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THE CHINA MAIL, NOVEMBER 29, 193′
TO-DAY'S STRANGE STORY OF REAL PEOPLE
DID MARSHAL NEY ESCAPE?
By VINCENT TOWNE
"I protest, before God and my coun- try, against this sentence that has condemned me. I appeal from it to man, to posterity, to God!"
The doomed prisoner then turned to the firing squad, composed of 80 veterans of his own armies:
"My brave comrades, when I place my hand upon my heart, fire! See that you take sure aim at my heart!"
Raising his hand to his bosom, he thus gave the terrible signal. There was a ragged, nervous crackling of
musketry and Michel Ney, erstwhile · Marshal, Duke of Elchingen, Prince of Moskva, dropped upon the ground. his face turned slightly to one side.
The dust beneath him became crim- son with his life blood. The soldiers marched away. And then a squad appeared with a litter on which the corpse was borne to an adjacent hos- pital, there to be placed in a leaden coffin encased within a casket of oak, Early next morning it was borne
to the cemetery, and buried.
Such is history's account of the great hero's tragic ending. His crime had been loyalty to his old comman- 'der, Napoleon. Placed at the head of an army sent by Louis XVIII to cap- ture the fugitive from Elba, Ney had. fallen upon his knees before his for- mer Emperor and brought him, vic- torious, into Paris. Then had come the surrender to the Allies, Napoleon's exile to St. Helena, Ney's own flight, his capture in a friend's castle, his trial and condemnation; his execution on December 5, 1815.
The day following the marshal's funeral, Philip Petrie, a sailor, while holystoning the deck of a vessel bound from Bordeaux to Charleston, S. C., glanced up, and, recognizing a ruddy- faced individual, saluted respectfully. "Who do you think I am?" asked the passenger.
"My old commander, Marshal Ney," said Petrie, very politely.
"Marshal Ney was executed two days ago in Paris," réplied the stran- ger with a scowl, and during the re- mainder of the voyage he remained in hiding in his cabin.
A few weeks later several French immigrants, meeting a familiar figure upon the streets of Georgetown, S. C., cried out: "Mon Dieu, le marechal Ney!" whereupon the personage thus addressed vanished like breath into the wind.
It was about. this time that a mys- terious stranger, calling himself Peter Ney, appeared at Chewaw, S. C., and there engaged himself to teach the school of Brownsville, nearby. Glanc- ing at a newspaper one morning in the schoolroom, he feel in a swoon, and school had to be dismissed. That night he was observed to be burning documents, decorations and badges. Next morning he was found in bed with his throat cut, the blade of his pocket knife being broken off in the wound, which, hanks to good nursing healed. The newspaper which caused the fainting At contained news of Napoleon's death. Later, when shown а paper, announcing the death Napoleon's son the schoolmaster suf- fered another paroxysm, and proceed- ed to burn more manuscripts.
of
One morning, while at Statesville, S. C. John Snyder and Frederick Barr, veterans of the Napoleonic wars, recognized the schoolmaster
as the Field Marshal of France. Synder went so far as to accost Peter Ney, and received only black looks for his pains.
The schoolmaster, while upon his deathbed, in the early winter of 1846, was pressed by his physician to clear up the mystery of his identity.
"I am Marshal Ney of France!" the Frenchman gasped with almost his dying breath. And, after his funeral, one of his intimate friends, Mr. Mary C. Dalton of Iredell County, N. C, revealed what she claimed to have been a confession made to her by Peter Ney shortly before his death. Accord- ing to this story, the teacher was the great Marshal of France. Wellington had interceded and saves his life. The firing squad had been instructed to fire over his head, but not until he should
Raising His Hand To His Bosom He Thus Gave the Terrible Signal.
To
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the hospital whither he had been brought upon the litter he was that night disguised in ill-fitting clothes and started on his way to Bordeaux, There, posing as a servant carrying a valise, he embarked for Charleston. History proves that Marshal Ney's' triol and its preliminarlės were con- ducted by secret methods. Members of the Assembly who voted for his execution did so with the understand- ing from the King that the death sentence was to be commuted to life in exile.
Wishing to satisfy himself as to the mystery clinging to the Ney case, Louis Napoleon, after coming to the throne, ordered the Marshal's grave opened. When searched, the inner coffin contained not a bone, not one relic of a human corpse.
Carolinians who knew Schoolmaster Ney, when shown portraits of the great Marshal of France, pronounced the likeness as precisely that of their friend. Both the teacher and the to Marshal were ruddy of face. Each slept but five hours a night; each was a. good fencer, a fearless horseman, a skilled mathematician and a clever performer upon the flute.
give the signal by pressing his hand shirt.
But, if Marshal Ney did escape to further these deceptions, America, why did he not return to his to his heart, by which action he burst a trusted men from his own army were beloved France bag of red fluid secreted beneath his selected to All the firing squad. At been granted to all political exiles?
after amnesty had
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