The Yard at Perleberg: Benjamin Bathurst and the White Swan Post-House, 25 November 1809

On the afternoon of Saturday 25 November 1809, in the small Prussian town of Perleberg in the Prignitz district of Brandenburg, a twenty-five-year-old British envoy arrived at the White Swan post-house under an assumed name. He was Benjamin Bathurst, born 18 March 1784, third son of Henry Bathurst, Bishop of Norwich, and cousin of Henry Bathurst, third Earl Bathurst, who in early 1809 held the Foreign Affairs portfolio pro tempore in the Spencer Perceval ministry. He had married Phillida Call, daughter of Sir John Call, first Baronet of Whiteford, on 25 May 1805. Through the year now closing he had been British envoy at the court of Emperor Francis I of Austria, working to bring Vienna into the war against France. Francis had declared war on 9 April 1809, lost at Wagram on 5 and 6 July, and signed the Treaty of Schönbrunn on 14 October. Bathurst had been recalled, and was making his way north towards Hamburg and the sea. He travelled as “Baron de Koch,” a Hamburg merchant. His courier, Krause, travelled as “Fischer.”

At Perleberg the party halted at the White Swan (the Weisser Schwan) around midday for fresh horses and a meal. During the afternoon Bathurst’s manner changed. He was visibly agitated. He burned papers in his room’s fireplace. He walked to the Brandenburg cuirassier garrison and applied to its commander, Captain von Klitzing, for a guard. A small detachment of soldiers was posted at the inn. At about 7 pm Bathurst stood the guard down. At about 9 pm, on being told the carriage was ready, he walked through the inn into the post-house yard. He was reported to have stood for a moment at the heads of the horses and then to have stepped to one side. Krause, following moments behind, found him gone.

The yard was searched within minutes. He was never seen again. What had become of him is what this case asks.

The documented account

The mission and the journey

In early 1809 the Spencer Perceval ministry was being assembled around a series of caretaker arrangements at the senior offices of state. Earl Bathurst held the Foreign Affairs seal pro tempore during this period; he is more familiarly associated with the War and Colonies office, which he took in 1812. From the Foreign Office in London he dispatched his young cousin Benjamin to Vienna with instructions to support a renewed Austrian war effort against Napoleon. Francis I declared war on France on 9 April 1809, opening the War of the Fifth Coalition.

Bathurst remained at Vienna through the Austrian successes at Aspern-Essling on 21 and 22 May, the decisive French victory at Wagram on 5 and 6 July, and the harsh Treaty of Schönbrunn signed on 14 October. After Schönbrunn he was recalled. In mid-November he left Vienna with passports the Prussian government had provided. He travelled north through Berlin under the assumed name “Baron de Koch,” posing as a Hamburg merchant. His one travelling companion in the carriage was the courier Krause, travelling as “Fischer.” Their intention was Hamburg and a ship for England.

Perleberg, 25 November 1809

They reached Perleberg, about 120 kilometres west-northwest of Berlin, around midday on Saturday 25 November 1809. They halted at the post-house and dined at the White Swan inn; the precise relationship between post-house and inn at this address is not fully resolved in the surviving record.

During the afternoon Bathurst’s behaviour changed. He showed visible agitation. He expressed fear for his safety. He walked to the Brandenburg cuirassier garrison commanded by Captain von Klitzing and applied for a guard. Klitzing posted a small detachment of soldiers at the inn. Sitting in his private room, Bathurst burned papers in the fireplace. This is the only “chimney” element in the documentary record. Later popular retellings would conflate it with the location of his missing trousers, which were not in any chimney.

At about 7 pm Bathurst told Klitzing’s men they could stand down, and ordered the carriage for 9 pm. At 9 pm, on being told the horses were harnessed, he left his private room, walked through the inn, and stepped out into the post-house yard. He was reported to have stood for a moment at the heads of the horses, then to have stepped to one side. Krause, following moments behind, found him gone. The yard, the inn, and the immediate streets were searched within minutes. There was no trace.

The immediate search and the recovered effects

Krause raised the alarm. Captain von Klitzing was informed within the hour and took charge of the local investigation. In the following days the Stepenitz river was dragged, outhouses, woods, ditches, and neighbouring villages were searched.

On 26 or 27 November 1809 Bathurst’s expensive sable fur coat, valued at between 200 and 300 Prussian thalers, was discovered in the possession of the Schmidt family of Perleberg, in their cellar or an outhouse on the property (accounts differ). The son of the household, Augustus Schmidt, had been working as a hostler in the White Swan yard on the night of the disappearance. The Prussian investigators arrested him; he maintained the coat had been thrown into his family’s yard.

On 16 December 1809, two old women out scavenging firewood in Quitzow Wood, about three miles north of Perleberg, found Bathurst’s pantaloons. The pantaloons had two bullet holes but no bloodstains, and despite recent wet weather they were dry, suggesting they had been placed in the wood after the wet spell. In one pocket was a half-finished, pencilled letter addressed to Phillida. Per Baring-Gould’s 1889 paraphrase, the letter said Bathurst was afraid he would never reach England, and that his ruin would be the work of Count d’Antraigues, a French royalist double agent then living in England. The exact wording is preserved only as paraphrase.

