not appear in the documents relative to the _Affaire Coulon_, not
because the Prussian Government shirked its duty, but because he
was in no way mixed up with the matter of the parsnips. It is quite
true that, as M. de Beauchamp asserts, the Court of Louis XVIII. did
endeavour to involve the Prussian authorities in the investigation,
but it was in such a manner that it was not possible for them to
act. On July 23rd, when the Count de l'Isle was determined to leave
Warsaw, Count d'Avaray called on the President von Hoym, and told
him in mysterious language that he was aware of a conspiracy in
which were involved several Frenchmen and as many as a dozen Poles
that sought the life of his august master. Herr von Hoym doubted.
He asked for the grounds of this assertion, and was promised
full particulars that same evening at eight o'clock. At the hour
appointed, the Count appeared breathless before him, and declared
that now he was prepared with a complete disclosure. However, he
told nothing, and postponed the revelation to 10 o'clock. Then
Avaray informed him that the keeper of the Café Coulon had been
hired by some strangers to meet him that same night on the road
to Novawies, to plan with him the murder, by poison, of the Count
de l'Isle. The whole story seemed suspicious to von Hoym. It was
now too late for him to send police to watch the spot where the
meeting was to take place, which he might have done had d'Avaray
condescended to tell him in time, two hours earlier. He asked
d'Avaray where Coulon lived that he might send for him, and the
Count professed he did not know the address.
Next day Count d'Avaray read to the President von Hoym a document,
which he said had been drawn up by members of the court of the Count
de l'Isle, showed him a paper that contained twelve small parsnips,
and requested him to subscribe the document and seal the parcel of
parsnips. Naturally, the President declined to do this. He had not
seen Coulon, he did not know from whom Coulon had received the
parcel, and he mistrusted the whole story. However, he requested
that he might be furnished with an exact description of the two
mysterious strangers, and when he had received it, communicated with
the police, and had inquiry made for them in and about Warsaw. No
one had seen or heard of any persons answering to the description.
Presently the Marquis de Bonney arrived to request the President, in
the name of the Count de l'Isle, to have the parsnips examined by
specialists. He declined to do so.
On July 26th, the Count d'Avaray appeared before the head of the
Police, the President von Tilly, and showed him an attestation
made by several doctors that they had examined three parsnips that
had been shown them, and they had found in them a paste composed
of arsenic and orpiment. Von Tilly thought the whole story so
questionable that he refused to meddle with it. Moreover, a notary
of Warsaw, who had been requested to take down Coulon's statement,
had declined to testify to the genuineness of the confession,
probably because, as Coulon afterwards insinuated, he had been
helped to make it consistent by those who questioned him.
Louis XVIII. left Warsaw on July 30, and as the rumour spread
that Coulon's wife had bought some arsenic a week before at an
apothecary's shop in the place, the police inspector ordered her
arrest. She was questioned and declared that she had, indeed, bought
some rat poison, without the knowledge of her husband. Coulon was
now taken up and questioned, and he pretended that he had given
his wife orders to buy the rat poison, because he was plagued with
vermin in the house.
Then the authorities in Warsaw sent all the documents relating to
this matter, including the _procès verbal_ drawn up by the courtiers
of Louis XVIII., to Berlin, and asked for further instructions.
According to this _procès verbal_ Coulon had confessed as follows:
On the 20th July two strangers had entered his billiard room, and
had assured him that, if he were disposed to make his fortune, they
could help him to it. They made him promise silence, and threatened
him with death if he disclosed what they said. After he had sworn
fidelity and secrecy, they told him that he was required to throw
something into the pot in which the soup was being prepared for
the King's table. For so doing they would pay him 400 louis d'or.
