“MERCHANT OF VENICE”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 345, 4 May 1928, Page 9

“MERCHANT OF VENICE”

DESCENDANT’S CLAIM FOR £29.600,000 FRENCH NAVAL OFFICER M. Nicholas Thierry, a retired naval officer, is bringing an action against the French Government to recover a sum of approximately £29,600,000, which represents, with accumulated interest, the fortune left by one of his ancestors, a Venice merchant in Shakespearean days, which fell into the hands of the French Government. The ancestor, Jean' Thierry, was born in Chateau Thierry in 1579, and was the son of a humble farmer of the Champagne district. When 16 years of age he went to Italy, and for several years was a servant at an inn at Brescia. There he was noticed by a wealthy Greek merchant named Athanase Tipaldi, who engaged him as a valet. One day in a shipwreck he saved his master’s life, and when Tipaldi died at Venice he left all his fortune, his large business and his many ships to young Thierry. The new “Merchant of Venice” developed the business and amassed great wealth until he died, aged 96. When he died in 1675 he left a fortune estimated at over five million ducats. Plot to Claim Millions In his will, the “Merchant of Venice” —who, since he left France as a boy, had never had any news of his family —stiuplated that his fortune was to go to “his brothers and their children.” The bank of the Venetian Government was entrusted with the inheritance, and the executor of the will, a Signor Moro, went to France to search for the hiers to the Thierry fortune. The executor had not been in France ] more than a few weeks when he fell the victim to a plot laid by three French finance officials. They destroyed all official evidence of the inheritors’ rights, and produced »our documents purporting to show that they themselves were the actual heirs to the Thierry millions. They were unmasked, however, and sentuced to death in 1703. They managed to escape, however, and fled to Holland. It was only seven years later that the question of Thierry’s inheritance came up again. Legal proceedings began, and went on for years. It seems that all the Thierrys of France put in claims to the vast fortune. Seven thousand people with the name of Thierry applied to the court, but their claims were dismissed. After the French revolution the Thierry inheritance, which was still in the Venetian State Bank, was brought to France. M. Thierry has, it is said, spent many years endeavouring to establish that he is the direct descendant of the original “French Merchant of Venice.” ! and it is said that he h*V succeeded.