STATEMENT OF MR. ERSKINE MATHER TO M. SALVAGNOLI.*
* From 2 in No. 13, Official Papers
On the 29th of December, 1851, my brother and I set out to go and breakfast at a café in the Piazza del Duomo.
Passing by the Piazza San Marco we stopped to look at the band of the regiment, and other soldiers standing about; after waiting three or four minutes we passed on, leaving them still there. When we arrived about the middle of the Via Langa we again heard the music, and, as they were marching the same way, we walked on their right hand nearly to the end of the Via Martelli. That street being very narrow, as you are aware, and at this time rendered more so by a carriage passing along, as our café was on the other side we were obliged to cross between the band and the guard, where they had left a space of about forty or fifty feet, and many other persons were crossing at the same time. While walking arm in arm with my brother I suddenly received a violent blow on my back, making me turn short round. I then perceived that it was given by the officer in advance of the guard, who held in his hand his naked sword, with the flat edge of which he had struck me.
I asked him somewhat angrily, but without threat or gesticulation, in the best Italian I knew, why he had struck me, using nearly these words, “Perche m’aveti dato questo?’” While I was speaking to the officer I was suddenly interrupted by another person, dressed in the Austrian uniform, who placed himself between the officer and me, at the same time giving me a blow in the face which drew blood. The blow made me start and fall back; before I could recover myself I received another cut, on the head, from the first officer, which stunned me; it passed through my hat, making a wound nearly three inches and a half in length, and down to the bone, causing the blood to flow violently.
A short time after I begged my brother to follow the officer, that he might recognise him; and I was taken to the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, where I was obliged to remain three weeks before I could return home. As it has been said that I used threatening language to the officer after the first blow, I solemnly assure you that it is utterly false and without foundation, which the following reasons will prove:—
1st. It is impossible to believe that I could for a single instant have contemplated an act so full of folly and madness, as alone, and, unarmed, to threaten a man with his sword in hand, at the head of a large body of men by whom he was supported.
2nd. If I had contemplated the folly of opposing an officer under such circumstances, I should have done so by a sudden and instantaneous blow, and not by taking a position, and thus inviting the irresistible assailment of so many armed men.
3rd. Another proof that I was not in a menacing attitude, and was not prepared for any personal attack, is the fact of the second assailant giving me, without opposition or hindrance, a violent blow on the face.
4th. If I had been in a menacing attitude, or prepared for defence, with my arm raised, instead of receiving the blow on my head he would have struck my raised arm.
5th. The wound, which I to this moment bear, was not given, holding the sword short, near the point, as all the military officers who have examined it can testify; which proves that I was at a considerable space from him, only reached by a sword or other weapon: thus he was beyond any threatening attitude of mine, as I was without sword or arms.
Thus I have proved the absurdity of the assertion that I made any threatening resistance; equally untrue is the assertion that the blow was given because wearing a white hat they thought I was a Tuscan. If the first reason had been sufficient, the other, miserable as it is, had not been necessary. But all the defence is palpably false, contradictory, and nothing worth. An untruth defended cannot become truth. All these facts, without troubling you further, prove the truth of my statement, which it has been my duty to give you.
I am, &c.,
James Ekskine O. Mather.
The British residents and travellers then at Florence were strongly indignant at so cowardly and unjustifiable an attack on their young countryman. The British residents were the pride and ornament of the Tuscan court on days of high ceremony and festival, but on the grand reception day, the first day of the year, they unanimously intimated officially that they would mark their dissatisfaction of the disgraceful assault by abstaining from presenting themselves, without the fullest investigation and redress were granted. This feeling of indignation rose so high that it was with difficulty the many young Englishmen at Florence could be restrained from making an attack upon the officers of the Croat regiment, Kinsky, amongst whom was Lieutenant Forshalier, the brutal assailant.
