Claimants to Royalty

<SPAN name="chap34"></SPAN> <h3> THE FALSE DAUPHINS: N�UNDORFF. </h3> <p>During the trial of the <i>soi disant</i> 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!</p> <p>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'Angoul�me. 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 <i>r�le</i> of ill-used royalty. By these means, and by practising as a spiritualist, the <i>soi disant</i> 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.</p> <p>Unfortunately Naundorff's pretensions did not die with him, for he left two children, Louis and Marie Antoinette "de Bourbon," who some few years since renewed their claims to the reversion of the French throne. In 1873, the son, Louis, summoned the Count de Chambord before a Paris court, to show cause why a judgment pronounced many years ago against Naundorff's father, by the Civil Tribunal of the Seine, should not be reversed in his, Louis's, favour. Notwithstanding the fact that the putative "grandson" of Louis the Sixteenth retained the services of Jules Favre as an advocate, he was unable to soften the iron hearts of the Parisian jury, and had to subside into oblivion.</p> <br/><br/><br/> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />