The States and Union. [volume] (Ashland, Ohio) 1868-1872, 1870-06-15
Austrian Women hippersR Receiving
- the Reward of their Brutality.

1t is well known that during the re-
evolutionary wars in Northern Italy,
in 1913 and and 1919, the Austrian
commanders caused a number of aris-
tocratic ladies who had participated in
some patriotic demonstration, to be
brutually whipped by Croatic soldiers
in front of the jails, and in the pres
ence of large crowds of spectators.
Thus in Brescias the Countess of Fer
rari, a young married lady of twenty
five, who had collected money for the
revolutionary volunteers, was placed
before a military Commission of Aus
TRAN officers, and by direction of
Lieutenant Field-M Marshal Neipperg,
sentenced to receive fifty strokes with
the uer1es. On the same afternoon
she was led on the Place d'Armes,
and, having been stripped almost max
ed, tied to a bench, she received her
punishment at the hands of two sal
wart Croats, who were armed with
formidable punches of birch rods.
Every stroke with them must have
been intensely painful, but the Coun-
tess did not Utter a sound of complaint.
AT the twenty-fifth stroke, however,
she tainted, and when her executieners
had inflicted the full number of strokes
on her senseless body, she was carried
back in an almost ~lifeless condition of
her cell, and thrown on a bundle of
straw. She never fully recovered
from this terrible castigation, and diod
a few months afterward. This is one
ly one case of many. TIE fathers,
husbands, brothers and sons of these
martvrcd italian ladies formed in the
years a secret league for the purpose
of melting out punishment to the brut
al Austrian commanders who had Or
dered their mothers, wives and sisters
to be chastised in this cruel manner.
They resolved to bide their time, and
to pick off the Austrians whcne' er an
opportunity to do so presented itself.
Two years ago great excitement vas
created in Austria by the assassination
of an Austrian General in Illyria, by
4 young italian nobleman, who thus
avenged his mother, that had been ter
ribly fogged, by order of the Gener-
al. The avenger succeed in making
Ills CoSstllc, dlu GIlC AuSITldH 0OECTH
ment did not take pains to obtain his
extradition from the Italian authori-
ties. The other day q similar tragedy
took place in the neighborhood of
Laybach, where Meipperg, the prin-
cipal actor in the cruel scene which
we narrated above, owned q country
seat. On the 9Th Of April, a well
dressed young stranger presented him
self at the chateau and told the servant
who opened the door to him that he
desired to see Count Neipperg. "The
Count is in the garden. Shall ] call
him? ;" asked the servant. NO." re-
piled the stranger, stake me to the
garden, and / will see His Excellency
there" The servant conducted him
to the garden, III rather a remote part
of which they met Ncipperg, who was
promenading with his daughter, a
young lady of %. The stranger, ad-
dressing Neipperg, said to him: Il
am Count Ferrari! What did you
do to my mother? Neipperg looked
in surprise at him. The next moment
Count Ferrari plunged a knife into
his breast, and, despite the frantic at
tcmpts of the young Countess Neip-
perg, succeeded in making his escape.