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THE COUNT VAN HORN.
During the minority of Louis XV., while the Duke of Orleans
was Regent of France, a young Flemish nobleman, the Count
Antoine Joseph Van Horn, made his sudden appearance in
Paris, and by his character, conduct, and the subsequent disasters
in which he became involved, created a great sensation in
the high circles of the proud aristocracy. He was about twenty-two
years of age, tall, finely formed, with a pale, romantic countenance,
and eyes of remarkable brilliancy and wildness.
He was one of the most ancient and highly-esteemed families
of European nobility, being of the line of the Princes of Horn
and Overique, sovereign Counts of Hautekerke, and hereditary
Grand Veneurs of the empire.
The family took its name from the little town and seigneurie
of Horn, in Brabant; and was known as early as the eleventh
century among the little dynasties of the Netherlands, and since
that time, by a long line of illustrious generations. At the
peace of Utrecht, when the Netherlands passed under subjection
to Austria, the house of Van Horn came under the domination
of the emperor. At the time we treat of, two of the branches
branch was represented by the reigning prince, Maximilian
Emanuel Van Horn, twenty-four years of age, who resided in
honorable and courtly style on his hereditary domains at Baussigny,
in the Netherlands, and his brother the Count Antoine
Joseph, who is the subject of this memoir.
The ancient house of Van Horn, by the intermarriage of its
various branches with the noble families of the continent, had
become widely connected and interwoven with the high aristocracy
of Europe. The Count Antoine, therefore, could claim relationship
to many of the proudest names in Paris. In fact, he
was grandson, by the mother's side, of the Prince de Ligne, and
even might boast of affinity to the Regent (the Duke of Orleans)
himself. There were circumstances, however, connected with
his sudden appearance in Paris, and his previous story, that
placed him in what is termed “a false position;” a word of baleful
significance in the fashionable vocabulary of France.
The young Count had been a captain in the service of Austria,
but had been cashiered for irregular conduct, and for disrespect
to Prince Louis of Baden, commander-in-chief. To check
him in his wild career, and bring him to sober reflection, his
brother the Prince caused him to be arrested, and sent to the
old castle of Van Wert, in the domains of Horn. This was the
same castle in which, in former times, John Van Horn, Stadt-holder
of Gueldres, had imprisoned his father; a circumstance
which has furnished Rembrandt with the subject of an admirable
painting. The governor of the castle was one Van Wert, grandson
of the famous John Van Wert, the hero of many a popular
song and legend. It was the intention of the Prince that his
to sober and improve, not to punish and afflict him. Van Wert,
however, was a stern, harsh man, of violent passions. He
treated the youth in a manner that prisoners and offenders were
treated in the strongholds of the robber counts of Germany, in
old times; confined him in a dungeon, and inflicted on him such
hardships and indignities, that the irritable temperament of the
young count was roused to continual fury, which ended in insanity.
For six months was the unfortunate youth kept in this
horrible state, without his brother the Prince being informed of
his melancholy condition, or of the cruel treatment to which he
was subjected. At length, one day, in a paroxysm of frenzy,
the Count knocked down two of his gaolers with a beetle, escaped
from the castle of Van Wert, and eluded all pursuit; and after
roving about in a state of distraction, made his way to Baussigny,
and appeared like a spectre before his brother.
The Prince was shocked at his wretched, emaciated appearance,
and his lamentable state of mental alienation. He received
him with the most compassionate tenderness; lodged him
in his own room; appointed three servants to attend and watch
over him day and night; and endeavored, by the most soothing
and affectionate assiduity, to atone for the past act of rigor with
which he reproached himself. When he learned, however, the
manner in which his unfortunate brother had been treated in
confinement, and the course of brutalities that had led to his
mental malady, he was aroused to indignation. His first step
was to cashier Van Wert from his command. That violent man
set the Prince at defiance, and attempted to maintain himself in
his government and his castle, by instigating the peasants, for
been formidable against the power of a petty prince; but he was
put under the ban of the empire, and seized as a state prisoner.
The memory of his grandfather, the oft-sung John Van Wert,
alone saved him from a gibbet; but he was imprisoned in the
strong tower of Horn-op-Zee. There he remained until he was
eighty-two years of age, savage, violent, and unconquered to the
last; for we are told that he never ceased fighting and thumping,
as long as he could close a fist or wield a cudgel.
In the mean time, a course of kind and gentle treatment and
wholesome regimen, and above all, the tender and affectionate
assiduity of his brother, the Prince, produced the most salutary
effects upon Count Antoine. He gradually recovered his reason;
but a degree of violence seemed always lurking at the bottom
of his character, and he required to be treated with the
greatest caution and mildness, for the least contradiction exasperated
him.
