No more innocent claimant to royalty, nor more undeserved a victim,
than was Caspar Hauser, is told of in history. His birth, his death,
and his real parentage, are all enveloped in a mystery no amount of
research has, as yet, been able to pierce. The world first heard of
him on Whit-Monday, the 26th of May, 1828. On the afternoon of that
day a citizen of Nuremberg was interested in the appearance of a youth
in a peasant's dress, who seemed endeavouring to walk into the town,
but with unsteady gait and tottering step. When approached and
accosted, he replied in the Bavarian idiom, "I want to be a trooper as
my father was," and held out a letter addressed to the captain of the
fourth squadron of the sixth regiment of Bavarian Light Horse. As this
officer was quartered near the citizen's own house, he assisted the
crippled lad to the place indicated. The captain was from home, and as
the bearer of the letter to him appeared to be little better than an
idiot, and incapable of giving other account of himself than that he
wanted to be a trooper as his father had been, he was conducted to the
stable and given some straw, upon which he laid himself down and fell
asleep. When the captain came home the lad was sought for, but it
required no little exertion to awaken him. He could not give any
account of himself, and recourse was had to the letter for an
explanation. It was written in German, in an unknown hand, and
expressed a wish that the youth should be admitted into the captain's
troop of Light Horse. A memorandum in Latin was enclosed, and was
stated by the writer of the letter to have been received by him on the
7th of October, 1812, when the present bearer, then a baby, had been
left at his house. It proceeded to declare that the writer was a poor
labourer, and the father of ten children; but that he had complied with
the unknown mother's request by bringing up the little foundling
secretly, and by giving him instructions in reading, writing, and
Christianity. This communication contained neither the writer's name
nor address, nor did the memorandum enclosed throw much light on the
subject.
It ran thus:--"The child is already baptized; you must give him a
surname yourself; you must educate the child. His father was one of
the Light Horse. When he is seventeen years old, send him to Nuremberg
to the sixth regiment of the Light Horse, for there his father was. He
was born on the 30th April, 1812. I am a poor girl, and cannot support
him. His father is dead."
This unsatisfactory communication, and the utter inability of the youth
to furnish any account of himself, determined the captain to have
nothing to do in the matter; so he immediately handed his charge over
to the police. Taken to the guardroom, a close examination was made of
the strange arrival. His attire consisted of a coarse shirt,
pantaloons, and a peasant's jacket, in which was a white handkerchief
marked "K.H." (Kaspar Hauser). He was of medium height,
broad-shouldered, and well built; his skin was white and fine, his
limbs delicately moulded, and his hands small and beautifully formed.
The soles of his feet were as soft as the palms of his hands, and were
covered with blisters, which seemed to account for his difficulty in
walking. But subsequent investigation offered further elucidation upon
this point; it showed that his feet had never before been compressed by
shoes, and that owing to the confined position in which the unfortunate
boy had been retained, the joint at the knees, instead of being a
protuberance when the leg was straightened, formed a hole or
depression. Whilst under examination he manifested neither dread nor
astonishment, but continued to cry and point to his feet. His
behaviour excited the compassion of the officials, and one of them
offered him some meat and beer; but he rejected them with disgust,
partaking, however, of bread and water with apparent relish.
The usual interrogations were put to him, as to his name, whence he
came, and his travelling pass; but all in vain. Beyond his frequently
repeated expression, "I want to be a trooper as my father was," little
could be got out of him. Some of the spectators began to fancy the lad
was playing a part, and their suspicions were increased when, upon
writing materials being offered to him, he took a pen, and slowly and
clearly wrote "Kaspar Hauser." Unable to make out whether he was an
idiot or an impostor, he was removed to a tower near the guard-house,
where rogues and vagabonds were confined. Given a straw bed, he lay
down and slept soundly.
Although at first utterly unable to furnish any account of himself,
Caspar, under the kind and judicious treatment of his keepers,
gradually learnt to speak, and gather some idea of the world and its
ways. As soon as ever he was really enabled to communicate with those
around him, the Burgermeister, Herr Binder, went to visit him, and take
down his deposition. From what the poor lad then or subsequently
stated, the following extraordinary particulars were recorded, and are,
or were some few years ago, still preserved in the Nuremberg Police
Court. Caspar's account was to the effect that he did not know who he
was, or whence he came; that as far back as he could recollect he had
always lived in a hole or cage, and always sat upon the ground, with
his back supported in an erect position,--a statement which the
condition of his knees fully corroborated. He had been kept in a state
of semi-darkness in this subterranean place, clad only in shirt and
trousers, and fed only upon bread and water. At times he had been
overpowered with heavy sleep, and on awakening from this state would
find his nails trimmed, his clothes changed, and his dungeon cleaned
out. Every day a man, whose face he had never seen, would come and
bring him a loaf of bread and a pitcher of water. Some time before
Caspar's removal into the outer world, "the man" was accustomed to come
every day with a small table or board, which he put over the lad's
feet, and putting a sheet of paper upon it, guided his hand, in which
he had placed a pencil, so that he gradually learnt to write. By
constant imitation of the marks or lines "the man" guided him into
making, Caspar Hauser had learnt to make the letters composing his own
name, or rather the name he went by. This writing appears to have
greatly delighted the poor captive and, beyond two wooden horses, would
seem to be all that he had to amuse himself with. At last "the man"
came one night, lifted Caspar on to his shoulders, and taking him out
of the dungeon, carried him towards Nuremberg. He made the lad try to
walk, but the unusual exercise caused him such pain that he fainted;
and when he recovered his senses he found himself alone by the city
gates, where he was discovered.
