ressing our troops hard: placing himself at the head of the latter, he
fought valiantly, but at length his soldiers abandoned him, and we have
not been able to learn his fate" ('Memoires du Duc de Navailles', book
iv. P. 243)

The report of his death spread rapidly through France and Italy;
magnificent funeral services were held in Paris, Rome, and Venice, and
funeral orations delivered. Nevertheless, many believed that he would
one day reappear, as his body had never been recovered.

Guy Patin mentions this belief, which he did not share, in two of his
letters:--

"Several wagers have been laid that M. de Beaufort is not dead! 'O
utinam'!" (Guy Patin, September 26, 1669).

"It is said that M. de Vivonne has been granted by commission the post of
vice-admiral of France for twenty years; but there are many who believe
that the Duc de Beaufort is not dead, but imprisoned in some Turkish
island. Believe this who may, I don't; he is really dead, and the last
thing I should desire would be to be as dead as he",(Ibid., January 14,
1670).

The following are the objections to this theory:

"In several narratives written by eye-witnesses of the siege of Candia,"
says Jacob, "it is related that the Turks, according to their custom,
despoiled the body and cut off the head of the Duc de Beaufort on the
field of battle, and that the latter was afterwards exhibited at
Constantinople; and this may account for some of the details given by
Sandras de Courtilz in his 'Memoires du Marquis de Montbrun' and his
'Memoires d'Artagnan', for one can easily imagine that the naked,
headless body might escape recognition. M. Eugene Sue, in his 'Histoire
de la Marine' (vol. ii, chap. 6), had adopted this view, which coincides
with the accounts left by Philibert de Jarry and the Marquis de Ville,
the MSS. of whose letters and 'Memoires' are to be found in the
Bibliotheque du Roi.

"In the first volume of the 'Histoire de la Detention des Philosophes et
des Gens de Lettres a la Bastille, etc.', we find the following
passage:--

"Without dwelling on the difficulty and danger of an abduction, which an
Ottoman scimitar might any day during this memorable siege render
unnecessary, we shall restrict ourselves to declaring positively that the
correspondence of Saint-Mars from 1669 to 1680 gives us no ground for
supposing that the governor of Pignerol had any great prisoner of state
in his charge during that period of time, except Fouquet and