After much negotiation at Florence and Vienna, the British charge d’affaires was at length informed, on the 15th of January, by Prince Lichtenstein, that he had been authorized by Marshal Radetzky to state that the marshal approved that an inquiry should be instituted into the affair. This inquiry was gone into in secret, without any professional man being permitted to be present in the interests of justice, or in defence or support of the wounded Englishman. The city of Florence in command of Austrian troops,—its duke replaced on his throne and there supported by them,—all the official men and courts existing, as it were, by the tolerance of those troops, an inquiry to investigate fairly a charge, by those thus humbly protected, against one of the officers of their proud protectors would seem hopeless. Yet such were the manly independence, veracity, and courage of the Italian and French witnesses that the whole truth came out, and, as the British chargé d’affaires afterwards writes to the Duc de Casigliano, the foreign minister of Tuscany, “the evidence which has thus been obtained, conclusively establishes that a most unprovoked outrage was committed on an unarmed and unoffending British subject;” and the British government were satisfied, he said, that “the government of Tuscany must be anxious to mark their abhorrence of this outrage inflicted upon an innocent individual.” *
* Official Papers, No. 18.
Of that evidence Mr. Scarlett, the chargé d’affaires, writes to Earl Granville ** that, “All the witnesses concur, more or less, in bearing out Mather’s statement.
** Official Papers, No. 18.
None are in contradiction with it. Perhaps the most important evidence is that of Pini, which exactly corroborates Mather’s statement, and certainly there is not a single syllable, from first to last, at variance with it.” Thus speaks Giovanni Pini, the important witness of the scene of blood and outrage:—“On the day in question, about twelve o’clock, more or less, I was in the Via Martelli, about half way down, when I heard coming towards me the Austrian military band, which was accompanying, as usual, the detachment intended to relieve the guard of the city. As soon as the band had passed, I stationed myself on the path where the people were, that is between the band and the soldiers who were behind. The street being rather narrow the people who were close by the band, I may say in a crowd, were pressing upon each other. A few steps further on I observed an Austrian officer, who had a cap on, and was therefore at the time off duty, strike, with his left hand, a young man who was on that side of him, with a blow which hit him on the face, and I suppose it was given with some force, for the young man who received it staggered backwards; and I observed that, as soon as he had recovered himself, another Austrian officer, who was the one at the head of the soldiers, and marching with them with his drawn sword, strike with it the same young man on the head, inflicting a wound on his forehead, from which blood began to flow in such quantities, as wine from a broken bottle. I immediately ran to the assistance of the poor youth, who had been so unreasonably ill-treated, since I could not find that he had offended the soldiers in any manner. Besides myself he was assisted by a gentleman who showed that he was his brother, although he could not speak Italian, and a Frenchman whom I do not know. There was also a priest, who was moreover unknown to me. There were other persons, also, who witnessed the transaction like myself, but I could not discover among them any of my acquaintance. The wounded person, whom I understood to be an Englishman, signified to me his gratitude for the assistance I had afforded him, but said little, as he spoke only in his own language to his brother, who started off from us immediately in order to look at the officer, who had inflicted the wound, so as to be able to recognise him, and then came back directly. He overtook the officer at the Piazza del Duomo, because the detachment was going towards the Piazza del Gran Duca. I and the brother of the wounded man then conveyed him to the first doctor’s shop, which is on the Piazza del Duomo, at the corner of the Via Martelli; but, finding that the apothecary could not treat him, we went off forthwith to the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, where the wounded man, having lost much blood, fainted away, and after having been brought to, was put into bed.... From the wounded man himself, as well as from the medical men who were attending in the room, I heard that if the Englishman had not had on his head a rather stout hat, he might have been killed on the spot; but I do not know how deep the wound was.” *
* Page 51 of Official Papers.
Francis Catani, a priest, also gave evidence, to a certain extent, to the same effect, and added, “that he had heard that if the Englishman had not had his hat on his head he would have been killed on the spot, for it was that which alone protected him.”
