Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton

by Anonymous

Maturin Bruneau, the next pretender to the honours of the deceased son of Louis XVI., was quite as great a rascal as Hervagault, but he lacked his cleverness. Bruneau was the son of a maker of wooden shoes, who resided at the little village of Vezin, in the department of the Maine and Loire. He was born in 1784, and having been early left an orphan, was adopted by a married sister, who kept him until she discovered that he was incorrigibly vicious, and was compelled to turn him into the streets to earn his livelihood in the best way he could. Although Maturin was only eleven years old at the time, he found no difficulty in providing for himself. He strayed a little distance from home, into regions where he was personally unknown, and there accosted a farmer whom he met, asking him for alms, and stating at the same time that he was a little "De Vezin." The farmer's curiosity was excited, for the Baron de Vezin was a well-known nobleman, who had suffered sorely in the civil war of 1795, whose chateau had been burnt, and whose estates had been devastated by the republican soldiery; and that his son should be compelled to beg was more than the honest agriculturist could bear. So he took the little waif home with him, and kept him until the Viscountess de Turpin de Crissé heard of his whereabouts, and carried him off to her own chateau at Angrie.

In her mansion Maturin Bruneau was treated as an adopted son, and lived in great splendour until, in 1796, a letter arrived from Charles de Vezin, the brother of the baron, who had just returned to France, and who informed the viscountess that she had been imposed upon, for the only nephew he ever possessed was at that time an emigrant refugee in England. The result was that Bruneau was thrust out of doors, and, sent back to his native village and the manufacture of wooden shoes. The jibes of his fellow-villagers, however, rendered his life so miserable that the viscountess consented to receive him as a servant, and he remained with her for a year; but his conduct was so unbearable that she was at last compelled to dismiss him.

After a brief sojourn with his relatives he announced his intention of making the tour of France, and left his home for that purpose at the age of fifteen. He seems, in the course of his wanderings, to have fought in the Chouan insurrection in 1799 and 1800, and having been press-ganged, deserted from his ship in an American port, and roamed up and down in the United States for some years. When the news of Napoleon's downfall reached that country in 1815, he returned to France, arriving with a passport which bore the name of Charles de Navarre. He reached the village of Vallebasseir in great destitution, and there, having been mistaken for a young soldier named Phillipeaux, who was supposed to have perished in the war in Spain, he picked up all available intelligence respecting the family, and forthwith presented himself at the house of the Widow Phillipeaux as her son. He was received with every demonstration of affection, and made the worst possible use of his advantages. After spending all the ready money which the poor woman had, he proceeded to Vezin, where he was recognised by his family, although he pretended to be a stranger. Thence he repaired to Pont de Cé, where lived a certain Sieur Leclerc, an innkeeper, who had formerly been a cook in the household of Louis XVI. To this man he paid a visit, and demanded if he recognised him. The innkeeper said he did not, whereupon he remarked on the strangeness of being forgotten, seeing, said he, "that I am Louis XVII., and that you have often pulled my ears in the kitchen of Versailles."

Leclerc, whose recollections of the dauphin were of quite a different character, ordered him out of his house as an impostor. But it does not fall to everybody to be familiar with the ways of a court, or even of a royal kitchen, and a few persons were found at St. Malo who credited his assertion that he was the Prince of France. The government, already warned by the temporary success of Hervagault's imposture, immediately pounced upon him, and submitted him to examination. His story was found to be a confused tissue of falsehoods; and after being repeatedly interrogated, and attempting to escape, and to forward letters surreptitiously to his "uncle," Louis XVIII., he was removed to the prison of Rouen as the son of the Widow Phillipeaux, calling himself Charles de Navarre. When he entered the jail he was the possessor of a solitary five franc piece, which he spent in wine and tobacco, and he then took to the manufacture of wooden shoes for the other prisoners in order to obtain more. As he worked he told his story, and his fellow jail-birds were never tired of listening to his romance. Visitors also heard his tale, and yielded credence to it, and it was not long before everybody in Rouen knew that there was a captive in the town who claimed to be the son of the murdered king.

