_Staatspolizeikapitan_



(Statement of the self-so-called Benjamin Bathurst, taken at the
police station at Perleburg, 25 November, 1809.)

My name is Benjamin Bathurst, and I am Envoy Extraordinary and
Minister Plenipotentiary of the government of His Britannic Majesty
to the court of His Majesty Franz I, Emperor of Austria, or, at
least, I was until the events following the Austrian surrender
made necessary my return to London. I left Vienna on the morning
of Monday, the 20th, to go to Hamburg to take ship home; I was
traveling in my own coach-and-four, with my secretary, Mr. Bertram
Jardine, and my valet, William Small, both British subjects, and
a coachman, Josef Bidek, an Austrian subject, whom I had hired
for the trip. Because of the presence of French troops, whom I
was anxious to avoid, I was forced to make a detour west as far
as Salzburg before turning north toward Magdeburg, where I
crossed the Elbe. I was unable to get a change of horses for my
coach after leaving Gera, until I reached Perleburg, where I
stopped at the Sword & Scepter Inn.

Arriving there, I left my coach in the inn yard, and I and my
secretary, Mr. Jardine, went into the inn. A man, not this fellow
here, but another rogue, with more beard and less paunch, and
more shabbily dressed, but as like him as though he were his
brother, represented himself as the innkeeper, and I dealt with
him for a change of horses, and ordered a bottle of wine for
myself and my secretary, and also a pot of beer apiece for my