Identity of name, title, description, character, position, time and place, are doubtless enough to establish identity of person, or nothing would be able to prove it.
Let us apply this clear principle to the matter in hand, and it will end in proof.
1st. The name. Let us remember that the chief agent of the hateful substitution was a Frenchman called Louis, Comte de Joinville. Now, as history and the whole of the aristocracy are silent on the matter, we cannot even imagine that this title in 1773 belonged to any one not of the Orleans family. Let us see if it could then be found in that family.
The Fief of Joinville, raised to a barony at the beginning of the eleventh century, and to a principality under Henri II, after passing successively to several lords, had at last fallen into the female line by the death, on March 16, 1675, of the Duc de Guiche, Prince de Joinville; and Mademoiselle, the daughter of Gaston de France, having inherited it in her own right from her maternal grandmother, Catherine-Henriette de Joyeuse, Duchesse de Guise, left it by will to her cousin-german, Philippe de France, Monsieur, only brother of Louis XIV, and head of the Orleans branch. Whence it follows that this principality is actually patrimonial in that family, and that the Duc de Chartres, son of its chief, had the right to call himself by that name.
I say more: open the books written about him, and the frontispiece will show that he was not only Duc de Valois, de Nemours, de Montpensier, d’Etampes, but also Comte de Beaujolais, de Joinville, de Vermandois, and de Soïssons.[22]
I say still more: that is precisely the name under which he and his wife were accustomed to travel.
In 1778 she assumed it to go to Holland; he had taken it in 1777 to visit the Netherlands; the year before it was the title borne by the Duchess during the whole of her tour in Italy;[23] and to speak only of the year of the exchange, the newspapers of the day forbid any doubt that, under that name, and in the summer, the Duke had made a pretty long journey.[24] And worthy witnesses, whose valuable evidence we shall presently quote, declare that the august couple bore that title precisely at the time of the exchange and in the very districts where this horrible agreement was made.[25]
2nd. The Rank. According to the decree of Faenza, the Comte de Joinville was a French nobleman; almost all the witnesses testified to his being rich and powerful, and if we may believe the evidence of one who ought to have known more than any one else, since he had it direct from the man who no doubt had categorically interrogated the Comte after his arrest at Brisighella—he was nothing less than a prince in disguise.[26]
It will be remembered, too, that having been led before the Cardinal-Legate at Ravenna, the Cardinal, on recognizing him, welcomed him warmly, affectionately embraced him, and at once set him entirely at liberty.
Now, it must be pointed out that the etiquette of the Roman Church is that Cardinals must embrace only the members of reigning houses, and it could have been only the consideration due to so august a rank that could have cut short the prosecution already set on foot by the inexorable agents of the Inquisition.