Rutland weekly herald. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1859-1877, 1870-06-16
avonging n Mothers Wrongs.
A COUPLE OF STORIES FROM EUROPE


COUPLE OF STORIES FROM EUROPE
1t is we'll known that during the reyo
lutionary wars in Northern Italy in !S4c
and 1S49, the Austrian commander If
naused a number of aristocratic ladies who
had participated in some patriotic demon
STATIONS. to be brutally whipped by
Croatian soldiers in front of the city janis
and in the presence of large crowds oil
srectators. Thus in Brescia the Countess
81 Ferrari. Young married lady of TWEEN
tv.fuo Who had collected money for the
revoIntionary volunteers, was placed be-
fore a military commission OF Austrian
officers and, by direction OF Lieutenant
Field Marshal Neipperg, sentenced to re-
ceiye fifty strokes with the Ge7yeS. On the
same afternoon she was led on the Place
dArmes and, after having been stripped
almost naked, tied to bench, she received
her punishment at the hands of two stall
wart Croats who were armed with
formidable lunches of birch rods.
Every stroke with them must have
been intensely painful, but
the Countess did not utter sound of
complaint. At the twenty-ffth stroke,
however, she tainted, and when her execu-
TONERS had inflicted the full number of
strokes on her senseless body, she wa
carried back in an almost lifeless condi-
ton to her cell, and thrown on a bundle
of straw. She never fully recovered from
this terrible castigation, and died a few
months afterward. This is only one case
of many. The fathers, husbands, brothers
and sons of these martyred italian ladies
formed in the year 1850 a secret league
for the purpose of meeting out punish
ment to the brutal Austrian commanders
who had ordered their mothers, wives and
sisters to be chastised in this cruel man
ner. They resolved to bide their time,
and to pick off the Austrians whenever an
opportunity to do so presented itself Two
years ago great excitement was created in
Austria by the assassination of an Aus
trian General, in Illyria, by young
Italian nobleman, who thus avenged
his mother, that had been terribly
logged, by order of the General The
avenger succeeded in making his escape,
and the Austrian government did not
take pains to obtain his extradition from
the Italian authorities. The other day a
similar tragedy took place in the neigh
borhood of Laybach, where Neipberg, the
principal actor in the cruel scene which
we narrated above, owned a country seat
On the 9th of April, well dressed young
stranger presented himself at the chateau
and told the servant who opened the door
to him that he desired to see Count Neip-
berg. 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, in
rather a remote part of which they met
Neipberg, who was promenading with his
daughter, a young lady of twenty-five
The stranger, addressing Neipberg, said
to him: 81 am Count Ferrari What did
you do to my mother ?" Neipberg looked
in surprise at him. The next moment
Count Ferrari plunged knife into his
breast, and, despite the frantic attempts
of the young Countess of Neipberg, sue
ceeded in making his escape.
Several weeks ago there were given the
particulars of a strange Russian tragedy,
including the finding in a trunk at one OF
the railway depots of Moscow of the body
of one M. dc Zohn, formerly rich French
merchant, and at last Russian nobleman,
who had been inveigled into certain
house in the city of the czsrs and there,
III Lub uGiShb VI u WIN ISFSls sldin@ anu
cut to pieces at the command of wonder
fully beautiful girl named Afraia. Upon
the arrest of this girl with her compan-
ions, she not only Wanted the crime she
directed, but fercely declared that the
mutilated remaias were those of her faith
or and that she had caused the murder in
fulfillment of vow which she had made
in infancy to her mother, who had been
Anfra,,aI a,,I that, of 20 1ia IS 4
misery by M. de Zohn in his younger
days By late journals it appears that
the trial has been begun in st. Peters
burg. aud further details of the tragedy
have been. developed. Aftor the unsus-
pecting nobleman had been brought into
the house and was rendered unsteady by
deep drinking, he was deliberately robbed
of all the money and jewelry
upon his person. In answer to his pro-
tests and threats of complaint to the pol
ice he was told that the robbery had been
merely quizzical joke to try bis nerves,
and that he must drink again in honor of
the excellence of suGh wit. The girl
Afraia presented him with glass of wine
in which cyanide of potassium had been
dissolved, and no sooner had he drank
half the deadly draught than he fell back
ward, gasping, upon the diVaN on which
he had been sitting, with the cry, "Wo-
mau, you have poisoned me" With eyes
on fire with hereditary hatred, Afraia
bent over him in his agony, and told him
that she was his child, and that his death
was the penalty of having wronged her
poor mother! While yet the wretched man
glared at her, in CHASTITY discredit of such
frightful retribution, one of her masculine
aooomplices passed leather strap about
his neck, dragging him to the floor, while
another beat out his brains with ar of
iron. The disfgured body was then cut
into pieces, placed in a trunk, and the
latter sent to the railway station at Mos
COW, where its timely discovery by the
police led to the detection and arrest of
the murders.
----------------------- ---------
DuArI on Mn HASKELL, THE FIRE