In this state of mental convalescence, he began to find the
supervision and restraints of brotherly affection insupportable;
so he left the Netherlands furtively, and repaired to Paris,
whither, in fact, it is said he was called by motives of interest,
to make arrangements concerning a valuable estate which he inherited
from his relative the Princess d'Epinay.
On his arrival in Paris, he called upon the Marquis of Créqui,
and other of the high nobility with whom he was connected.
He was received with great courtesy; but, as he brought no letters
from his elder brother, the Prince, and as various circumstances
of his previous history had transpired, they did not receive
him into their families, nor introduce him to their ladies.
suppers at their separate apartments, and took him to their
boxes at the theatres. He was often noticed, too, at the doors
of the most fashionable churches, taking his stand among the
young men of fashion; and at such times, his tall, elegant figure,
his pale but handsome countenance, and his flashing eyes, distinguished
him from among the crowd; and the ladies declared
that it was almost impossible to support his ardent gaze.
The Count did not afflict himself much at his limited circulation
in the fastidious circles of the high aristocracy. He
relished society of a wilder and less ceremonious cast; and
meeting with loose companions to his taste, soon ran into all the
excesses of the capital, in that most licentious period. It is
said that, in the course of his wild career, he had an intrigue
with a lady of quality, a favorite of the Regent; that he was
surprised by that prince in one of his interviews; that sharp
words passed between them; and that the jealousy and vengeance
thus awakened, ended only with his life.
About this time, the famous Mississippi scheme of Law was
at its height, or rather it began to threaten that disastrous catastrophe
which convulsed the whole financial world. Every
effort was making to keep the bubble inflated. The vagrant
population of France was swept off from the streets at night,
and conveyed to Havre de Grace, to be shipped to the projected
colonies; even laboring people and mechanics were thus crimped
and spirited away. As Count Antoine was in the habit of sallying
forth at night, in disguise, in pursuit of his pleasures, he
came near being carried off by a gang of crimps; it seemed, in
fact, as if they had been lying in wait for him, as he had experienced
made of his case by his relation, the Marquis de Créqui, who
took much interest in the youth; but the Marquis received mysterious
intimations not to interfere in the matter, but to advise
the Count to quit Paris immediately: “If he lingers, he is
lost!” This has been cited as a proof that vengeance was dogging
at the heels of the unfortunate youth, and only watching
for an opportunity to destroy him.
Such opportunity occurred but too soon. Among the loose
companions with whom the Count had become intimate, were
two who lodged in the same hotel with him. One was a youth
only twenty years of age, who passed himself off as the Chevalier
d'Etampes, but whose real name was Lestang, the prodigal
son of a Flemish banker. The other, named Laurent de Mille,
a Piedmontese, was a cashiered captain, and at the time an
esquire in the service of the dissolute Princess de Carignan, who
kept gambling-tables in her palace. It is probable that gambling
propensities had brought these young men together, and
that their losses had driven them to desperate measures; certain
it is, that all Paris was suddenly astounded by a murder
which they were said to have committed. What made the crime
more startling, was, that it seemed connected with the great
Mississippi scheme, at that time the fruitful source of all kinds
of panics and agitations. A Jew, a stock-broker, who dealt
largely in shares of the bank of Law, founded on the Mississippi
scheme, was the victim. The story of his death is variously related.
The darkest account states, that the Jew was decoyed
by these young men into an obscure tavern, under pretext of negotiating
with him for bank shares, to the amount of one hundred
Lestang kept watch upon the stairs. The Count and De Mille
entered with the Jew into a chamber. In a little while there
were heard cries and struggles from within. A waiter passing
by the room, looked in, and seeing the Jew weltering in his
blood, shut the door again, double-locked it, and alarmed the
house. Lestang rushed down stairs, made his way to the hotel,
secured his most portable effects, and fled the country. The
Count and De Mille endeavored to escape by the window, but
were both taken, and conducted to prison.
A circumstance which occurs in this part of the Count's
story, seems to point him out as a fated man. His mother, and
his brother, the Prince Van Horn, had received intelligence
some time before at Baussigny, of the dissolute life the Count
was leading at Paris, and of his losses at play. They despatched
a gentleman of the Prince's household to Paris, to pay the debts
of the Count, and persuade him to return to Flanders; or, if he
should refuse, to obtain an order from the Regent for him to
quit the capital. Unfortunately the gentleman did not arrive at
Paris until the day after the murder.
The news of the Count's arrest and imprisonment, on a
charge of murder, caused a violent sensation among the high
aristocracy. All those connected with him, who had treated
him hitherto with indifference, found their dignity deeply involved
in the question of his guilt or innocence. A general convocation
was held at the hotel of the Marquis de Créqui, of all
the relatives and allies of the house of Horn. It was an assemblage
of the most proud and aristocratic personages of Paris.
Inquiries were made into the circumstances of the affair. It
that he had been killed by several stabs of a poniard. In escaping
by the window, it was said that the Count had fallen, and
been immediately taken; but that De Mille had fled through
the streets, pursued by the populace, and had been arrested at
some distance from the scene of the murder; that the Count had
declared himself innocent of the death of the Jew, and that he
had risked his own life in endeavoring to protect him; but that
De Mille on being brought back to the tavern, confessed to a
plot to murder the broker, and rob him of his pocket-book, and
inculpated the Count in the crime.
Another version of the story was, that the Count Van Horn
had deposited with the broker bank shares to the amount of
eighty-eight thousand livres; that he had sought him in this
tavern, which was one of his resorts, and had demanded the
shares; that the Jew had denied the deposit; that a quarrel had
ensued, in the course of which the Jew struck the Count in the
face; that the latter, transported with rage, had snatched up a
knife from a table, and wounded the Jew in the shoulder; and
that thereupon De Mille, who was present, and who had likewise
been defrauded by the broker, fell on him, and despatched him
with blows of a poniard, and seized upon his pocket-book: that
he had offered to divide the contents of the latter with the Count,
pro rata, of what the usurer had defrauded them; that the latter
had refused the proposition with disdain, and that, at a noise of
persons approaching, both had attempted to escape from the premises,
but had been taken.
Regard the story in any way they might, appearances were
terribly against the Count, and the noble assemblage was in great
and to save their illustrious escutcheons from this murderous
stain of blood? Their first attempt was to prevent the affair
from going to trial, and their relative from being dragged before
a criminal tribunal, on so horrible and degrading a charge. They
applied, therefore, to the Regent, to intervene his power; to treat
the Count as having acted under an access of his mental malady;
and to shut him up in a madhouse. The Regent was deaf to
their solicitations. He replied, coldly, that if the Count was a
madman, one could not get rid too quickly of madmen who were
furious in their insanity. The crime was too public and atrocious
to be hushed up, or slurred over; justice must take its
course.
Seeing there was no avoiding the humiliating scene of a public
trial, the noble relatives of the Count endeavored to predispose
the minds of the magistrates before whom he was to be arraigned.
They accordingly made urgent and eloquent representations of
the high descent, and noble and powerful connections of the Count;
set forth the circumstances of his early history; his mental malady;
the nervous irritability to which he was subject, and his extreme
sensitiveness to insult or contradiction. By these means,
they sought to prepare the judges to interpret every thing in favor
of the Count, and, even if it should prove that he had inflicted the
mortal blow on the usurer, to attribute it to access of insanity,
provoked by insult.
To give full effect to these representations, the noble conclave
determined to bring upon the judges the dazzling rays of the whole
assembled aristocracy. Accordingly, on the day that the trial took
place, the relations of the Count, to the number of fifty-seven persons,
the Palace of Justice, and took their stations in a long corridor
which led to the court-room. Here, as the judges entered, they
had to pass in review this array of lofty and noble personages,
who saluted them mournfully and significantly, as they passed.
Any one conversant with the stately pride and jealous dignity of
the French noblesse of that day, may imagine the extreme state
of sensitiveness that produced this self-abasement. It was confidently
presumed, however, by the noble suppliants, that having
once brought themselves to this measure, their influence over the
tribunal would be irresistible. There was one lady present, however,
Madame de Beauffremont, who was affected with the Scottish
gift of second sight, and related such dismal and sinister apparitions
as passing before her eyes, that many of her female
companions were filled with doleful presentiments.
Unfortunately for the Count, there was another interest at
work, more powerful even than the high aristocracy. The infamous
but all-potent Abbé Dubois, the grand favorite and bosom
counsellor of the Regent, was deeply interested in the scheme of
Law, and the prosperity of his bank, and of course in the security
of the stock-brokers. Indeed, the Regent himself is said to have
dipped deep in the Mississippi scheme. Dubois and Law, therefore,
exerted their influence to the utmost to have the tragic affair
pushed to the extremity of the law, and the murder of the broker
punished in the most signal and appalling manner. Certain it is,
the trial was neither long nor intricate. The Count and his fellow-prisoner
were equally inculpated in the crime, and both were
condemned to a death the most horrible and ignominious—to be
broken alive on the wheel!