And the Senator Giuseppe Vai states that “the young Englishman went aside quickly towards the end of my house, the Casa Marchesini, or perhaps rather under it, and at the same time I heard that a few words were rapidly exchanged between them, which I did not understand, because I was too high up to be able to distinguish them (he was at an upper window of his house), and also because the band was making a noise, and at the same moment I saw that the said officer, raising his sabre, gave the young man a blow on the forehead with it, using the cutting edge, by which the latter fell down upon the step by the wall of’ the Casa Marchesini, but with almost the rapidity of lightning he got up again, and when he was standing I saw the blood was flowing from the place where he was struck.... Because this act produced upon me a disagreeable impression I withdrew from the window.”
These extracts of evidence demonstrate the guilty nature of the outrage, and the careful and truthful statement of the young Englishman, as well as his cool and courageous conduct in a case at the time apparently so desperate.
Mr. Mather, the father of these youths, immediately left England for Florence, and, as he passed through London, laid the case before the foreign minister, as far as the detail had reached him by the letters of the younger brother, which were handed to the minister. He arrived at Florence after his son had been three weeks in the hospital; part of that time in a dangerous state. The kind attention and the great skill of the medical officers of that magnificent Florentine institution were doubtless the chief causes of his recovery. The conduct of these young Englishmen under such trying circumstances has been praised by almost every political writer who took an interest in the subject, and there seemed only one opinion throughout the country, that their coolness, courage, and endurance, under great difficulties and personal dangers, could not have been surpassed by the bravest and most experienced men.
Lord Palmerston, after the publication of the Official Papers, on reviewing the whole facts of the case, in a debate upon it in parliament, declared “that he found much to criticise in almost all the parties concerned, except Mr. Mather and his sons.” *
* House of Commons debate, June 14,1853.
In the route to the hospital, in the occurrences there, as well as in the account of the outrage, the graphic details by the generous-hearted Giovanni Pini bring the reader in presence of the cruel and bloody scene. While ill in hospital, pressed by professing friends, the British chargé d’affaires among them, to authorise proceedings in the Tuscan law courts, Mr. E. Mather firmly refused his sanction. He at once elevated the question to its right position by an appeal to the representative of his country for the redress of an injury done to a British subject, and for the future protection of British subjects, to be redressed by the Tuscan government to the satisfaction of that of Britain, without reference to his own private wrong. His young brother, before the day had closed, sought out Mr. Scarlett, the British chargé d’affaires, and also Prince Lichtenstein, the Austrian commander-in-chief, taking with him two witnesses to testify to the exactitude of his statement, and to them he poured out in clear and emphatic language the story of the outrage committed. The conduct of these two young Englishmen, without friends in a strange city, relying on their sense of right, and sustained by their own firmness and courage, was truly heroic. Their father, one of the most patriotic and useful public men in the north of England, warmly approved of their course of conduct, and pursued their views for redress. It is humiliating to our country to write what historical truth compels us to admit, that their efforts were met by the chicanery of diplomacy and treachery on the part of British officials, which have left behind an unpleasant impression of incapacity and want of principle, when the purest honour, and a high sense of national justice should have exclusively prevailed. They were well sustained, however, in their course by the generous sympathy of the people of Florence, and at home by the warmest feelings of their countrymen. As an eloquent public writer earnestly expressed himself in reference to their conduct, and that of the Earl of Malmesbury, the successor to Earl Granville:—“Both father and sons have nobly vindicated themselves as Englishmen; it was only when the national honour was confided to the minister, that the national honour was degraded by the spirit of the Jew pedlar.” After several weeks’ delay in Florence, the Mathers removed from that city to Genoa, where the father leaving his sons in safety, and for the purpose of the better recovery of the eldest, himself returned to England, to press the case personally upon the foreign minister of England. His first demand was punishment of the officer who had committed what Lord Granville called, “a cruel and cowardly outrage,” and then, but not without the first was granted, compensation to the injured youth by the government under whoso jurisdiction the culprit acted. The Earl of Malmesbury, then foreign minister (the Whigs having left office), after several imperfect and ineffectual attempts for the better security of his countrymen abroad, by the signal punishment of the Austrian officer, wrote to Mr. Mather, senior, by his undersecretary, a letter, on the 24th of May, 1852, in very pitiable terms, to the effect that no national redress had been obtained; but that one thousand francesconi had been placed to the credit of his son, by the Tuscan government, for the injury which he had sustained. Mr. Mather’s answer, with his indignant refusal of the acceptance of such redress, received high eulogies from the public writers of the day, and brought on debates in both houses of parliament. We extract a portion of the letter:—
“Now, my lord, you will do me the favour to remember, that a British subject, my son, was attacked in Florence by two armed Austrian officers, receiving the most ‘unmerited and brutal treatment,’ as your lordship has expressed it; that he was cut down by one of them, left in his own blood, his life in danger for a length of time, and his health perhaps for ever injured; and all this without any provocation, any offence, as it has been proved by evidence not to be controverted, of the most respectable witnesses,—people the subjects of the state whose officers had so acted,—yet for all this no real redress has been obtained; that officer is still at large, and remains unpunished....
