STUDIES IN THE NAPOLEONIC WARS 060

The Aftermath of the Failed Plot

8. Tales of Secret Service (21)

The Aftermath of the Failed Plot

On the whole there is much to be said in favour of the latter hypothesis. Ferdinand’s life had been spent in the midst of plots, and he suspected everything and everybody. It is almost certain that he had, through Amezaga, some previous warning of Kolli’s scheme, and that he did not get his first notion of it from Richard’s visit. The mention of Amezaga in his letter instead of Don Antonio, seems to prove this. The real Kolli was not to have come to Valençay in this particular fashion. Moreover, we have in the Baron’s little book an account of an interview which he had, long years after, with Berthémy, who in 1814 had become a colonel in the service of the King of Naples. This officer told him that he had been disgusted with Fouché’s orders, and had done as little as he could to favour Richard’s plan; that his bearing towards the agent had been such as muct have attracted the notice of the King’s Spanish servants and courtiers, who smelt treachery everywhere.

Moreover, Richard had played his part badly, had frightened Don Antonio by his ‘Verbiage sans suite et trouble extraordinaire,” and was in such a state of mixed terror and excitement that he would have roused suspicion in the most guileless breast. The Princes had resolved that he was not the real Kolli, and played for safety by denouncing a man whom they believed (and rightly) to be only a police spy.

Richard’s failure did not bring about Kolli’s execution. When the latter learned in his dungeon, many weeks after, of his supposed visit to Valençay, he wondered why he had been spared. Apparently it was because Napoleon was satisfied with the moral effect of Ferdinand’s hypocritical declaration, and was content to leave the Baron visible as an example of a rash and maladroit plotter who had tried an impossible adventure.

But he spent the long months from April 1810 to February 1814 in a dungeon in the keep of Vincennes, kept au secret and restricted to an allowance of ten sous per diem over and above the prison ration of an ordinary criminal. His only excitement for the first year was that his neighbours in the cell above him, the two brothers Polignac, kept up a correspondence with him by means of a string let down at night with a little bag at the end, in which letters were placed. They were less well guarded than himself, and had corrupted their jailer, who once or twice let them come down to the cell below them, while all the world was asleep.

When the Polignacs were removed, Kolli got as neighbour above a worthy abbe, to whom the secret of the string and bag had been confided, and received pious exhortations instead of the scraps of newspaper with which his previous friends had been wont to regale him.

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