Phillida Bathurst, the British investigation, and the Paris audience

News reached Berlin and London in early December 1809. On 12 December 1809 the Moniteur Universel of Paris carried its Berlin correspondent’s notice that “Sir Bathurst” had shown signs of insanity on his way from Berlin and had destroyed himself in the neighbourhood of Perleberg. The British press read this as a French-press attempt to forestall the political-assassination reading.

Phillida Bathurst left for Prussia probably in December 1809 or January 1810, accompanied by the German explorer Heinrich Röntgen (not the later X-ray physicist). She found Captain von Klitzing’s investigation already under way, stayed for months, and in March 1810 organised a renewed area-wide search at her own expense using trained dogs. Nothing was found.

She then travelled to Paris under a special safe-conduct and was received by Napoleon, who declared on his word of honour that he knew nothing of Bathurst’s fate and offered assistance. One genealogical reading places this audience with Bathurst’s mother Grace Coote Bathurst rather than with Phillida; most contemporary and 19th-century accounts give it to Phillida. The British end of the search was co-ordinated from London by Earl Bathurst. The Foreign Office correspondence is held at The National Archives: the 1809 Vienna mission in the FO 7 series, the post-disappearance correspondence with Berlin probably in the FO 64 Prussia series, and the Bathurst diplomatic papers under catalogue reference C/F57742.

The case ran in the British press through 1810. No body was found. No clothing beyond the coat and the pantaloons was found. No charge of murder was sustained against any named individual.

The 1852 skeleton

On 15 April 1852 a house on the Hamburg road outside Perleberg, about three hundred paces from the White Swan, was being demolished. Its owner, the mason Kiesewetter, had bought it in 1834 from a man named Christian Mertens, who in November 1809 had been a serving man at the White Swan. Under the stone threshold of the stable the workmen found a human skeleton. The skull bore a fracture at the back, consistent with a heavy blow from a blunt instrument. The upper teeth were intact. One lower molar carried signs of dental work.

News reached the Bathurst family in England. Mrs Tryphena Bathurst Thistlethwayte, born 2 August 1794, married to Thomas Thistlethwayte MP since 1827 and widowed in 1850, then nearly sixty, was the surviving sister. She travelled to Perleberg later in 1852 bringing a portrait of her brother as he had been in 1809. She inspected the skull. She could not say whether or not it was Benjamin’s. She had not seen him in forty-three years. The remains were not identified, and have not been re-examined since.

Evidence

Prussian police file, 1809-1810 (official-record): the investigation led by Captain von Klitzing of the Brandenburg cuirassier garrison at Perleberg; Krause’s deposition, the searches of the Stepenitz, the Quitzow Wood discovery, the arrest and interrogation of Augustus Schmidt; the file is most likely held by the Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv at Potsdam.
British Foreign Office correspondence (official-record): the FO 7 Vienna series for the 1809 mission and the FO 64 Prussia series for the post-disappearance investigation at The National Archives; the Bathurst diplomatic papers under catalogue reference C/F57742.
Sable fur coat in the possession of the Schmidt family, Perleberg, 26 or 27 November 1809 (physical): valued at 200 to 300 Prussian thalers, recovered in the family cellar or outhouse, with Augustus Schmidt working as a hostler in the White Swan yard on the night of the disappearance.
Pantaloons recovered in Quitzow Wood, three miles north of Perleberg, 16 December 1809 (physical): two bullet holes, no bloodstains, dry despite recent wet weather, with a half-finished pencilled letter to Phillida Bathurst in one pocket.
Frau Kestern, Coffee House employee (testimonial): later testified that Augustus Schmidt had come into the establishment immediately after Bathurst left it on the evening of 25 November, asked where the visitor had gone, then hastened after him.
Krause, courier (testimonial): the moment-of-disappearance account, of following Bathurst into the yard and finding him gone.
Skeleton recovered 15 April 1852 under the stone threshold of the stable at the Mertens-Kiesewetter house on the Hamburg road, three hundred paces from the White Swan (physical): skull fractured at the back, upper teeth intact, one lower molar with dental work; not identified.
Inspection by Tryphena Bathurst Thistlethwayte at Perleberg, 1852 (testimonial): inspected the skull with a portrait of her brother and could not identify it; she had not seen him in forty-three years.
Le Moniteur Universel, Paris, 12 December 1809 (official-record, French press): Berlin correspondent’s notice claiming Bathurst had shown signs of insanity and destroyed himself.

