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.