STUDIES IN THE NAPOLEONIC WARS 053
Baron Kolli and the Prisoner of Valençay
8. Tales of Secret Service (14)
Baron Kolli and the Prisoner of Valençay
If I only knew the Baron by his little book, published in 1823 at Paris, I should have been inclined to think that he had invented himself and his adventures. But there is no doubt that there was such a person—one runs upon him unexpectedly in quite serious state papers, and in contemporary memoirs of perfect authenticity. All the absurdities of his style, and his interminable testimonials to his own courage, magnanimity, disinterestedness, loyalty, and adroitness, must not drive us into a disbelief in his existence.
Who was he? The editors of the Dictionnaire Universelle de Biographie cannot inform us of his age, birthplace, or nationality. He himself always signs majestically Kolli—no Christian name is discoverable. The editors of the Dictionnaire can only call him “le Baron Kolli”—but what sort of a baron was he? Or “le Colonel Kolli”—but in what army had he commanded a regiment? The only definite statement about his origin which I have discovered is that he is said to have been a Piedmontese. But no Italian could have a name beginning with K. He himself gives us no help in all his diffuse paragraphs. He professes intense veneration for St-Louis and the sacred lilies of France, but never claims to be a Frenchman. His enthusiasm is equally great for Catholic Spain—the Inquisition included—and Ferdinand rey neto. He has even reverence to spare for George III of England, whose sentiments he considered “touching and sublime”, and whose prudence and energy had made a reign of sixty years illustrious.
There is, perhaps, some slight help to be got from the fact that he certainly was not conversant with the Spanish tongue; he got it up in twenty-four lessons, he tells us, so as to be able to converse currently with princes and others. On the other hand, he knew German very well, and his English was fluent. This leads me to the hypothesis that he may have been an Irish Colley—one of those innumerable scions of exiled Jacobite adventurers who pervaded every Catholic country in Europe in the XVIIIth century, and appear spasmodically in Austrian, Neapolitan, Spanish, and French army lists. The K at the front of his name suggests an Austrian domicile. And certainly his book betrays a Hibernian style by its turgid magniloquence. He prefers to call the Napoleonic eagle “the unholy vulture”, or a police inspector “the ferocious head of a band of Sbirri”. Perhaps it may suffice to give an idea of his diction if we transcribe his notes on his first night spent in prison under the keep of Vincennes.
“The aspect of my cell inspired me with a sudden horror. I hoped that a speedy death would save me from the long agonies which so many martyrs, faithful to their king, had been condemned to endure in this abyss. But when I questioned my soul, I felt my melancholy somewhat alleviated by the thought that I was one of them; that I was breathing the air which had barely sufficed to keep them alive. I compared my lot with that of those faithful ones, and appropriating to myself some portion of the veneration which they inspired, I found that even Misfortune has its charms when virtue is her companion. The dull noises which occasionally echoed along these sepulchral vaults brought me some suggestion of the calm of the grave, and freed me from the worries of the everyday world. And my eyes, peering into the blank darkness, seemed to discern a blood-flecked phantom, in whose half-seen visage majesty and kindliness were combined. Yes—it was the spirit of the murdered Due d’Enghien, who seemed to halt before me, to lift his hand from under his sable cloak, and, pointing to heaven, to murmur, “Friend! those who die here live for eternity’.”
It is, however, worth while to disentangle from this bombast a genuine and a very curious story, which gives us interesting light upon the methods of the French police under the direction of Fouché, and raises some puzzling problems as to the intentions of Napoleon with regard to Ferdinand VII, the captive of Valençay.
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