As soon as the sentence of the court was made public, all the
nobility, in any degree related to the house of Van Horn, went
into mourning. Another grand aristocratical assemblage was
held, and a petition to the Regent, on behalf of the Count, was
drawn out and left with the Marquis de Créqui for signature.
This petition set forth the previous insanity of the Count, and
showed that it was an hereditary malady in his family. It stated
various circumstances in mitigation of his offence, and implored
that his sentence might be commuted to perpetual imprisonment.
Upward of fifty names of the highest nobility, beginning with
the Prince de Ligne, and including cardinals, archbishops, dukes,
marquises, etc. together with ladies of equal rank, were signed to
this petition. By one of the caprices of human pride and vanity,
it became an object of ambition to get enrolled among the illustrious
suppliants; a kind of testimonial of noble blood, to prove
relationship to a murderer! The Marquis de Créqui was absolutely
besieged by applicants to sign, and had to refer their
claims to this singular honor, to the Prince de Ligne, the grandfather
of the Count. Many who were excluded were highly incensed,
and numerous feuds took place. Nay, the affronts thus
given to the morbid pride of some aristocratical families, passed
from generation to generation; for, fifty years afterward, the
Duchess of Mazarin complained of a slight which her father had
received from the Marquis de Créqui; which proved to be something
connected with the signature of this petition.
This important document being completed, the illustrious body
of petitioners, male and female, on Saturday evening, the eve of
Palm Sunday, repaired to the Palais Royal, the residence of the
Regent, and were ushered, with great ceremony, but profound silence,
number as deputies, to present the petition, viz.: the Cardinal de
Rohan, the Duke de Havré, the Prince de Ligne, and the Marquis
de Créqui. After a little while, the deputies were summoned to
the cabinet of the Regent. They entered, leaving the assembled
petitioners in a state of the greatest anxiety. As time slowly
wore away, and the evening advanced, the gloom of the company
increased. Several of the ladies prayed devoutly; the good Princess
of Armagnac told her beads.
The petition was received by the Regent with a most unpropitious
aspect. “In asking the pardon of the criminal,” said he,
“you display more zeal for the house of Van Horn, than for the
service of the king.” The noble deputies enforced the petition
by every argument in their power. They supplicated the Regent
to consider that the infamous punishment in question would reach
not merely the person of the condemned, not merely the house of
Van Horn, but also the genealogies of princely and illustrious
families, in whose armorial bearings might be found quarterings
of this dishonored name.
“Gentlemen,” replied the Regent, “it appears to me the disgrace
consists in the crime, rather than in the punishment.”
The Prince de Ligne spoke with warmth: “I have in my
genealogical standard,” said he, “four escutcheons of Van Horn,
and of course have four ancestors of that house. I must have them
erased and effaced, and there would be so many blank spaces, like
holes, in my heraldic ensigns. There is not a sovereign family
which would not suffer, through the rigor of your Royal Highness;
nay, all the world knows, that in the thirty-two quarterings of
Madame, your Mother, there is an escutcheon of Van Horn.”
“Very well,” replied the Regent, “I will share the disgrace
with you, gentlemen.”
Seeing that a pardon could not be obtained, the Cardinal de
Rohan and the Marquis de Créqui left the cabinet; but the
Prince de Ligne and the Duke de Havré remained behind. The
honor of their houses, more than the life of the unhappy Count,
was the great object of their solicitude. They now endeavored
to obtain a minor grace. They represented, that in the Netherlands,
and in Germany, there was an important difference in the
public mind as to the mode of inflicting the punishment of death
upon persons of quality. That decapitation had no influence on
the fortunes of the family of the executed, but that the punishment
of the wheel was such an infamy, that the uncles, aunts,
brothers, and sisters, of the criminal, and his whole family, for
three succeeding generations, were excluded from all noble chapters,
princely abbeys, sovereign bishopries, and even Teutonic
commanderies of the Order of Malta. They showed how this
would operate immediately upon the fortunes of a sister of the
Count, who was on the point of being received as a canoness into
one of the noble chapters.
While this scene was going on in the cabinet of the Regent,
the illustrious assemblage of petitioners remained in the hall of
council, in the most gloomy state of suspense. The reentrance
from the cabinet of the Cardinal de Rohan and the Marquis de
Créqui, with pale downcast countenances, had struck a chill into
every heart. Still they lingered until near midnight, to learn the
result of the after application. At length the cabinet conference
was at an end. The Regent came forth, and saluted the high
personages of the assemblage in a courtly manner. One old lady
he kissed on the cheek, calling her his “good aunt.” He made a
most ceremonious salutation to the stately Marchioness de Créqui,
telling her he was charmed to see her at the Palais Royal; “a
compliment very ill-timed,” said the Marchioness, “considering
the circumstance which brought me there.” He then conducted
the ladies to the door of the second saloon, and there dismissed
them, with the most ceremonious politeness.
