THE REAL KING OF FRANCE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 312, 27 May 1911, Page 10

THE REAL KING OF FRANCE.

.V lIUMANTKI STOIiY. AND KKCKXT PETITION. The Senate of tin- French Republic was a.-iked to decide oil Tuesday who is I lie legitimate Kill}.' of France (says a writer in tin- London Daily News, of ■Jfarcli :!otiil. The claim of the NifundorlTs is eighty years old, ImL it lias lately entered upon a new anil, one may hope, tlie linal stage, About. the year IH - 2!) Kai't Willu'lrn NaundorlV, a watchniaker, living in the town of Crossen, j(i Silesia, first held himself out to lie the Dauphin, the hapless soil of Louis XVI.. who is reported to have died ill the prison of the Temple on June Bth, 1700, hut who NaundorlV alleges had been smuggled out of prison. The tnree grandchildren of this Karl Wilhelm NaundorlT are now petitioning the French Senate to he restored to French citizenship. Tneir petition has been investigated by a Committee of the Semite, and the report of this committee, drafted by M. Hois?y d'Anglas, a well-known loyalist senator, was on the Senate's programme for discussion. DID THE DAUPHIN 1)1 K IN TIIE TEMPLE? That the Dauphin did not die in the Temple, says M. Boissy d'Anglas, is shown by the irregularity of the death certificate. It, was made four clays instead of within three days after his death; it was not witnessed bv his sister, immured in the same prison; the actual witnesses could have known nothing. This may seem formidable, but it amounts to just nothing. Registration was very irregular in the days of the Revolution. Louis XVl's death was not registered until two months, Danton's and Marat's until three weeks after they were dead. The Dauphin's sister, an infant, was incompetent as a witness; the actual witnesses were the Dauphin's gaolers. Says M. Lenotre, "The Dauphin's death certificate is one of the most regular of the time." 'M. Boissy d'Anglas has other arguments. The Royal Family believed that he did not die in the Temple; the Ducuess d' Angouleme, the Dauphin's sister, said as much;'the Church would allow no Mass for his soul; Louis XVIII made no attempt.' to recover the body, along with his father's and mother's, and bury it at St. Denis; the Due de Berry wrote letters to Naundorff acknowledging his identity with the Dauphin. Every one of these statements crumbles under examination. The statement of the Duchesse d' Angouleme proves her profound conviction that her brother died in prison. There were memorial services for the Dauphin at the Restoration in Orleans, Tours, Rennes, Rochefort, and in every district in France. The remains of the Dauphin were searched for in the cemetery of St. Marguerite, hut could not he identified, just as those of his aunt could not be identified. The letters of the Due de Berry do not exist.

WAS NAUNDORFF THE DAUPHIN"? But even if we assumed that the Dauphin escaped, what is there to identify him with Naundorff? There is a register of births in Camberwell, in which he is entered as His Royal Highness Charles Louis, Duke of 'Normandy, and father of Adelberth, Prince of France, to say nothing of a similar entry in the Dutch records. XI. Boissy d'Anglas says that in the face of these records we can only doubt the title of Naundorff by insulting England and Holland. It must in that ease be as easy to win kingdoms as to be ignorant of the functions of a registrar. The Dauphin disappeared in 1705. N'nundorfT first appears upon the scene in ISIO. \V|int was his life from 1795 to 1810? Naundorff has tout th» story of those adventurous years, and the best that one of his most ardent supporters can say of that story is that "the lying in places hits you in the face." This is the story which NanndorfT himself solemnly declared to be the "'pure and unimpeachable truth." Perhaps it is superfluous to add that when in ISIS Naundorff was married at Spaniiau he gave his age as 43; the Danpinn would have been just ten years younger. WHO WAS &lUNDORFF? The career of Naundorff can be tracked in official records. In Berlin at .the end of 1810 or the beginning of lftll,Karl Wilhelm Naundorff first appears upon the scene. In 1812 he moves to Spandnu aim is admitted a burgess. There he lives with and perhaps later marries a Mmc. Sonnenfeld. In 1818 he marries again, and enters his name on the records as the sou of (iodfrev Nairndorfl'. In 181!) lie has a daughter, and this heir of the Bourbons gives her the prosaic German name of Johanna Antrim, lie lias a sou, and forgetting that the Kings of France arc Louis and Ilenris he calls him Karl Edward. lie is living at Brandenburg, and there he is arrested for incendiarism and counterfeit coining. He is acquitted oil the first charge, but gets three years on the second. He spends ,'!2 montlis in gaol, and when he returns to the world beggared and broken, the great idea comes to him of wiping out his miserable past by assuming the identity of one of the most unfortunate of kings. 18'2!) is the date when the great idea first comes to him; we can mark the date bv a significant act. A daughter is born to nini; lie registers Iter name as "Manie Antoinette, ft is not a very original idea. He is the sixth, and not the last, pretender to seize the thocs of the hapless Dauphin. And it is not the first time that he has borrowed an identity, for he has as little right to the name of Naundorfi' as to the name of Bourbon. He comes front Halle. He is Karl Ben jamin Werge, a soldier of an infantry regiment in garrison at Halle from T7!)li to 1709. He becomes Naundorff in Will. Bourbon in 1829, and a swindling notary, infinite audncity, and infinite credulity spread the imposture, keep it alive, and after 80 years submit it solemnly to the French Senate for ratification.