Gonsalvo, who was lieutenant-general to the celebrated Spanish general,
the marquis of Spinola, and governor of Milan, in 1624, intending to
take possession of a little walled village in the Palatine, called
Ogershiem, dispatched an officer, at the head of some troops upon that
errand. On the first alarm, nine tenths of the inhabitants removed to
Manheim, leaving behind them about twenty insignificant people, and a
poor shepherd, who, beside being a brave fellow, was a man of humour.
The shepherd in good time fastened the gates, let down the drawbridge,
and made a wonderful shew of resistance. A trumpeter summoned the
village in form, upon which the few inhabitants that remained made their
escape through a postern-gate, and left only the shepherd, and the
shepherdess, big with child. This unaccountable peasant, in a style of
the representative of a garrison, gave audience, from the walls, to the
military herald, and made his terms of capitulation, inch by inch,
stipulating, at the same time, for the preservation of the state, and
the free exercise of the protestant religion. Imagine, therefore, what
must be the surprise of the Spaniards, when they entered the village,
and found him and his wife only in it! Yet the droll peasant preserved
the muscles of his countenance inflexible; and, some weeks afterward,
when his wife lay in, he desired the great Gonsalvo to be godfather;
which honour the pompous Spaniard, for the jest’s sake, could not
decline, but on the contrary, sent her some very handsome presents. This
account, the historian (_Mr. Spanheim, Hist. de l’ Elect. Palet._) says,
might appear a little romantic to posterity, if the notoriety of it had
not been a circumstance indisputable at the time it happened.
* * * * *
_SINGULAR ACCOUNT OF LA MAUPIN._
From Burney’s History of Music.
La Maupin seems to have been a most extraordinary personage. “She was
equally fond of both sexes, fought and lived like a man, and resisted
and fell like a woman. Her adventures are of a very romantic kind.
Married to a young husband, who soon was obliged to absent himself from
her, to enter on an office he had obtained in Provence, she ran away
with a fencing master, of whom she learnt the small sword, and became an
excellent fencer, which was afterwards a useful qualification to her on
several occasions. The lovers first retreated from persecution to
Marseilles; but necessity soon obliged them to solicit employment there,
at the opera; and, as both had by nature good voices, they were received
without difficulty. But soon after this she was seized with a passion
for a young person of her own sex, whom she seduced, but the object of
her whimsical affection being pursued by her friends, and taken, was
thrown into the convent at Avignon, where La Maupin soon followed her;
and having presented herself as a novice obtained admission. Some time
after, she set fire to the convent, and availing herself of the
confusion she had occasioned, carried off her favourite. But being
pursued and taken, she was condemned to the flames for contumacy:
a sentence, however, which was not executed, as the young Marseillaise
was found and restored to her friends.
“She then went to Paris, and made her first appearance on the opera
stage in 1695, when she performed the part of Pallas, in Cadmus, with
the greatest success. The applause was so violent, the she was obliged,
in her car, to take off her casque to salute and thank the public, which
redoubled their marks of approbation. From that time her success was
uninterrupted. Cumeni, the singer, having affronted her, she put on
men’s clothes, watched for him in the Place des Victoires, and insisted
on his drawing his sword and fighting her, which he refusing, she caned
him, and took from him his watch and snuff-box. Next day, Dumeni, having
boasted at the opera-house, that he had defended himself against three
men who attempted to rob him, she related the whole story, and produced
his watch and snuff-box in proof of her having caned him for his
cowardice. Thevenard was nearly treated in the same manner, and had no
other way of escaping her chastisement, than by publicly asking her
pardon, after hiding himself at the Palace Royal during three weeks. At
a ball given by Monsieur, the brother of Louis XIV. she again put on
men’s clothes, and having behaved impertinently to a lady, three of her
friends, supposing La Maupin to be a man, called her out. She might
easily have avoided the combat by discovering her sex, but she instantly
drew, and killed them all three. Afterwards returning very coolly to the
ball, she told the story to Monsieur, who obtained her pardon.”
* * * * *