The application of the Prince de Ligne and the Duke de
Havré, for a change of the mode of punishment, had, after much
difficulty, been successful. The Regent had promised solemnly
to send a letter of commutation to the attorney-general on Holy
Monday the 25th of March, at five o'clock in the morning. According
to the same promise, a scaffold would be arranged in the
cloister of the Conciergerie, or prison, where the Count would be
beheaded on the same morning, immediately after having received
absolution. This mitigation of the form of punishment gave but
little consolation to the great body of petitioners, who had been
anxious for the pardon of the youth: it was looked upon as all-important,
however, by the Prince de Ligne, who, as has been
before observed, was exquisitely alive to the dignity of his family.
The Bishop of Bayeux and the Marquis de Créqui visited the
unfortunate youth in prison. He had just received the communion
in the chapel of the Conciergerie, and was kneeling before the
altar, listening to a mass for the dead, which was performed at
his request. He protested his innocence of any intention to murder
the Jew, but did not deign to allude to the accusation of robbery.
He made the Bishop and the Marquis promise to see his
brother the Prince, and inform him of this his dying asseveration.
Two other of his relations, the Prince Rebecq-Montmorency and
the Marshal Van Isenghien, visited him secretly, and offered him
poison, as a means of evading the disgrace of a public execution.
On his refusing to take it, they left him with high indignation.
“Miserable man!” said they, “you are fit only to perish by the
hand of the executioner!”
The Marquis de Créqui sought the executioner of Paris, to
bespeak an easy and decent death for the unfortunate youth.
“Do not make him suffer,” said he; “uncover no part of him but
the neck; and have his body placed in a coffin before you deliver
it to his family.” The executioner promised all that was requested,
but declined a rouleau of a hundred louis-d'ors which the
Marquis would have put into his hand. “I am paid by the King
for fulfilling my office,” said he; and added, that he had already
refused a like sum, offered by another relation of the Marquis.
The Marquis de Créqui returned home in a state of deep affliction.
There he found a letter from the Duke de St. Simon,
the familiar friend of the Regent, repeating the promise of that
Prince, that the punishment of the wheel should be commuted to
decapitation.
“Imagine,” says the Marchioness de Créqui, who in her
memoirs gives a detailed account of this affair, “imagine what we
experienced, and what was our astonishment, our grief, and indignation,
when, on Tuesday the 26th of March, an hour after mid-day,
word was brought us that the Count Van Horn had been
exposed on the wheel, in the Place de Grève, since half-past six
in the morning, on the same scaffold with the Piedmontese, De
Mille, and that he had been tortured previous to execution!”
One more scene of aristocratic pride closed this tragic story.
arrayed himself in the uniform of a general officer, with
his cordon of nobility on the coat. He ordered six valets to attend
him in grand livery, and two of his carriages, each with six
horses, to be brought forth. In this sumptuous state, he set off
for the Palace de Gréve, where he had been preceded by the
Princes de Ligne, de Rohan, de Croüy, and the Duke de Havré.
The Count Van Horn was already dead, and it was believed
that the executioner had had the charity to give him the coup de
grace, or “death blow,” at eight o'clock in the morning. At five
o'clock in the evening, when the Judge Commissary left his post
at the Hotel de Ville, these noblemen, with their own hands, aided
to detach the mutilated remains of their relation; the Marquis
de Créqui placed them in one of his carriages, and bore them off
to his hotel, to receive the last sad obsequies.
The conduct of the Regent in this affair excited general indignation.
His needless severity was attributed by some to vindictive
jealousy; by others to the persevering machinations of Law
and the Abbé Dubois. The house of Van Horn, and the high
nobility of Flanders and Germany, considered themselves flagrantly
outraged: many schemes of vengeance were talked of, and a
hatred engendered against the Regent, that followed him through
life, and was wreaked with bitterness upon his memory after his
death.
The following letter is said to have been written to the Regent
by the Prince Van Horn, to whom the former had adjudged
the confiscated effects of the Count:
“I do not complain, sir, of the death of my brother, but I
complain that your Royal Highness has violated in his person the
for the confiscation of his effects; but I should think myself as
much disgraced as he, should I accept any favor at your hands.
I hope that God and the King may render to you as strict
justice as you have rendered to my unfortunate brother.”
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