“Whatever personal reparation you might deem proper to demand, which I conceded with regret, to your lordship’s express commands (as I foresaw a probable misapplication of such concession), was, as you know, to give place to public honour.
“You now inform me that Prince Schwarzenberg, the late prime-minister of Austria, ‘prior to his death had addressed a note to her majesty’s government expressing his great regret at the occurrence, and at the act of the Austrian officers.’ The extent of such regret may be estimated by this:—the Austrian officer, who stained the honour of the Austrian army by his bloodthirsty and cowardly act, has been allowed to go free and unpunished, and his conduct has been approved, at least defended, by Prince Schwarzenberg’s lieutenant, the Austrian commander-in-chief in Tuscany, Prince Lichtenstein. This man I frequently saw, in all the pride of military array and overbearing insolence, in the streets of Florence, a public example to his brother officers, and the world, of the impunity with which British subjects may be treated, and the evidence of the low estimation of his superiors for British honour, and British power. This all the while that British statesmen and diplomatists were making urgent demands for redress, your lordship among the number.... Has it been obtained?...
“The patriotic manner in which I have repeatedly expressed myself in this unfortunate affair, as you are pleased to observe, has originated in feelings that induce me now to express the pain which I feel that this crime is sought to be compromised, and the indignation, as far as I am concerned, with which I reject the offer of the Tuscan government, and any participation in such proceedings.
“I will not pretend to be a judge of what is due to the honour of England, but I know what is due to my own.”
The effect of this note was that Lord Malmesbury threw the responsibility on Mr. Scarlett, his representative in Tuscany, and annulled his proceedings. He then sent out Sir Henry Bulwer to endeavour to arrange the affair, or to withdraw the embassy from Florence. A sort of apology was given by the court of Florence for the outrage, and a responsibility was assumed by it for the future, in case of injury to British subjects—as if the law of nations had not already secured it. No redress or punishment for the outrage ever followed Sir Henry’s mission. He might, for all its purposes, have as well remained in England. The Mathers refused to the last the money compensation, and to this hour, in this infamous matter, the guilty officer has never met his just punishment, nor public honour been satisfied. It is known that had the course been pursued which the father and sons adopted, and justice been satisfied, any personal compensation was to have gone chiefly to the public hospital of Florence, and for other public institutions of that refined capital, in which those Englishmen had received so much kindness and sympathy when it was personally dangerous to yield it, in the presence of their barbarous Croat invaders. Mr. Erskine Mather is now a scientific British officer, and bears amidst the ranks of England’s defenders the visible scar of the wound so treacherously and wantonly inflicted upon him because he was an Englishman: a remembrance to every Englishman of how little he may rely upon the defence of his own honour, or the honour of his country in his person, while the diplomacy of England is in the hands of men who sympathise with foreign despotism, or find luxurious and lucrative appointments at foreign courts under the ostensible duty of watching over the interests of their country.
The remaining features of English affairs, in relation to foreign nations, were of too little interest to require notice in these pages.