeance!
and death to the Germans!”]
In Paris, solemn obsequies were performed for the murdered ambassadors.
The seats which Bonnier and Roberjot had formerly occupied in the hall
of the Corps Legislatif were covered with their bloody garments. When
the roll was called and their names were read, the president rose and
replied solemnly: “Assassinated at Rastadt!” The clerks then exclaimed:
“May their blood be brought home to the authors of their murder!”