WEALTHY ECCENTRIC.

Gisborne Times, Volume L, Issue 5138, 2 April 1919, Page 7

WEALTHY ECCENTRIC.

“EMPEROR OF SAHARA.” END OF AN EXTRAORDINARY CAREER. The following story was recently told in the London News:— M. Jacques Lebaudy, the millionaire mine and land owner,teuce self-styled “Emperor of the Sahara,” was shot and killed at his home by his wife, Marie I<ebaudy. Lebaudy was the eon of Jules Lebaudy, the French Sugar King. He and two brothers inherited about 20 millions between them, and Jacques came into prominence about the beginning of the century with his fantastic- project to found an Empire in the Sahara.

Hi* kingdom was to be a kind of No Man’s Land near Morocco, with a coastline of 140 miles, and extending eome miles inlandColonel Gouraud, a well-known American, who introduced the Pullman car and the gramophone to Europe, was to be Lobaudy’s Gov-ernor-General, and when the pair stayed at the Savoy Hotel in London something like Court etiquette was maintained.

Lebaudy’s imperial standard waa three golden bees and a crown on a blue ground, and there was great dismay in the Savoy suite when it was reported that the royal flag had been stolen. Subsequently, however, a chambermaid found that it had slipped down behind the bed of the Gov-ernor-General.

When the Emperor approached his realm in a yacht laden with stores, rifles, machine-guns, and gramophones he found the Moors far from sympathetic. His little army of followers was ordered ashore to capture “Troja,” which was to be his capital, but some of his men were taken prisoners, and the Emperor fled back to Europe. He did not forgive his native country for ridiculing his projects. Two years later he sent an ultimatum through the post to France in which, after styling himself “His Majesty, Jasues 1., independent Sovereign,” he referred to Prance a* occupying but a minor position oa the planet and to the French people as bandits and plunderers. When he was in England in 1903 Lebaudy’s Governor-General described him as “bigger than Napoleon, about the size of Lord Roberts, with tho look of Custer in hia youth, and much the same kind of man as Stanley.” In recent years Lebaudy has been living in America, mostly in New York hotels, where he spent his time in dictating letters to typiste and discussing his investments and the various legal disputes which were always arising concerning. them. In 1915 his wife complained of hifl eccentricities, and at her instanoe the authorities stepped in arid lebaudy was taken to a sanatorium.