The Devil’s Footprints

The strange beings who people our folklore could perhaps be inspired by real events, like the one that occurred in Devonshire in 1855.

It is 7 February 1855.  The whole of England’s South-West has been swept since morning by an appalling tempest.  Wind of unheard-of violence is uprooting trees, taking off roofs, blowing down belfries and ripping out gravestones in the cemeteries, leaving tombs open and coffins scattered.

Barricaded inside their houses, the inhabitants of Devonshire are terrified.  Some would later say:

“It was an infernal night, the wind was screaming like a thousand witches…”

Suddenly, around five o’clock in the morning, the wind calms, the noise stops and snow begins to fall heavily.

This silence, after the torment, worries all who have not slept a wink that night.  One of them would say,

“We had the impression that there was some sort of threat hovering…  With my wife who was trembling with fear huddled against me, we were afraid of something supernatural.  Everything was really strange that night.”

It is in Blayford that it all unfolds.

Around six o’clock, a high-pitched, terrifying howl suddenly erupts near the village.  A dog’s howl which is heard for about a kilometre all around.  The good people huddle under their eiderdowns.  Then, once again, there is silence.

Around eight o’clock, Dawn breaks and the inhabitants of Blayford fearfully open their shutters.  Snow is no longer falling, but the countryside is all white.  Many times, the villagers of the little English town have seen this spectacle upon rising and they have always found something marvellous about it.  Today, inexplicably, they feel anguish.  A woman, unable to clearly explain her unease, would say:

“Bad luck seemed to be floating over us…”

Despite this, that same morning, a farm hand goes to have a look around to see the damage caused by the tempest.  He then notices some strange footprints.  Footprints of a kind that he has never seen and which correspond to no known animal in the region.  They look like a little horse-hoof and pierce the snow with mathematical regularity.  The farm hand, very intrigued, follows them across the fields and soon arrives beside the tattered remains of the dog who had howled so atrociously in the early hours of the morning.

He bends over it and notices, stunned,

“that the poor animal had died from wounds which could not have been made by either a man or a beast”…

He runs back to alert the village, saying:

“Come and see!  There are some strange footprints.”

The inhabitants of Blayford rush out and see that the farm hand has not lied.

Further, at that same moment, throughout the whole of Devonshire, peasants are discovering the same footprints in the fresh snow.

They extend over more than 160 kilometres.

The journalists of the County of course write about the phenomenon, remarking that the footprints, which are like dots on rigorously straight lines, each measures ten centimetres in length by seven centimetres in width, and that they are very regularly twenty-five centimetres apart…  One journalist writes:

“These footprints don’t stop anywhere.  Whatever it was, the unknown creature walked on hooves in short, leaping steps, in an inexplicable fashion without stopping nor resting, and it covered here more than thirty kilometres during the tragic night of 7 February, crossing rivers, climbing the walls of several houses and walking on the roofs before finally arriving at the little village cemetery without daring to enter it…”

Zoologists soon come from London to examine these strange prints which remain visible in the frozen snow.  None of them manages to identify the animal who had travelled all over South-East England – always in a straight line.

The mysterious “Devil’s Footprints”, drawn by a witness and published in “The Illustrated London News” on 24 February 1855.

One of them writes a few days later in the Illustrated London News:

“This mysterious visitor generally only passed once down or across each garden or courtyard, and did so in nearly all the houses in many parts of the several towns above mentioned, as also in the farms scattered about;  this regular track passing in some instances over the roofs of houses, and hayricks, and very high walls (one fourteen feet [4.50 metres]), without displacing the snow on either side or altering the distance between the feet, and passing on as if the wall had not been any impediment.  The gardens with high fences or walls, and gates locked, were equally visited as those open and unprotected.”

Another notes that

“two inhabitants of one community followed a line of prints for three and a half hours, passing under rows of redcurrant bushes and fruit trees in espaliers;  losing the prints and finding them again on the roof of houses to which their search had led them”.

Farther on, he adds that these prints

“passed through a circular opening of about thirty centimetres in diameter and inside a drain of 15 cm;  finally, they crossed an estuary around 3,500 kilometres wide”…

A third writes:

“These footprints are strange, for the snow is completely removed, as if it has been cut by a diamond or marked by a red-hot iron…”

Naturally, many hypotheses are emitted by both journalists and scholars who study the case.  Some are extravagant.  Someone suggests that these strange marks could have been made

“by a balloon dragging its tethering ring at the end of a rope”.