Coulon considered a moment; then the strangers promised they would
provide a situation for his wife in France. After that one of them
said to his fellow in Italian, "We must be off. We have no time
to lose." Next day, in the evening, a third stranger appeared at
his door, called him forth into the street, walked about with him
through the streets of old and new Warsaw, till he was thoroughly
bewildered, and did not know where he was, and, finally, entered
with him a house, where he saw the two strangers who had been with
him previously. Champagne was brought on the table, and they all
drank, and one of the strangers became tipsy. When Coulon promised
to do what was required of him, he was told to secure some of the
mutton-chops that were being prepared for the Royal table, and to
manipulate them with the powder that was to be given him. That the
cook might not notice what he was about, he was to treat him to
large draughts of brandy. Coulon agreed, but asked first to touch
the 400 louis d'or. Then the tipsy man shouted out, "That is all
right, but will Boyer consent to it?" The other stranger tried to
check him, and said, "What are you saying? Boyer is not here, he has
gone out of town and will not be back for a couple of days." After
Coulon had insisted on prepayment, he had been put off till the next
evening, when he was to meet the strangers at 11 o'clock on the road
to Novawies. There he was to receive money, and the powder for the
King. He was then given one ducat, and led home at one o'clock in
the morning. On the following night, at 11 o'clock, he went on the
way to Novawies, and then followed what we have already given from
the story of the man, as recorded by M. de Beauchamp. He received
from the men a packet containing the parsnips, and some money--only
six dollars. They put a kerchief under the earth beneath a tree,
and bade him, if he had accomplished his task, come to the tree and
remove the kerchief, as a token to them; if, however, he failed,
the kerchief was to be left undisturbed. The tree he had marked
well, it was the forty-fifth along the road to Novawies. A small end
of the kerchief peeped out from under the soil. The strangers had
then given him a bottle of liqueur to stimulate his courage for the
undertaking.
After that Coulon was left alone, he said that he staggered
homewards, but felt so faint that he would have fallen to the ground
had not a Prussian officer, who came by, noticed his condition and
helped him home. At the conclusion of the _procès verbal_ came
an exact description of the conspirators. Such was the document
produced originally by the Count d'Avaray, and we can hardly wonder
that, on hearing it, the Prussian civil and police authorities had
hesitated about taking action. The so-called confession of Coulon
seemed to them to be a rhodomontade got up for the purpose of
obtaining money out of the ex-King and his Court.
From Berlin orders were sent to Warsaw to have the matter thoroughly
sifted. Coulon and his wife were now again subjected to examination.
He adhered at first to his story, but when he endeavoured to explain
the purchase of the arsenic, and to fit it into his previous tale,
he involved himself in contradictions.
The President at this point addressed him gravely, and warned
him of the consequences. His story compromised the French chargé
d'affaires, M. Galon Boyer, and this could not be allowed to
be passed over without a very searching examination that must
inevitably reveal the truth. Coulon was staggered, and hastily
asked how matters would stand with him if he told the truth. Then,
after a little hesitation, he admitted that "he thought before the
departure of the Count de l'Isle he would obtain for himself a sum
of money, with which to escape out of his difficulties. He had
reckoned on making 100 ducats out of this affair." He now told quite
a different tale. With the departure of the court of the emigrés,
he would lose his clientelle, and he was concerned because he owed
money for the café and billiard table. He had therefore invented
the whole story in hopes of imposing on the court and getting from
them a little subvention. But he said he had been dragged on further
than he intended by the Count d'Avaray, who had swallowed his lie
with avidity, and had urged him to go on with the intrigue so as to
produce evidence against the conspirators.
That was why he had made up the figment of the meeting with the
strangers on the road and their gift to him of the parsnips, which
he admitted that he had himself scooped out and filled with the rat
poison paste he had bought at the apothecary's.
So far so good. What he now said was precisely what the cool heads
of the Prussian authorities had believed from the first. But Coulon
did not adhere to this second confession. After a few days in prison
he professed his desire to make another. He was brought before the
magistrate, and now he said that the whole story was got up by the
Count d'Avaray, M. de Milleville, and others of the surroundings
of the exiled King, for the purpose of creating an outbreak of
disgust in Europe against Napoleon, and of bringing about a revolt
in France. He declared that he had been promised a pension of six
ducats monthly, that when he gave his evidence M. de Milleville had
paid him 35 ducats, and that he had been taken into the service,
along with his wife, of the ex-Queen, as reward for what he had done.
There were several particulars which gave colour to this last
version of Coulon's story. It was true that he had been given some
money by Milleville; it was perhaps true that in their eagerness to
prove a case of attempted assassination, some of those who conducted
the inquiry had helped him to correct certain discrepancies in his
narrative. Then, again, it was remarkable that, although the Count
d'Avaray knew about the projected murder, he would not tell the
Prussian President the facts till 10 o'clock at night, when it was
too late to send the police to observe the pretended meeting on the
Novawies road; and when Herr von Hoym asked for directions as to
where Coulon lived that the police might be sent to arrest him on
his return, and during his absence to search the house, the Count
had pretended to be unable to say where Coulon lived. It was also
true that de Milleville had repeatedly visited Coulon's house during
the course of the intrigue, and that it was immediately after Coulon
had been at Milleville's house that his wife was sent to buy the rat
poison.
