Ernst Hartenstein
_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
valet and the coachman, to be taken outside to them. Then Jardine
and I sat down to our wine, at a table in the common room, until
the man who claimed to be the innkeeper came back and told us
that the fresh horses were harnessed to the coach and ready to
go. Then we went outside again.

I looked at the two horses on the off side, and then walked around
in front of the team to look at the two nigh-side horses, and as I
did I felt giddy, as though I were about to fall, and everything
went black before my eyes. I thought I was having a fainting
spell, something I am not at all subject to, and I put out my hand
to grasp the hitching bar, but could not find it. I am sure, now,
that I was unconscious for some time, because when my head
cleared, the coach and horses were gone, and in their place was a
big farm wagon, jacked up in front, with the right front wheel
off, and two peasants were greasing the detached wheel