Hypotheses

A. Murder for robbery by Augustus Schmidt and Christian Mertens, connected to the White Swan, the modern critical reading (Dash 1990, Mason 1991, leaning of Baring-Gould 1889). For: the fur coat was in the Schmidt family’s possession within forty-eight hours; Schmidt was working as a hostler in the yard that night; Frau Kestern’s testimony places him following Bathurst; the 1852 skeleton was found at the threshold of a house formerly owned by Mertens, three hundred paces from the inn; the skull’s fracture is consistent with a single heavy blow; the pantaloons, dry, bullet-holed, and bloodless, read as a post-hoc plant. Against: the 1852 skeleton was not identified; no conviction was ever sustained against Schmidt for Bathurst’s murder; a robbery whose primary motive is the coat alone is awkward; the inferential link to Mertens is via a property purchase forty-three years later, suggestive, not proof.

B. French political assassination on Napoleonic orders or by French agents in occupied northern Germany, the British public conviction at the time. For: Bathurst was an active British envoy who had spent the year working to bring Austria into war with France; the pantaloons letter, in Baring-Gould’s paraphrase, names Count d’Antraigues; the Moniteur notice reads as French-press deflection; the French military and police presence across northern Germany after Schönbrunn provided operational capacity; the case fits the pattern of Napoleonic-era political eliminations such as the Duc d’Enghien in 1804. Against: Napoleon’s reported denial in Paris and again at St Helena; the robbery-murder reading accounts for the evidence more economically; bullet holes through cloth without blood look planted, which points away from an actual French operation rather than towards one.

C. A robbery that became murder when Bathurst struggled, with the pantaloons and letter used to deflect suspicion onto the French, the hybrid reading. For: this fits the dual evidentiary record without requiring either a French operation or an outsider; Schmidt and Mertens had motive, opportunity, and local knowledge. Against: it requires either an authentic letter preserved by chance or a forgery convincing enough to fool the Prussian police, the British family, and a century of commentators.

D. Voluntary disappearance or mental breakdown, the Moniteur reading and the minority position since. For: visible agitation, burned papers, the requested guard; long stressful mission, Austrian defeat, return through hostile territory. Against: no prior record of mental illness; the coat in Schmidt’s possession is hard to explain; no subsequent sighting in 216 years; a young wife and family argue against.

E. Random highway robbery by an unknown third party. For: northern Germany in late 1809 carried displaced soldiery and unsettled banditry; the body’s never having been found is consistent with disposal by people who left the area. Against: it does not account for the coat in Schmidt’s possession, Frau Kestern’s testimony, or the 1852 skeleton at the Mertens threshold.

What remains unknown

No body has ever been conclusively identified as Bathurst’s. No conviction was ever sustained against any named individual for his murder. The 1852 skeleton at the Mertens-Kiesewetter house was not identified by Tryphena Thistlethwayte, and has been lost from the surviving record since. The exact wording of the half-finished pantaloons letter survives only as paraphrase in Baring-Gould 1889. Whether the Paris audience was granted to Phillida Bathurst or to Bathurst’s mother Grace Coote Bathurst remains contested between the standard accounts and the genealogical readings. The Prussian police file led by Captain von Klitzing is most likely held by the Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv at Potsdam and has not been re-examined by modern Cold File-grade scholarship. The “vanishing” framing the case acquired through Charles Fort’s Lo! (1931) and H. Beam Piper’s “He Walked Around the Horses” (1948) is folklore, not the documentary record. The documentary record is a robbery-murder lean that no Prussian or British court ever closed.

Closing register on the named-but-never-convicted

Augustus Schmidt and Christian Mertens are named in this article because the contemporaneous Prussian investigation of 1809 and 1810 named them, and because the 19th-century British accounts that drew on that investigation named them. Neither man was ever legally convicted of murdering Benjamin Bathurst. The 1852 skeleton was not identified. No court, Prussian or British, ever closed the case against any individual. The modern critical reading leans towards a robbery-murder by people connected to the White Swan, but a lean is not a verdict.

Sources

Primary:

The National Archives (UK), catalogue entry for Benjamin Bathurst, diplomat, reference C/F57742.
The National Archives (UK), Foreign Office: Embassy and Consulates, Austria (Vienna): General Correspondence (FO 7).
The National Archives (UK), Foreign Office: General Correspondence before 1906, Prussia (FO 64).
Le Moniteur Universel, Paris, 12 December 1809, Berlin correspondent’s notice on Bathurst (BnF / Gallica).
Henry Bathurst, Memoirs of the Late Right Reverend Henry Bathurst, Lord Bishop of Norwich (London, 1837).
Sabine Baring-Gould, “The Disappearance of Bathurst,” in Historic Oddities and Strange Events (London, 1889).
Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv (Potsdam), Prignitz and Perleberg holdings finding aid.

Secondary:

Mike Dash, “The Disappearance of Benjamin Bathurst,” Fortean Times 54 (Summer 1990), pp. 40-44.
Michael Mason, “Benjamin Bathurst: The Case of the Missing Diplomat, 1809,” Biography 14:3 (1991), p. 216.
“A Mysterious Crime,” Littell’s Living Age, 1862.
Dictionary of National Biography (1885-1900), entry for Benjamin Bathurst.
Wikipedia, “Benjamin Bathurst (diplomat),” used as a footnoted map to primaries.