INTO THE NIGHT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 49, 27 February 1937, Page 4 (Supplement)

INTO THE NIGHT.

DIPLOMAT'S FATE. r d l ; MYSTERY DEFIED THE * YEARS. if. ■ Benjamin Bathurst, born in London in d, 17*4, was the son of Lord Bishop l " Bathurst of Norwich, and a descendant o e of that famous 5-ir Benjaijjin Bathurst, if who was governor of the East India d Company and treasurer to Princess £ Anne of Denmark. a i At an wrly age Benjamin Bathurst r j entered the diplomatic service and

gained promotion to the post of secretary of Legation at Leghorn. In 1805 he married Phillida, daughter of Sii John Call, Bart. Early in 1809 he was sent on a secret embassy to the court of Emperor Francis of Austria, whose Empire was then upon the verge of a very delicate crisis forced upon it by the ambitions of Napoleon. England at the time was urging Austria to declare war against the French Emperor, but the Cabinet at Vienna was as yet undecided whether to enter again into the perils which it had endured in the Napoleonic wars. Affairs were at this tension when Benjamin Bathurst hurried to Vienna as Ambassador Extraordinary of the British King. Encouraged by the message brought by the young Ambassador, Austria sent its troops across the frontier and Napoleon was known to be greatly exasperated. Bathurst, while remaining in Vienna, let it be known that he feared Napoleom's wrath. Returning to London. While he still waited at the Austrian capital, there occurred on July 6 the famous battle of Wagram, culminating in the armistice which in October led to terms of peace highly favourable to Bonaparte. His missi6n now at an end, Bathurst started back to London. Hesitating which road to take, he selected that through Trieste, Malta and Berlin. When he started out he had with him his private secretary and valet, and the better to outwit French spies, masqueraded as "Herr Koch, travelling merchant." He carried with him pistols, both upon his person and in the back of his carriage. About noon. November 25, 1809, the returning Ambassador arrived at Perlberg, about 13 miles beyond Berlin on the road to Hamburg, and here he alighted at the White Swan inn for refreshment. A woman who saw him eating at the inn noticed that he shivered as though stricken with a chill and that his hand trembled while he raised his cup of tea to his lips. He wore a pair of grey trousers, a greyfrogged short coat and a handsome sable greatcoat lined with violet velvet. His cap was also of sable fur and in his scarf was a valuably diamond pin. Finishing his meal he crossed to the market place, told the commandant of the town that he was a traveller on his way to Hamburg and requested that he might be given a guard in the inn while he remained there. Laughing at his fears, the commandant allowed him two soldiers and noted that he was greatly agitated with fear. Returning to the Swan, Bathurst countermanded previous orders given for fresh horses, explaining that he would

h 1 not proceed on his journey until after d night rail, as it would be safer to travel ■t while hidden by darkness. Vanished Into the Night. ; So at 7 oV-bnk he dismissed his guard • 0 and ordered hi* horses to be ready at e nine. Alter the carriage had dri\en h up. he stood watchins a servant place .. his portmanteau in the vehicle. Then 5, he stepped around to the heads of the e hor-es—di-solved into the night, e \\ hen Bathurst thus vanished, the n -"-tier sunt po-t:!eon were adjusting the d harne-s by the dim light of a hurn e lantern and the Ambassador's secretary e was standing in the doorway of the inn e paying tlie account to the landlord. After e the landlord and secretary had advanced i- to the carriage and while the valet tl stood at the door of the vehicle, it was y i discovered that the Ambassador was I missing. Shivering with the cold, they n waited and sent back to the room which iv Bathurst had occupied. Then they called, s. but there was no answer. Without a d word of warning, a cry of alarm or a f sound of struggle, the diplomat had e entered the black realm of mystery. After the alarm had been given soldier* i scoured the entire country round. The |ri\er was dragged and every nook and cranny searched. Three weeks after the strange disappearance two peasant women seeking firewood > found in the woods near the inn a pair of grey, mudsoiled trousers turned inside out. They contained two bullet hole*, but showed no traces of blood. Suspected Foul Play. In one of the pockets wa* a halffinished letter afterward identified as from Bathurst to his wife and stating that he was afraid that he would never reach England—that his ruin would be n wrought by Count d'Entraigues, a famous French spy. This letter also P i requested Mrs. Bathurst not to remarry it j in the event of her husband's failure to t, ! return. Heavy rewards for the disj covery of the ambassador's body were ; offered by the Bathurst family, the Eng,s I lish Government and Prince Frederick of | Prussia, but they availed nothing, it j Various theories a* to Bathurst's dis- ' appearance were put forward. One was that he had been lost at sea; another ■ that he had been murdered by his valet. Count d'Entraigues, fear for whom Bathurst had expressed in the unfinished letter, was, with his wife, afterward cruelly murdered by an Italian servant. Before hi* death the count was heard to -ay that Bathurst was murdered in the fortress of Magdeburg. A German | newspaper stated that the envoy had j committed suicide during a fit of insanity | and a Hamburg paper late in January | deepened the mystery by announcing ! that he was "well in mind and body," ; that his friends had '"received a letter from him da-tod December 13. which, therefore, must have been written after the date of his supposed death." Coat Found in Cellar. Ae. this statement was untrue, there was a suspicion that it had been inserted for a purpose. Bathurst's fur coat was afterwards found in the cellar of a peasant behind some firewood and the peasant's wife declared that she had found it at the inn and brought it home. The commandant of Perlberg always maintained that the ambassador had not fallen a victim to French spies, but that, if murdered at all, he had been slain for his money. In 1852 a house once occupied by one Mertens —who was a serving man at the White Swan at the time of Bathurst's disappearance 43 years before—was torn down and a human skeleton was discovered under the threshold of the stable. It lay stretched out, face upward and in the back of the skull was a fracture indicating a heavy blow. But investigation showed Mertens to have been a respected citizen. Inasmuch as a favourable peace with Austria had been concluded, Napoleon could not have been vitally interested in any papers which the ambassador was likely to carry upon his person during his return from Vienna. Bathurst's disappearance still remains the darkest mystery in the annals of a diplomacy.