The Strange Story of the Aristocratic Assassinations

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n                   When Mrs Phillida Bathurst heardnof the disappearance of her husband Benjamin she arranged for her brother andnherself to go immediately to Perleberg, Prussia, travelling via Sweden and thenBaltic on Swedish passports. She sent Herr Heinrich Röntgen ahead, to gathernwhat information he could, and they met him in Berlin, where he told her thatnhe had heard from a lady in Magdeburg that Benjamin had been taken prisoner andnwas being held in the fortress there. She had told him that the Governor ofnMagdeburg, had said to her, “They are looking for the English Ambassador,nbut I have him up there,” pointing to the fortress. 

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nRöntgen added that henhad been to see the Governor himself, who confirmed that he had said this, butnit had been a mistake. Mrs Bathurst determined to speak to the Governor herselfnand went to Magdeburg, where she had a two-hour audience with him. He told hernwhat he had told Röntgen, that he had spoken to the lady at a ball and said henhad the English Ambassador in custody, but the mistake was his as the prisonernwas one Louis Fritz, an English spy in the pay of George Canning, the EnglishnForeign Secretary (and later, he served the shortest-ever term as PrimenMinister – he died after only 119 days in office). 

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nMrs Bathurst demanded to seenFritz but was told that he had been transferred to Spain. When the partynreturned to London, Röntgen wrote to Canning, inquiring about this Louis Fritznand received a reply denying all knowledge of him. Röntgen also told MrsnBathurst that a certain Comte D’Antraigues, someone unknown to him, wished tonspeak to her. She knew the name from the incomplete letter discovered in hernhusband’s trousers, found by two peasant women collecting fuel in the woodsnoutside Perleberg, and she received D’Antraigues the following day. 

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nHe railednagainst Napoleon and the French, but Mrs Bathurst was cautious and on hernguard. The Comte told her that what she had heard about Magdeburg was true,nthat Benjamin had been abducted by armed men and taken to the fortress, andnthat the Governor had written to Paris, to Fouché, the Minister of Police,nasking what he should do with the prisoner. The Minister had replied that madnEnglishmen should not bother the Emperor, and that the Governor should disposenof him. As he had already spoken about Bathurst, the Governor made up the storynabout Fritz to cover himself but it was all a lie and Mrs Bathurst’s husbandnhad perished at Magdeburg. She thanked him for the information but begged hisnpardon and asked if he could furnish her with proof of what he had told her. Hencould, he said, but he would need to send a ciphered message to France andnwould return with the reply, which he would translate for her when it arrived.nHe asked her to stay in London and wait for him to return. 

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nEmmanuel Henri LouisnAlexandre de Launay, Comte d’Antraigues, was born in Montpellier on ChristmasnDay 1753, and had joined the army at the age of fourteen, rising to become ancavalry Captain. In 1778, he left the army and mixed in intellectual circles –nhe was a friend of Rousseau and Voltaire – and became a supporter of the Frenchnrevolution, issuing pamphlets in defence of it, but following the storming ofnVersailles by a mob on October 5^th 1789, he changed sides and becamena defender of the Bourbon monarchy (it was rumoured that he had once,nunsuccessfully, tried to seduce Marie Antoinette). When his part in a plot tonaid the Royal family to escape from Paris was exposed, d’Antraigues fled tonSwitzerland, where he married his former mistress Madame de Saint-Huberty, anfamous opera singer, before moving to Italy. 

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nHe became a secret agent for thenfuture King Louis XVIII, but as the political landscape of Italy became muchnmore fluid he was again forced to flee. The French captured him at Trieste,nwhere Napoleon Bonaparte questioned him, but he and his wife managed to escape,n(aided, it was said, by Napoleon’s wife, who was an admirer of Madame denSaint-Huberty’s vocal abilities). Louis XVIII, suspicious that he may havenbetrayed his interests in return for his freedom, dismissed d’Antraigues fromnhis service, which antagonised him greatly and he became a vocal critic of thenKing. D’Antraigues’s loyalties passed to Czar Paul I of Russia, for whom henalso worked as a secret agent, before moving to London, where he spied fornCanning, the Foreign Secretary. 

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nOn the morning of July 22^nd 1812,nd’Antraigues had a ten o’clock appointment with Canning, so he and his wifenrose early to travel from their home in Queen Anne Street West, Barnes Terrace,nLondon into the city. At seven o’clock, their Italian servant Lorenzo drew anpoignard and a pistol from his master’s bedside, and standing six paces fromnhim on the staircase, he shot at him. The ball missed, passing betweennd’Antraigues and his wife, and Lorenzo lunged at his master, stabbing him innthe shoulder. The Comte, mortally wounded, staggered back into his bedroom andnLorenzo turned the blade next on his mistress, stabbing her fatally in thenbreast. She did not scream but only repeated, “Lorenzo, Lorenzo,” as she died.nThe murderer went back up to his master’s room and found him lying dead fromnhis wounds on the floor. D’Antraigues, ever cautious because of his dubiousndealings, always kept the poignard and four loaded pistols by his bedside, andnLorenzo took another of these, put it in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Hendied instantly. Madame was noted for her sharpness with her servants and hadnfired Lorenzo the previous day. It was this, some said, that had caused him tonseek vengeance, although others felt that Napoleon and Louis XVIII hadnsufficient cause to wish d’Antraigues dead and drew their own conclusions. In anlater biography of d’Antraigues, Un Agent Secret sous la Revolution etnL’empire – Le Comte D’antraigues by Léonce Pingaud (1893) there isnno mention at all of Benjamin Bathurst.

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