Among other persons of education and respectability who listened and believed was a Madame Dumont, the wife of a wealthy merchant. This lady became an ardent partizan of the pretender, and not only visited him, but spent her husband's gold lavishly to solace him in his captivity. She supplied him with the richest food and the rarest wines that money could buy. A Madame Jacquières, who resided at Gros Caillon, near Paris, who was greatly devoted to the Bourbon family, also came under the influence of Bruneau's agents, and finally fell a victim to his rascality. This good lady was an ardent Catholic, and having some lingering doubt as to the honesty of the prisoner of Rouen, in order to its perfect solution she visited many shrines, said many prayers, and personally repaired to the old city in which he was confined, where she caused a nine days' course of prayer to be said to discover if the captive were really the person he pretended to be. This last expedient answered admirably. The Abbé Matouillet, who celebrated the required number of masses before the shrine of the Virgin, was himself a firm believer in Bruneau, and he had no hesitation in assuring the petitioner that loyalty and liberality towards the prince would be no bad investment either in this world or the next. The Abbé then led his credulous victim into the august presence of the clogmaker, and the poor dupe prostrated herself before him in semi-adoration. Nor would she leave the presence until his Majesty condescended to accept a humble gift of a valuable gold watch and two costly rings. His Majesty was graciously pleased to accede to the request of his loyal subject.

Bruneau could neither read nor write, and perhaps it was as well for himself that his education had been thus neglected, for if he had been left to his own devices his imposture would have been very short-lived. But he contrived to attach two clever rascals to himself, who helped to prolong the fraud and to victimise the public. They were both convicts, but convicts of a high intellectual type. One was Larcher, a revolutionary priest, and a man of detestable life; while the other was a forger named Tourly. These worthies acted as his secretaries. On the 3d of March 1816, the priest wrote a letter to "Madame de France" in these terms:—

"My Sister,—You are doubtless not ignorant of my being held in the saddest captivity, and reduced to a condition of appalling misery. So may I beg of you, if you should think me worthy of your especial consideration, to visit me here in my imprisonment. Even should you for an instant suspect me of being an impostor, still may I claim consideration for the sake of your brother. The scandal and judgment of which our family is daily the object throughout the entire kingdom may well make you shudder. I am myself sunk in despair at the thought of being so near the capital without being permitted to publicly appear in it. If you determine upon coming down here you would do well to preserve an incognito. In the meantime receive the embraces of your unfortunate brother, The King of France and Navarre."

This precious epistle Madame Jacquières undertook not only to forward to the Duchess d'Angoulême, but also promised to procure the honour of a private interview for the bearer of the missive.

Larcher and Tourly must have been kept very busy, for the pretended dauphin was never tired of sending appeals for assistance to the foreign powers, of addressing proclamations to the people, and even went so far as formally to petition the parliament that he might be taken to Paris, in order there to establish his identity as the son of Louis XVI. The whole of the papers issued from the prison, and they were enormous in quantity, were signed by his secretaries with his name.

About the same time considerable interest was excited by a trashy novel, called the "Cemetery of the Madeleine," which pretended to give a circumstantial account of the life of the dauphin in the Temple. Out of this book the secretaries and their employer proceeded to construct "The Historical Memoirs of Charles of Navarre;" but after they had finished their work, they found that it was so ridiculously absurd that there was no probability that it would deceive the public for a moment. They accordingly handed the manuscript over to a more skilful rogue with whom they were acquainted, and this man, who was called Branzon, transformed their clumsy narrative into a well-written and plausible history. He did more, and "coached" the pretender in all the petty circumstances which he could find out respecting the Bourbon family. Manuscript copies of the "Memoirs" were assiduously distributed in influential quarters in Rouen, and particularly among the officers of the third regiment of the royal guard, then quartered in the town. A copy fell into the hands of a Vendéan officer named De la Pomelière, who recollected the story of the pretended son of Baron de Vezins, and half-suspected a similar imposture in this instance. With some difficulty he procured admission to the royal presence, and induced the sham dauphin to speak of La Vendée. During the conversation he remarked, that when the chateau of Angrie, the residence of the Viscountess de Turpin, was mentioned, the pretender slightly changed colour and became embarrassed. The acknowledgment that he was acquainted with the mansion, and the accurate description which he gave of it, gave the first clue whereby proof was obtained of his identity with Maturin Bruneau.