But this explanation appears absurd.  How could a metal ring tear apart the Blayford dog;  and by what miracle could this ring, attached to a balloon blown by the wind, leave perfect prints, disposed in a straight line and regularly distanced at 25 centimetres?…

A journalist suggests that it could be marks left by a kangaroo who had escaped from a menagerie.  The zoologists reply that it is extremely rare that kangaroos leap on only one leg, and that they haven’t any hooves, anyway…

Other investigators try to explain the presence of these marks by an atmospheric phenomenon.  It is pertinently replied that no-one had ever yet seen an atmospheric phenomenon leave hoof-prints…

Finally, none of the hypotheses emitted having been retained, the newspapers publish the embarrassed words of zoologists, physicists and meteorologists.  One of them, Doctor Williamson, goes as far as writing this:

“These millions of prints constitute an absolute enigma.  Neither a man, nor an animal, nor a machine is capable of leaving such marks.  This phenomenon is inexplicable.  Consequently, the best thing, in my opinion, is to forget it.”

A surprising declaration, coming from a scholar.

But the Devonshire peasants do not forget, and they give a name to these mysterious marks:  they call them The Devil’s Footprints…  A name that is not very scientific of course, but which still remains.  And it is by this name that Historians continue to designate them today…

***

Guy Breton, whose work I have translated, consulted the English Press of the epoch and was able to note that, for two months, February and March 1855, all of the English newspapers published articles, investigations, interviews and sketches on what was called at the time the “mysterious Devonshire holes”.  He adds that a number of authors have studied this case.  Charles Fort, who called himself an “amateur of the unusual and scribe of miracles”, consecrated a chapter of his Book of the Damned to them, as did Jacques Bergier and the Info group in Le Livre de l’Inexplicable…

***

They give no explanation and only emit hypotheses.  Some speak of sea birds, hailstones, field-mice.  But there is no bird, nor field-mouse whose feet end in hooves.  As for hailstones, has anyone ever seen any fall in a straight line, twenty-five centimetres apart?…  A modern author had another idea:  he suggested that these marks could have been left by an extra-terrestrial who landed from a space-ship…  Guy Breton says that he is not hostile a priori to this kind of explanation, but that this person would have had a strange way of walking.  On top of which, he must have been very small to have been able to pass through openings of a diameter of thirty centimetres…

***

So, we come back to Charles Fort’s explanation.  He said with humour:

“These prints could only have been made by a thousand one-legged kangaroos wearing a very small horseshoe…”

In other words, we don’t know.

***

There have been some absolutely identical marks left in Scotland in 1839, in the Kerguelen Islands in 1840, in the United States in 1908, in Belgium in 1945 and in Brazil in 1954…  So, you see, the Devil walks around his estates.  After all, he is called the Prince of this World…

***

Elisabeth, the suffering empress – part 6

Elisabeth and Franz-Josef at Cap Martin in 1894.

The third observation which can be made about Crown Prince Rudolf, Archduke of Austria’s death at Mayerling in the night of Tuesday 29 to Wednesday 30 January 1889, is that the dossier given by Emperor Franz-Josef to Count Taafe, the Prime Minister – and his childhood friend – has also disappeared in a suspicious fire at his castle.  The copy of this dossier, deposited with a lawyer of the imperial family, was stolen.

Fourthly, Herr Frederic Wolf, a carpenter in the village of Alland, near Mayerling, has recounted that his father, also a carpenter, was called to clean up the hunting pavillion two days after the drama.  Herr Wolf had always said that the bedroom had been the scene of a terrible combat.  The furniture had been knocked over and broken, there were bullet impacts on the furniture and in the walls.  There were traces of blood everywhere and, in particular, an enormous puddle of it near the bed.  To make it go away, his father had had to plane the floor-boards.  He added that the bedroom window was broken and that a ladder was leaning against the outside wall.

Crown Prince Rudolf, Archduke of Austria.

Fifthly, Archduchess Maria-Theresa, the widow of Archduke Karl-Louis, who was one of Emperor Franz-Josef’s brothers, had certified that Rudolf had said to her husband:

“I am going to be assassinated.”

Rudolf was alluding to a European conspiracy which was aiming to depose Franz-Josef from Hungary’s throne and place his liberal son in his place.  According to Empress Zita, Austria’s last empress and last Queen of Hungary, in her 1983 newspaper interview, Rudolf had refused to participate in the plot against his father.  He had said to his uncle Karl-Louis:

“I would have no scrupules in revealing this conspiracy but if I do, I will be killed.”

Sixthly, Archduchess Maria-Theresa saw Rudolf dead and touched his hands.  She declared to Empress Zita:

“The gloves had been stuffed with cotton, for his hands were broken.”

This remark can be connected to the statement by Prince Xavier de Bourbon-Parme (Empress Zita’s brother) published in the December 1982 number of the magazine Historia:

“I have it from a reliable source, believe me, because it is from the mouth of an official person who had entered the bedroom of the drama when the body of Maria Vetsera had just been removed, that Archduke Rudolf’s right wrist had been severed by a blow from a sabre.”