Coulon pretended to have heard M. de Milleville say that "This
affair might cause a complete change in the situation in France,
when tidings of what had been done were published." Moreover, he
said that he had been despatched to the Archbishop of Rheim's with
the message "Le coup est manqué."
But it is impossible to believe that the emigré court can have
fabricated such a plot by which to cast on the name of Napoleon the
stain of attempted assassination. The whole story reads like the
clumsy invention of a vulgar adventurer. Coulon's second confession
is obviously that of his true motives. He was in debt, he was losing
his clientelle by the departure of the Count, and it is precisely
what such a scoundrel would do, to invent a lie whereby to enlist
their sympathies for himself, and obtain from them some pecuniary
acknowledgment for services he pretended to have rendered. The
little court was to blame in its gullibility. Its blind hatred of
Napoleon led it to believe such a gross and palpable lie, and, if
doubts arose in any of their minds as to the verity of the tale told
them, they suppressed them.
Coulon was found guilty by the court and was sentenced to five
years' imprisonment. The judgment of the court was that he had acted
in concert with certain members of the retinue of the Count de
l'Isle, but it refrained from naming them.
The Murder of Father Thomas in Damascus.
The remarkable case we are about to relate awoke great interest
and excitement throughout three quarters of the world, and stirred
up that hatred of the Jews which had been laid asleep after the
persecutions of the Middle Ages, just at the time when in all
European lands the emancipation of the Jew was being recognised as
an act of justice. At the time the circumstances were imperfectly
known, or were laid before the public in such a partial light that
it was difficult to form a correct judgment upon them. Since then,
a good deal of light has been thrown on the incident, and it is
possible to arrive at a conclusion concerning the murder with more
unbiased mind and with fuller information than was possible at the
time.
The Latin convents of Syria stand under the immediate jurisdiction
of the Pope, and are, for the most part, supplied with recruits
from Italy. They are very serviceable to travellers, whom they
receive with genial hospitality, and without distinction of creed.
They are nurseries of culture and of industry. Every monk and friar
is required to exercise a profession or trade, and the old charge
against monks of being drones is in no way applicable to the busy
members of the religious orders in Palestine.
In the Capuchin Convent at Damascus dwelt, in 1840, a friar named
Father Thomas, a Sardinian by birth. For thirty-three years he had
lived there, and had acted as physician and surgeon, attending to
whoever called for his services, Mussulman or Christian, Turk, Jew
or Frank alike. He set limbs, dosed with quinine for fever, and
vaccinated against smallpox. Being well known and trusted, he was
in constant practice, and his practice brought him, or, at all
events, his order, a handsome annual income. His manners were,
unfortunately, not amiable. He was curt, even rude, and somewhat
dictatorial; his manners impressed as authoritative in the sickroom,
but were resented in the market-place as insolent.
On February 5th, 1840, Father Thomas disappeared, together with his
servant, a lay brother who always attended him. This disappearance
caused great commotion in Damascus.
France has been considered in the East as the protector of
Christians of the Latin confession. The French Consul, the Count
Ratti-Menton, considered it his duty to investigate the matter.
Father Thomas had been seen to enter the Jews' quarter. Several
Israelites admitted having seen him there. No one saw him leave it:
consequently, it was concluded he had disappeared, been made away
with, there. As none but Jews occupied the Ghetto, it was argued
that Father Thomas had been murdered by Israelites. That was settled
as a preliminary. But in the meantime the Austrian Consul had been
making investigation as well as the Count Ratti-Menton, and he had
obtained information that Father Thomas and his servant had been
noticed engaged in a violent quarrel and contest of words with some
Mohammedans of the lowest class, in the market-place. No weight was
attached to this, and the French Consul pursued his investigations
in the Jews' quarter, and in that quarter alone.
Sheriff Pacha was Governor of Syria, and Count Ratti-Menton required
him to allow of his using every means at his disposal for the
discovery of the criminal. He also requested the Austrian Consul to
allow a domiciliary visitation of all the Jews' houses, the Austrian
Government being regarded as the protector of the Hebrews. In both
cases consent was given, and the search was begun with zeal.
