[6] A man deposed that he had seen the body when it was buried hastily, by night; the face, he said, was swollen, and the eyes forced out of their sockets. Supposing this testimony were true, the appearance would denote strangulation rather than poison; but that Alvarez should have been privately murdered is altogether improbable.
[7] Burnet says of the wars in the reign of William III. “The late king told me that in these campaigns the Spaniards were both so ignorant and so backward, so proud and yet so weak, that they would never own their feebleness or their wants to him. They pretended they had stores when they had none; and thousands when they scarce had hundreds. He had in their councils often desired that they would give him only a true state of their garrisons and magazines; but they always gave it false; so that for some campaigns all was lost, merely because they deceived him in the strength they pretended they had. At last he believed nothing they said, but sent his own officers to examine every thing.” Vol. ii. p. 7.
[8] Memoria de Azanza y O’Farrell, § 193, pp. 169, 170. They plead this in justification or excuse for themselves.
[9] The account of Kolli’s examination had in one part been palpably falsified. He was represented as saying that it was the Duke of Kent’s wish to send Ferdinand to Gibraltar; but that he would not have assisted in this plan, because it would have been in fact sending him to prison! The whole of these documents are printed in Louis Goldsmith’s Recueil de Decrets, Ordonnances, &c. t. iv. pp. 302–14; and by Llorente, in his Mémoires pour servir à l’Histoire de la Revolution d’Espagne, t. ii. pp. 306–342. This unworthy Spaniard expresses there a decided opinion that Kolli himself was the person who went to Valençay, as the official report stated. The Baron, however, has published his own story, and it is confirmed by the declarations of Richard and Fouché, authentically made after the restoration of the Bourbons.
One curious fact appears in the Baron de Kolli’s Memoirs. Diamonds to the amount of 200,000 francs were taken from him by the police when he was seized. After the restoration he reclaimed them. The result of his application was a royal ordonnance, in which the King decided, that the other effects belonging to the claimant should be restored to him, but that the diamonds seized at Paris are, and remain, confiscated, as having been given to the Sieur de Kolli by a government then at war with France. And his renewed applications were answered by a repetition of this ordonnance!
[10] Notwithstanding the facility with which, in many instances, Louis was deluded by his brother, and the curious simplicity of character which he exhibits, it is impossible to peruse his Documens Historiques et Reflexions sur le Gouvernement de la Hollande, without feeling great respect for him. His conduct was irreproachable, his views benevolent even when erroneous, his intentions uniformly good; and excellent indeed must that disposition have been, which in such trying circumstances always preserved its natural rectitude.
It appears by these documents that the throne of Spain was offered to him before Joseph was thought of, and that he rejected the proposal as at once impolitic and iniquitous. But it is curious to see how completely he had been deceived concerning the course of events in the Peninsula, and still more extraordinary that in the year 1820 (when his book was published) he appears to have obtained no better information upon that subject than was communicated in the Moniteur during his brother’s reign.
[11] The prejudice against mercury prevailed so strongly among the native practitioners, that the commander-in-chief, at a time when syphilitic diseases were thinning the ranks, found it necessary to enforce its use in the army and in all the military hospitals.
[12] Some days after the storm the boats of the Triumph picked up about thirty tons of quicksilver, in leathern bags of fifty pounds each, which were cast on shore from the wreck. They were stowed below in the storerooms and after-hold, and the bags having been thoroughly soaked in the sea, decayed and burst before the danger was perceived. As much of the quicksilver as possible was collected, but it insinuated itself every where, and not less than ten tons weight was supposed to have got between the timbers, which could only be cleared by docking the ship and removing a plank at the lowest part near the keel. The provisions were spoilt; two or three hundred of the crew were so severely affected, that it was necessary to remove them immediately, many of them being in a state which left little chance of recovery; and the ship was sent to Gibraltar to have all her stores taken out, and undergo a thorough clearance.
[13] A minute and interesting account of this escape was published at Lausanne, 1817, with this title, Relation du Séjour des Prisonniers de Guerre Français et Suisses sur le Ponton la Castille, dans la Baie de Cadix, et de leur Evasion le 15 May, 1810. Par L. Chapuis, de Lausanne, Chirurgien major.