Everything appeared to corroborate this most extraordinary
circumstance; it was some time before he could walk without stumbling;
he appeared to have no control over his limbs; the attempt to compress
his feet into boots caused him great torture, whilst walking drew sighs
and groans from him. His eyes, unaccustomed to the light, became
inflamed; he had no idea of the relative distances of things, and when
he first saw the flame of a candle was so delighted that he put his
finger into it. When pretended thrusts were made at him he exhibited
no alarm, and did not recoil, and altogether showed such intense
ignorance of the operations of the senses that those about him were
convinced that he was no impostor, as strangers imagined him to be.
The meanwhile, whilst the lad was gradually becoming reconciled to the
wonders of the world around him, the strange story of his discovery was
spreading rapidly all over Europe. The scientific and the curious
flocked to Nuremberg in order to behold this human phenomenon, and
presented him with toys and gifts. But he complained that his visitors
teased him, and that he had headaches, which he never had when he was
in his cell. At this time, the close scrutiny which his story
underwent began to excite curious suspicions as to the facts of his
parentage. It was argued that a mother desirous of getting her child
adopted was not likely to have placed it at the door of a poor labourer
already burdened with ten children of his own, and with the hope that
he could support it for seventeen years; nor was it within the bounds
of probability that a man so situated could have kept the boy all that
period without putting him to work. Moreover, what reason could the
labourer have had for keeping the boy concealed all that time? The
mother might have wished concealment, but certainly not the adopting
labourer. It was felt there was some deep mystery behind all this
secrecy, and everything about it pointed to a noble origin for Caspar.
These ideas, and the rumours they generated, had tragic consequences
for the poor lad. On the 17th October, feeling unwell, he was excused
from a mathematical class he attended, and was allowed to stay at home.
A little after noon, whilst a woman in the house was sweeping, she
noticed blood spots and bloody footmarks, and following them to the
cellar, there found Caspar, apparently dead, and with a dreadful wound
across his forehead. Medical assistance was procured, and the lad
removed to his bed. After a time he recovered from his insensibility,
but for a long while was in a state of delirium, during which he
frequently murmured, "Man come--don't kill me--I love all men--do no
one anything. Man, I love you too. Don't kill--why man kill?"
The poor innocent lad was carefully tended, and as soon as he had
regained sufficient strength to be interrogated a judicial inquiry was
made into the affair. According to the victim's account, "the man" had
entered the house, and as he was softly treading along a passage Caspar
noticed that he was masked, but before he could make any further
observation he was felled to the ground by the wound in his forehead,
and became insensible. He could not explain how he got into the
cellar, but fancied he must have crawled there in a half-insensible
condition. Nothing resulted from the judicial inquiry beyond the fact
that the extraordinary case excited more comment than ever. Among
others who became interested in the strange matter was Earl Stanhope,
then in Germany. This English nobleman was so pleased with the lad's
amiable ways and his misfortunes, that he placed him in the care of an
able tutor. After a time Caspar received the appointment of Clerk to
the Registrar's Court of Appeal, and performed his duties so well that
Lord Stanhope spoke of adopting him and taking him to England. This
probably induced his powerful foes to put him out of the way at once.
On the evening of the 14th December, 1833, as Caspar was returning home
from his official duties, a stranger accosted him, and by a promise of
revealing his parentage inveigled him into the palace gardens, where he
plunged a dagger into his side, and then instantly disappeared. Caspar
just managed to get home and murmur a few words when he became
insensible, and before the police arrived he expired.
The police appear to have made great efforts to discover the assassin,
but without success. The King of Bavaria caused an inquiry into Caspar
Hauser's case to be made, and the well-known jurist, Feuerbach, to whom
the inquiry was deputed, reported significantly, "_There are circles of
human society into which the arm of justice dares not penetrate._"
Who then was Caspar Hauser, and why include him among pretenders to
royal lineage? It was surmised, and still is believed by many, that he
was elder son of the Grand Duke Karl of Baden and his much-admired
consort, the Grand Duchess Stephanie Tascher, Napoleon's adopted
daughter. Their son, born in September 1812, was alleged to have died
when a few weeks old, but the popular idea in Baden was, and indeed
still is, that this boy was carried off and a dead child substituted in
his stead, at the instigation of the Grand Duke Karl's uncle and
successor, Ludwig, a man to whom the most disgraceful crimes and cruel
outrages are imputed.