Then a Turk, named Mohammed-el-Telli, who was in prison for
non-payment of taxes, sent word to the French Consul that, if he
would obtain his release, he would give such information as would
lead to the discovery of the murderer or murderers. He received
his freedom, and denounced, in return, several Jews' houses as
suspicious. Count Ratti-Menton at the head of a troop of soldiers
and workmen, and a rabble assembled in the street, invaded all these
houses, and explored them from attic to cellar.
One of the first names given by Mohammed-el-Telli was that of a
Jewish barber, Negrin. He gave a confused and contradictory account
of himself, but absolutely denied having any knowledge of the
murder. In vain were every means used during three days at the
French Consulate to bring him to a confession; after that he was
handed over to the Turkish authorities. They had him bastinadoed,
then tortured. During his torture, Mohammed-el-Telli was at his
side urging him to make a clean breast. Unable to endure his
sufferings longer, the barbar declared his readiness to tell all.
Whether what he said was based on reports circulating in the town,
or was put into his mouth by his tormentors, we cannot tell.
According to his story, on the evening of February the 5th a servant
of David Arari summoned him into his house. He found the master of
the house along with six other Israelitish rabbis and merchants, to
wit, Aaron and Isaac Arari, Mussa Abul Afia, Moses Salonichi, and
Joseph Laniado. In a corner of the room lay or leaned against the
wall Father Thomas, gagged and bound hand and foot. The merchants
urged Negrin to murder the Capuchin in their presence, but he
stedfastly refused to do so. Finally finding him inflexible, they
bought his silence with 600 piastres (hardly £6) and dismissed him.
Thereupon, the governor ordered the arrest of David Arari and the
other Jews named, all of whom were the richest merchants in the
town--at all events the richest Jewish merchants. They, with one
consent, solemnly protested their innocence. They, also, were
subjected to the bastinado; but as most of them were aged men, and
it was feared that they might succumb under the blows, after a few
lashes had been administered, they were raised from the ground and
subjected to other tortures. For thirty-six hours the unhappy men
were forced to stand upright, and were prevented from sleeping. They
still persisted in denial, whereupon some of them were again beaten.
At the twentieth blow they fainted. The French Consul complained
that the beating was inefficient--so the Austrian Consul reported,
and at his instigation they were again bastinadoed, but again
without bringing them to confession.
In the meantime, David Arari's servant, Murad-el-Fallat, was
arrested, the man who was said to have been sent for the barber.
He was dealt with more sharply than the others. He was beaten most
cruelly, and to heighten his pain cold water was poured over his
bruised and mangled flesh. Under the anguish he confessed that he
had indeed been sent for the barber.
That was an insufficient confession. He was threatened with the
bastinado again, and promised his release if he would reveal all he
knew. Thereupon he repeated the story of the barber, with additions
of his own. He and Negrin, said he, had by command of the seven rich
merchants put the Father to death, and had then cut up the body and
hidden the remains in a remote water conduit.
The barber, threatened with fresh tortures, confessed to the murder.
Count Ratti-Menton explored the conduit where the two men pretended
the mutilated body was concealed, in the presence of the servant and
barber, both of whom were in such a condition through the barbarous
treatment to which they had been subjected, that they could not
walk, and had to be carried to the spot. And actually there some
bones were found, together with a cap. A surgeon pronounced that
these were human bones. It was at once concluded that these were the
remains of Father Thomas, and as such were solemnly buried in the
cemetery of the Capuchin Convent.
David Arari's servant. Murad-el-Fallet, had related that the blood
of Father Thomas had been collected in a copper vessel and drawn
off and distributed among the Jews for religious purposes. It was
an old and favourite belief among the ignorant that the Jews drank
the blood of Christians at Easter, or mingled it with the Paschal
unleavened dough. At the same time the rumour spread that the rich
Hebrew Picciotto, a young man, nephew of the Austrian Consul at
Aleppo, had sent his uncle a bottle of blood.
The seven merchants were led before the bones that had been
discovered. They persisted in the declaration of their innocence.
From this time forward, all scruple as to their treatment vanished,
and they were tortured with diabolical barbarity. They received the
bastinado again, they were burned where their flesh was tenderest
with red hot pincers. Red hot wires were passed through their flesh.
