During the trial of the _soi disant_ Baron de Richemont, the spectators
were surprised and amused by a singular declaration addressed to the
jury by another pseudo-dauphin. This claimant, who varied the old
story by styling himself Charles Louis in lieu of Louis Charles,
protested that De Richemont was only an impostor put forward in order
to confuse public opinion, and stifle the voice of the veritable Duke
of Normandy, the author of this document!
This new pretender, if the royalists are to be believed, was a certain
Charles William Naundorff, member of a Jewish family of Polish Prussia,
and was born in 1775, or ten years earlier than the dauphin. He turned
up at Berlin in 1810, and resided there for about two years, earning
his livelihood by selling clocks. In 1812 he removed to Spandau,
obtained the rights of citizenship, and married the daughter of a
Heidelberg pipemaker. He professed to be a Protestant, spoke French
with a villainous accent, and yet, in 1825, from some unaccountable
reason, gave out to the world that he was the son of Louis the
Sixteenth. He had been in many difficulties before he complicated
matters by assuming the Duke of Normandy's titles, having been accused
of being an incendiary in 1824, and some months later of coining, for
which latter offence he was sentenced to three years' detention in the
Penitentiary of Brandenburg. On being released from captivity he set
up a claim to be the son of Louis the Sixteenth, and actually had the
foolhardiness to institute proceedings against the ex-king, Charles the
Tenth, and the Duchess d'Angoulême. All he gained by this audacity was
an immediate arrest, and expulsion from the frontiers of France, in
which country he had taken up his abode. Nothing daunted by this
summary action, the pretender appealed to the Council of State, and
obtained the services of Monsieur Cremieux to defend his cause, not, it
is true, as the son of Louis the Sixteenth, but as a foreigner
illegally arrested and expelled. Unsuccessful in his suit, Naundorff
passed into England, and continued to play his _rôle_ of ill-used
royalty. By these means, and by practising as a spiritualist, the _soi
disant_ prince contrived to make enough dupes to live by. In 1843 he
got into some difficulties with the English police, and being made
bankrupt, had to leave the country. Taking refuge in Holland, he
expired at Delft, on the 10th of August, 1845.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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