SOME FALSE PRETENDERS.
THE " unfortunate nobleman," now waiting deliverance from one of her Majesty's gaols, is by no means a soli- tary specimen of his kind. Hardly a decade passes that some fool or rogue does not claim to be an heir defrauded of his in- heritance, an unrecognised prince or an uncrowned king. The mysterious death of the unfortunate son of Louis XVI. afforded impostors of this class an opportunity of which they were not slow to avail themselves. Even yet the supply does not seem to be exhausted. Only last year the President of the French Chamber had to order the expulsion of an individual who asserted:that he was Louis XVII., and demanded to be restored to the throne of his ancestors. This gentleman did not appear to be in the least discouraged by two fatal and obvious objections to his claim,—that by this time Louis XVII. would be nearly a hundred years old, and that if he were ever so much alive France would not make him her king. It is said, however, that he found simpletons credulous enough to accept his pretensions, and believe that a man who could not be more than fifty was ninety-eight. This is likely enough, faith in impossi- bilities being by no means peculiar to the domain of religion. The person in question is the latest, if not the last, of the soi-disant sons of the martyred Louis. The first appeared in 1796, a tailor by trade, who bore the name of Hervagault, and actually succeeded in persuading a number of Loyalist country gentlemen—not common folks merely—that he was the veritable Dauphin. This man was condemned to a term of imprisonment for swindling, and died in the Bicetre in the time of the First Empire. The second, a certain Bruneau, was son of a sabot-maker at Vezins. After convincing a few credulous Legitimists of the genuineness of his pretensions, he was lucky enough to make the acquaintance of a former cook of Louis XVI., who found in his lineaments some resemblance to those of his old master, and from him he obtained useful information touching the habits of the late King, the ways of the Court, and the names of several of his servants and Minis- ters. This answered Brunean's purpose admirably ; he turned his newly-acquired knowledge to excellent account, made many dupes, especially among the old ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain, who gave him both sympathy and money, which so emboldened him that he sent a summons to Louis XVIII., requiring the King to resign the throne in his favour. This proceeding obtained Brunean a lodging at the King's expense. After his release he posed as a martyr, and found more believers than ever. In 1818 he ;vas im- prisoned a second time, and after the expiration of his sentence, finding the game was played out, he went to
America and became a sailor in a coasting vessel. When Bruneau retired from the scene, people thoUght they had heard the last of pretended Louis XVIL's; but ten years later a gentleman appeared upon the scene who proclaimed himself Duke of Normandy and Baron of Richemont. In 1828 and 18`..:9 he demanded from the Chambers official recognition of his rights. This man, who asserted his claims to the last, had been a Government employe at Rouen, and died in 1835. His great coup was the recognition accorded to him by the Duchess of Angouleme, who at that time was very near-sighted ; but even if she had been ever so clear of vision, she could not possibly identify the man of fifty with the child-brother whom she had last seen forty years before. But the soi-disant Duke of Nor- mandy was not allowed to have the field to himself. He had a formidable competitor in Charles Naundorff, a Prussian watch- maker, who proclaimed that he and he only was the true Louis XVII. He also had followers, and when expelled from France took refuge in Holland, and there died in 1845. In 1851, his heirs instituted a suit for the vindication of their supposed rights ; but the verdict was unfavourable to their claim ; and they met with equal ill-fortune in 1874, when the case was tried on appeal. Their advocate—and the -firmest believer in the justice of their cause—was Jules Favre. He-verily thought and consistently contended that Charles Naundorff was really son and heir to Louis XVI., a fact which Favre's well-known re- publicanism rendered all the more remarkable. When a man of his ability, accustomed to weigh evidence, and with a mind free from Legitimist leanings, could credit the Naundorff myth, it is no wonder that people less enlightened and more acute should jse equally credulous.
Another false Louis XVII., who called himself La Roche, died in 1872; but more prudent or less scrupulous than his confreres, he did not -bring his claims before the public, and they were only made generally known after his death. His story was that after the Restoration, his sister, the Duchesse d'Angouleme, had secretly recognised him, and paid him a handsome allowance, on condition that he should conceal his identity and live in obscurity. Naundorff had been his valet, and used the know- ledge he acquired in the service of La Roche to persuade people that he was the real Simon Pure. Characteristically enough, —for there is always some fatal flaw in these stories,—La Roche omitted to give a reason for the obscurity in which he had so long lived.
