Edgefield advertiser. [volume] (Edgefield, S.C.) 1836-current, 1899-08-23

.--.. IL riCtltu OI mere oluihoty
highway robbery and murder.
1t is hardly possible to overestimate
the sensation caused by the sudden
disappearance of the late envoy extra,
ordinary from the court of England
to that of Austria. Reports of all
kinds were rife, and information that
was never verified was freely circu-
lated. -,
The Times took the matter up and
not obscurely charged the Emperor
Napoleon with having made away with
Bathurst. The Moniteur, on the other
hand, in leading article published
December, 1909, state that Sir
Bathurst" on his way from Berlin,
had shown signs of insanity and had
destroyed himself in the neighbor-
hood OF Perleberg.
According to some he had been
murdered in wood by his servant, who
had robbed him and escaped. Offers
believed that he had been attacked by
brigands; while mysterious story ap-
peared in print suggesting that he
had been drowned 1T scd.
Bathurst himself had always de-
clared that his ruin would be brought
about, not by the Emperor Napoleon,
but by the Count d'Entraigues, a name
we'll known in. the secret history Of
those times as that of Russian spy,
and there is no doubt that the latter
had been heard to say that he could
prove that Bathurst had been shot IN
Magdeburg fortress. But as both
d'Entraigues and his wife were them
selves murdered by an Italian servant
believed in his turn to be spy not
long after Bathurst's disappearance,
his words we're never proved.
The theory that he had been carried
off to Magdeburg and there murdered
was. also held by Mr.. Underwood, at
that time prisoner of war in Paris,
who, in one of his letters written
then, declared that both French aud
English believed that the crime OF his
abduction had been committed by the
French government.
On January 23, 1916 there appeared
paragraph ina Hamburg paper, which
informed the people of Perleberg who
the murdered Bach reallywas who had
SO mysteriously disappeared. The
paragraph was in the form of letter,
dated London, January 6, exactly six
weeks after Bathurst's fate had been
sealed one way or. another.
II ran thus: ''Sir Bathurst, am.
bassador extraordinary of England tc
the court of Austria, who was be
lieved to have ~committe(-suicide-in 6
fit of insanity at Perleberg on Novem
Der 25 of last year, is we'll in mind
and body. His friends have received
d letter from him dated December 49,
which, therefore, must have beer
written after the date of his supposed
death"
Who inserted this paragraph, and fol
; what purpose?
1t was absolutely untrue, but may
have been designed to cause. the all
thorities to relax their efforts to probe
the mystery and perhaps to abandon
them altogether; or it may have beer
| a plan to throw dust in the eyes OF tn
public, to whom the story of Bathurs
| was one of absorbing interest,"
/ To those who held Bathurst in af
: fectionate remembrance it was com
| fort-and it was their only one ii
> after days to think that every con
ceivable effort had been made to fnt
, out the meaning OF his mysterious dis
appearance. His young wife, to whom
q he had been married for four years
g was utterly heartbrokeu, and alta tim
D when wars and rumors Of wars dis