Of all the heroes who have waged a private and undeclared war upon their
neighbours, Louis-Dominique Cartouche was the most generously endowed.
It was but his resolute contempt for politics, his unswerving love of
plunder for its own sake, that prevented him from seizing a throne or
questing after the empire of the world. The modesty of his ambition sets
him below Cæsar, or Napoleon, but he yields to neither in the genius
of success: whatever he would attain was his on the instant, nor did
failure interrupt his career, until treachery, of which he went in
perpetual terror, involved himself and his comrades in ruin. His talent
of generalship was unrivalled. None of the gang was permitted the
liberty of a free-lance. By Cartouche was the order given, and so long
as the chief was in repose, Paris might enjoy her sleep. When it pleased
him to join battle a whistle was enough.
Now, it was revealed to his intelligence that the professional thief,
who devoted all his days and such of his nights as were spared from
depredation to wine and women, was more readily detected than the
valet-de-chambre, who did but crack a crib or cry 'Stand and deliver!'
on a proper occasion. Wherefore, he bade his soldiers take service in
the great houses of Paris, that, secure of suspicion, they might
still be ready to obey the call of duty. Thus, also, they formed a
reconnoitring force, whose vigilance no prize might elude; and nowhere
did Cartouche display his genius to finer purpose than in this prudent
disposition of his army. It remained only to efface himself, and therein
he succeeded admirably by never sleeping two following nights in the
same house: so that, when Cartouche was the terror of Paris, when even
the King trembled in his bed, none knew his stature nor could recognise
his features. In this shifting and impersonal vizard, he broke houses,
picked pockets, robbed on the pad. One night he would terrify the
Faubourg St. Germain; another he would plunder the humbler suburb of St.
Antoine; but on each excursion he was companioned by experts, and
the map of Paris was rigidly apportioned among his followers. To each
district a captain was appointed, whose business it was to apprehend
the customs of the quarter, and thus to indicate the proper season of
attack.
Ever triumphant, with yellow-boys ever jingling in his pocket, Cartouche
lived a life of luxurious merriment. A favourite haunt was a cabaret
in the Rue Dauphine, chosen for the sanest of reasons, as his Captain
Ferrand declared, that the landlady was a femme d'esprit. Here he would
sit with his friends and his women, and thereafter drive his chariot
across the Pont Neuf to the sunnier gaiety of the Palais-Royal. A
finished dandy, he wore by preference a grey-white coat with silver
buttons; his breeches and stockings were on a famous occasion of black
silk; while a sword, scabbarded in satin, hung at his hip.
But if Cartouche, like many another great man, had the faculty of
enjoyment, if he loved wine and wit, and mistresses handsomely attired
in damask, he did not therefore neglect his art. When once the gang was
perfectly ordered, murder followed robbery with so instant a frequency
that Paris was panic-stricken. A cry of 'Cartouche' straightway ensured
an empty street. The King took counsel with his ministers: munificent
rewards were offered, without effect. The thief was still at work in all
security, and it was a pretty irony which urged him to strip and kill on
the highway one of the King's own pages. Also, he did his work with
so astonishing a silence, with so reasoned a certainty, that it seemed
impossible to take him or his minions red-handed.
Before all, he discouraged the use of firearms. 'A pistol,' his
philosophy urged, 'is an excellent weapon in an emergency, but reserve
it for emergencies. At close quarters it is none too sure; and why give
the alarm against yourself?' Therefore he armed his band with loaded
staves, which sent their enemies into a noiseless and fatal sleep.
Thus was he wont to laugh at the police, deeming capture a plain
impossibility. The traitor, in sooth, was his single, irremediable fear,
and if ever suspicion was aroused against a member of the gang, that
member was put to death with the shortest shrift.
It happened in the last year of Cartouche's supremacy that a
lily-livered comrade fell in love with a pretty dressmaker. The
indiscretion was the less pardonable since the dressmaker had a horror
of theft, and impudently tried to turn her lover from his trade.
Cartouche, discovering the backslider, resolved upon a public
exhibition. Before the assembled band he charged the miscreant
with treason, and, cutting his throat, disfigured his face beyond
recognition. Thereafter he pinned to the corse the following
inscription, that others might be warned by so monstrous an example:
'Ci git Jean Rebâti, qui a eu le traitement qu'il méritait: ceux qui en
feront autant que lui peuvent attendre le même sort.' Yet this was the
murder that led to the hero's own capture and death.
Du Châtelet, another craven, had already aroused the suspicions of
his landlady: who, finding him something troubled the day after the
traitor's death, and detecting a spot of blood on his neckerchief,
questioned him closely. The coward fumbling at an answer, she was
presently convinced of his guilt, and forthwith denounced him for a
member of the gang to M. Pacome, an officer of the Guard. Straightly did
M. Pacôme summon Du Chtelet, and, assuming his guilt for certitude,
bade him surrender his captain. 'My friend,' said he, 'I know you for
an associate of Cartouche. Your hands are soiled with murder and rapine.
Confess the hiding-place of Cartouche, or in twenty-four hours you are
broken on the wheel.' Vainly did Du Châtelet protest his ignorance.
M. Pacôme was resolute, and before the interview was over the robber
confessed that Cartouche had given him rendezvous at nine next day.