A German traveller, present at the time, declares that the first
to acknowledge the truth of the charge was brought to do so by
immersing him after all these torments for several hours in ice cold
water; after which the other six were lashed with a scourge made of
hippopotamus hide, till half unconscious, and streaming with blood,
they were ready to admit whatever their tormentors strove to worry
out of them.
The Protestant missionary, Wildon Pieritz, in his account enumerates
the sufferings to which these unhappy men were subjected.
They were, 1st, bastinadoed.
2nd. Plunged in large vessels of cold water.
3rd. Placed under pressure till their eyes started out of their
sockets.
4th. Their flesh, where most sensitive, was twisted and nipped
till they went almost mad with agony.
5th. They were forced to stand upright for three whole days,
and not suffered even to lean against a wall. Those who fell
with exhaustion were goaded to rise again by the bayonets of the
guard.
6th. They were dragged about by their ears, so that they were
torn and bled.
7th. Thorns were driven up the quick of their nails on fingers
and toes.
8th. Their beards were singed off, so that the skin was scorched
and blistered.
9th. Flames were put under their noses so as to burn their
nostrils.
The French Consul--let his name go down to posterity steeped in
ignominy--Count Ratti-Menton, was not yet satisfied. He was bent
on finding the vials filled with the blood. Each of the seven
questioned said he had not got one, but had given his vial to
another. The last, Mussa Abul Afia, unable to endure his torments
any longer, gave way, and professed his willingness to turn
Mussulman. Nevertheless, he was again subjected to the scourge,
and whipped till he named another confederate--the Chief Rabbi
Jacob Antibi, as the man to whom the blood had been committed.
Mussa's confession, committed to writing, was as follows:--"I am
_commanded_ to say what I know relative to the murder of Father
Thomas, and why I have submitted to become a Mussulman. It is,
therefore, my duty to declare the truth. Jacob Antibi, Chief
Rabbi, about a fortnight before the event, said to me--'You know
that according to our religion we must have blood. I have already
arranged with David Arari, to obtain it in the house of one of
our people, and you must be present and bring me the blood.' I
replied that I had not the nerve to see blood flow; whereupon,
the Chief Rabbi answered that I could stand in the ante-chamber,
and I would find Moses Salonichi and Joseph Laniado there. I then
consented. On the 10th of the month, Achach, about an hour and a
half before sun-down, as I was on my way to the synagogue, I met
David Arari, who said to me: 'Come along to my house, you are
wanted there.' I replied that I would come as soon as I had ended
my prayers. 'No, no--come immediately!' he said. I obeyed. Then he
told me that Father Thomas was in his house, and that he was to be
sacrificed that evening. We went to his house. There we entered a
newly-furnished apartment. Father Thomas lay bound in the midst of
all there assembled. After sunset we adjourned to an unfurnished
chamber, where David cut the throat of the monk. Aaron and Isaac
Arari finished him. The blood was caught in a vat and then poured
into a bottle, which was to be taken to the Chief Rabbi Jacob. I
took the bottle and went to him. I found him in his court waiting
for me. When he saw me enter, he retreated to his cabinet, and I
followed him thither, saying, 'Here, I bring you what you desired.'
He took the bottle and put it behind a book-case. Then I went home.
I have forgotten to say that, when I left Arari's house, the body
was undisturbed. I heard David and his brother say that they had
made a bad choice of a victim, as Father Thomas was a priest, and
a well-known individual, and would therefore be sought for, high
and low. They answered that there was no fear, no one would betray
what had taken place. The clothing would be now burnt, the body cut
to pieces, and conveyed by the servants to the conduit, and what
remained would be concealed under some secret stairs. I knew nothing
about the servant of Father Thomas. The Wednesday following, I met
David, Isaac, and Joseph Arari, near the shop of Bahal. Isaac asked
David how all had gone on. David replied that all was done that was
necessary, and that there was no cause for fear. As they began to
talk together privately, I withdrew, as I was not one who associated
with the wealthiest of the Jews, and the Arari were of that class.
The blood is required by the Jews for the preparation of the Paschal
bread. They have been often accused of the same, and been condemned
on that account. They have a book called Serir Hadurut (no such a
book really exists) which concerns this matter; now that the light
of Islam has shone on me, I place myself under the protection of
those who hold the power in their hands."