Note Back to Main Text — Chapter IX

The French ministers, in obedience to orders received from Paris, waited until the very last, leaving with their train only at nightfall on April twenty-eighth. In a few moments, and almost before the gates, they were surrounded and hustled, by whom is not altogether certain, though at the time some were believed to be Austrian hussars. In the ensuing tumult the three plenipotentiaries were dragged from their carriages and furiously assaulted; Roberjot and Bonnier were killed, Debry escaped. Next morning he appeared in Rastadt wounded and bloody, but not seriously injured. This murder has become one of the standing historical puzzles. Some have attributed its instigation to the British cabinet, some to Bonaparte, some again to Caroline of Naples, and some to the French émigrés. Many claim that the blows were struck by Debry himself, who, it is thought, was one of those Bonapartist agents, like Garat in Naples and Ginguené in Turin, whose business, as is claimed, was to bring on anarchy at any price, and discredit the Directory. The royalists, supported by the declarations of Mme. Roberjot, who was in the carriage with her husband, asserted this at the time, and the numerous hewers at the greatness of Napoleon have again repeated it in our day. There are circumstances which could be twisted into corroborative evidence if even the slightest positive proof existed; but no satisfactory testimony has ever been offered from Austrian sources to prove that these attacks, like others of the time and in other lands, were not instigated by the authorities, and made both to conceal inconvenient shortcomings, and to bring on the war for which Austria was now thoroughly prepared.[11]