In the grey morning thirty soldiers crept forth guided by the traitor,
'en habits de bourgeois et de chasseur,' for the house where Cartouche
had lain. It was an inn, kept by one Savard, near la Haulte Borne de la
Courtille; and the soldiers, though they lacked not numbers, approached
the chieftain's lair shaking with terror. In front marched Du Châtelet;
the rest followed in Indian file, ten paces apart. When the traitor
reached the house, Savard recognised him for a friend, and entertained
him with familiar speech. 'Is there anybody upstairs?' demanded Du
Châtelet. 'No,' replied Savard. 'Are the four women upstairs?' asked Du
Châtelet again. 'Yes, they are,' came the answer: for Savard knew the
password of the day. Instantly the soldiers filled the tavern, and,
mounting the staircase, discovered Cartouche with his three lieutenants,
Balagny, Limousin, and Blanchard. One of the four still lay abed; but
Cartouche, with all the dandy's respect for his clothes, was mending his
breeches. The others hugged a flagon of wine over the fire.
So fell the scourge of Paris into the grip of justice. But once under
lock and key, he displayed all the qualities which made him supreme. His
gaiety broke forth into a light-hearted contempt of his gaolers, and
the Lieutenant Criminel, who would interrogate him, was covered with
ridicule. Not for an instant did he bow to fate: all shackled as he was,
his legs engarlanded in heavy chains--which he called his garters--he
tempered his merriment with the meditation of escape. From the first he
denied all knowledge of Cartouche, insisting that his name was Charles
Bourguignon, and demanding burgundy, that he might drink to his country
and thus prove him a true son of the soil. Not even the presence of his
mother and brother abashed him. He laughed them away as impostors, hired
by a false justice to accuse and to betray the innocent. No word of
confession crossed his lips, and he would still entertain the officers
of the law with joke and epigram.
Thus he won over a handful of the Guard, and, begging for solitude, he
straightway set about escape with a courage and an address which Jack
Sheppard might have envied. His delicate ear discovered that a cellar
lay beneath his cell; and with the old nail which lies on the floor of
every prison he made his way downwards into a boxmaker's shop. But a
barking dog spoiled the enterprise: the boxmaker and his daughter
were immediately abroad, and once more Cartouche was lodged in prison,
weighted with still heavier garters.
Then came a period of splendid notoriety: he held his court, he gave an
easy rein to his wit, he received duchesses and princes with an air of
amiable patronage. Few there were of his visitants who left him without
a present of gold, and thus the universal robber was further rewarded by
his victims. His portrait hung in every house, and his thin, hard face,
his dry, small features were at last familiar to the whole of France. M.
Grandval made him the hero of an epic--'Le Vice Puni.' Even the theatre
was dominated by his presence; and while Arlequin-Cartouche was greeted
with thunders of applause at the Italiens, the more serious Français set
Cartouche upon the stage in three acts, and lavished upon its theme the
resources of a then intelligent art. M. Le Grand, author of the piece,
deigned to call upon the king of thieves, spoke some words of argot with
him, and by way of conscience money gave him a hundred crowns.
Cartouche set little store by such patronage. He pocketed the crowns,
and then put an end to the comedy by threatening that if it were played
again the companions of Cartouche would punish all such miscreants as
dared to make him a laughing stock. For Cartouche would endure ridicule
at no man's hand. At the very instant of his arrest, all bare-footed as
he was, he kicked a constable who presumed to smile at his discomfiture.
His last days were spent in resolute abandonment. True, he once
attempted to beat out his brains with the fetters that bound him;
true, also, he took a poison that had been secretly conveyed within the
prison. But both attempts failed, and, more scrupulously watched, he had
no other course than jollity. Lawyers and priests he visited with a
like and bitter scorn, and when, on November 27, 1721, he was led to the
scaffold, not a word of confession or contrition had been dragged from
him.
To the last moment he cherished the hope of rescue, and eagerly he
scanned the crowd for the faces of his comrades. But the gang, trusting
to its leader's nobility, had broken its oath. With contemptuous dignity
Cartouche determined upon revenge: proudly he turned to the priest,
begging a respite and the opportunity of speech. Forgotten by his
friends, he resolved to spare no single soul: he betrayed even his
mistresses to justice.
Of his gang, forty were in the service of Mlle. de Montpensier, who
was already in Spain; while two obeyed the Duchesse de Ventadour as
valets-de-pied. His confession, in brief, was so dangerous a document,
it betrayed the friends and servants of so many great houses, that the
officers of the Law found safety for their patrons in its destruction,
and not a line of the hero's testimony remains. The trial of his
comrades dragged on for many a year, and after Cartouche had been
cruelly broken on the wheel, not a few of the gang, of which he had
been at once the terror and inspiration, suffered a like fate. Such the
career and such the fitting end of the most distinguished marauder the
world has known. Thackeray, with no better guide than a chap-book, was
minded to belittle him, now habiting him like a scullion, now sending
him forth on some petty errand of cly-faking. But for all Thackeray's
contempt his fame is still undimmed, and he has left the reputation of
one who, as thief unrivalled, had scarce his equal as wit and dandy
even in the days when Louis the Magnificent was still a memory and an
example.