It has been said that in an age when faith in the miraculous prevails, miracles willhappen ; that among a people who believe in witchcraft, witches will abound ; and in explanation of the recent abundance of counterfeit Louis Dix-scpts, it may be suggested that they supply a want, and that there is a disposition among a certain class of the French people to believe in pretenders who are able to concoct a plausible story and assert their claims with sufficient confidence. But, of all European countries, France is the one in which the principles of divine and hereditary right are least respected. The mass of the French people have no more love for the principle of legitimacy than for the rights of primogeniture. If they would not bow the knee to Henry V., what hope is there• of persuading them to accept a Louis XVII.? We must seek some other explanation of the phenomenon, and this explanation is supplied by the author of "Les faux Louis XVII.," a work lately published in Paris. The author tells us that in 1800 there appeared, under the title of" Le Cimetiere de la Madelaine," a book which is now absolutely forgotten. It contained the supposed confidences of Abbe. Edgeworth, the priest who accompanied Louis 'XVI. to the scaffold. Even if he had written a book, he could have revealed very little. He only saw the Kiug a few times after his trial, not once before, and had no means of knowing what befell after the execution. Yet the author of the book pretended that he had received important information from Abbe Edgeworth, as also several letters and documents which were entrusted to the confessor by the Queen. Nevertheless the romance, for it was nothing more, seems to have been taken seriously by a good many people, and lent credit to the legend of the little Dauphin's escape from prison. But for the original myth that he was smuggled out in a bundle of linen, the " Cimetiere de la Madelaine " substitutes the still Wilder story that he got away in a wooden horse, sent expressly for that purpose by Charette, the Vendean chief. As soon as he was safely outside the prison walls, the child was dressed as a girl and sent to Brittany. But the little Prince, so miraculously saved, did not long survive his deliverance, Pursued by the emissaries of the conven.
Eon, he was put on board a Danish ship bound for America, and died before she reached her destination. Notwith- standing its glaring improbability, and the fact that it made the Dauphin die at sea, this story was adopted as the basis of his narrative by Hervagault, the first false Louis XVII. He was called Hervagault, he said, because that was the name of the man who sold his son for 200,000 francs to take the Dauphin's place in prison, and so deceive the gaolers. From Paris he was taken to the head-quarters of the Vendean Army, and afterwards, when threatened by the emissaries of the Convention, put on board a Danish vessel. But he did not die there, as was proved by the fact of his being still alive and ready to take possession of the throne of his ancestors. All Hervagault's successors told the same tale, with the differ- ence that while he pretended to have escaped in a bundle of linen, they preferred the legend of the wooden horse. It would thus seem that these adventurers drew both their inspiration and their materials from the pages of an obscure and obsolete romance. They had not enough imagination to invent a new story, or art enough to correct the more glaring inconsistencies of the one which they adopted. The motive of most of them was doubtless vanity, and that passion for personal distinction and cutting a great figure, which is one of the most marked features of the Frenoh character. None of the pretenders seem to have had specially in view the making of money ; one was rich ; all they cared for was to create a sensation and strut for a while in borrowed plumes.
Of a different sort from the false dauphins of France, more honourable yet equally visionary and vain, was Colonel Louis de Lusignan, whose death at St. Petersburg was announced only a few days ago. This gentleman rejoiced in the splendid but imaginary titles of" King of Cynrus, King of Armenia, and King of Jerusalem ;" and if fortune had been more kind he might have wielded the sceptre of his forefathers, for Louis de Lusignan was descended in a direct line from the highest nobility of the Crusades, and his headship of the family was recognised by the Lusignans of France. His grandfather settled in Russia at the time of the French Revolution, and the late Colonel was a Russian subject and a soldier of the Czar ; yet he carefully preserved the records of his race and the proofs of his royal descent, never abandoning the hope that the kingdoms of Cyprus and Armenia would sooner or later be revived and himself made their king. At every crisis of the Ottoman Empire —in 1829, in 1832, in 1840, in 1852, and again in 1872—he advanced his claims and demanded the restitution of his realm. In 1879 this poor prince, in partibus infidelium, protested against the usurpation of his kingdom of Cyprus by Lord Beaconsfield; he addressed a big memoir on the same subject to the Congress of Berlin, and a little later he demanded. from Turkey the modest sum of twenty millions sterling for the surrender of his rights over Palestine and Armenia. He was buried in the cemetery of Smolensk°, in a coffin ornamented with a triple royal escutcheon ; and his son Michel is now chief of the House of Lusignan in his stead. But though he has inherited the family name, he has not inherited the family folly ; for, wiser than his father, he sees that an age in which reigning monarchs can hardly hold their own is not a favourable one for royal pretenders, either true or false.
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