Seventhly, Doctor Karl Georg von Boroviczeny, a Berlin doctor and grandson of the Princess of Lowenstein, whose sister had married Don Miguel of Braganza.  Don Miguel was a great friend of Rudolf.  Invited to the hunt which was to take place on the morning of the drama, he had declined the invitation at the last moment.  But he recounted later to his family that Rudolf had said to him:

“I am going to be assassinated.  I know too many things.”

Eighthly, when the Carmelites at the convent built near Mayerling are asked if they pray for the Archduke who committed suicide, they reply only that he is dead.  The 1983 Mother Superior declared that each new Carmelite is taught that the Archduke did not commit suicide but that he had been killed.

Ninthly, Rudolf’s faithful coachman, present on the night of the drama, repeated, without giving details:

“It’s not like they always say, it’s not a suicide.”

Tenthly, Empress Elisabeth’s daughter Gisela told Empress Zita that she had touched her brother’s head and that it was crushed, as if it had received a blow.  The official version claims that Rudolf had killed Maria Vetsera by applying the weapon to her left temple, the bullet having exited through the right temple.  However, on 7 July 1959, undertakers from Baden in the Viennese forest, near Mayerling, proceeded to the exhumation of the defunct girl, in the presence of a forensic doctor.  It was noted that

“the cranium presented an oval hole of seven centimetres”.

There was no hole through which a bullet could have exited.

Eleventhly, the physical elimination of the Prince, for political reasons, is perfectly conceivable.  Different hates were unleashed against the Habsburg family.  We have seen, for example, that of Bismarck, ceaselessly trying to weaken Austria.  There were many others.  Empress Zita affirms that some of the assassins were foreigners.  In the hypothesis of an assassination, Maria Vetsera would have been killed only because she was with Rudolf.  This is far removed from the “Romeo and Juliet” version.

Twelfthly, according to a letter conserved in the Royal Archives of Windsor Castle, the British Prime Minister is convinced that it is a double assassination.  This letter was written on 12 February 1889 by the Prince of Wales to Queen Victoria:

“You tell me that Lord Salisbury is certain that poor Rudolf and that unfortunate young girl were killed…”

This letter can be connected to another contemporary one addressed by the King of the Belgians, Leopold II (Rudolf’s father-in-law) to his brother in Brussels.  Telling him of the uncomfortable voyage to Vienna to attend the funeral, the Belgian monarch adds:

“It is sovereignly important that the suicide version be affirmed and maintained.  (…)  Suicide and madness were the only means of avoiding an unforgettable scandal the details of which I cannot confide in my letter, but which I shall narrate in all details Saturday.

Your brother, Leopold.”

This capital letter was found in the personal papers of Monsieur Paul Hymans, Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs, one of the signatories of the Treaty of Versailles, after his death in 1942.

In light of these troubling elements, it is now impossible to blindly uphold the suicide thesis.  The possibility of assassination can no longer be systematically denied.  Doubt has always existed and is singularly reinforced by technical observations which give pause for thought.  Franz-Josef sometimes admitted:

“The truth is even more serious than anything than anyone one has ever said.”

More than a century after this drama, we are perhaps very close to the truth…

***

Elisabeth, the amazon queen – part 8

The imperial family at Godollo.

On 25 April 1879, a storm breaks and the Silver Wedding Jubilee ceremonies have to be delayed until 28 April because of bad weather.  The crowd’s impatience has made it even more enthusiastic.  In bright sunshine, the Emperor and Empress take place under a dais at eleven o’clock precisely.  Franz-Josef is standing, wearing a helmet with a long green plume, saluting his standards and colours.  Elisabeth (Sissi) and her daughter Maria-Valeria are seated, sheltered by a parasol, between the Emperor and Prince Rudolf, Archduke of Austria, who is also standing.  All of the trade corporations advance in an incredible procession before the imperial tent.  A baker carries a giant bretzel, a piece of which is snatched as it passes, by some people in the second storey of a house on the Ring.  On the pastry-cooks’ float, a wedding-cake one metre in diameter is resisting the heat.  The Master Printer Manz, disguised as Gutenberg, raises a composition on which can be read “Fifteen Days on the Danube”.  This is the title of a memoir written by Rudolf which has just been published.  The prettiest Viennese women, seated on a float, recall one of Durer’s works.  Then there are the hunters with their noisy packs of hounds.  Two hundred and thirty thousand people vibrate with these rejoicings, which are unparalleled in Europe.  A total success.  Franz-Josef, very moved, thanks his Government:

“Throughout my thirty years of reign, I have shared with my peoples many difficult hours and a lot of joys;  one could not procure me a purer nor deeper one than that of these last days.”

And the homage received by the Empress can be interpreted as a reconciliation between the city and the amazon sovereign.  A joke is circulating, in French, which makes Sissi laugh:

“The Empress is not celebrating twenty-five years of marriage but rather twenty-five years of manege!”

Vienna manifests a deep attachment to the couple.  It is the irrefutable proof that the peoples of Austria nourish a lively and warm sympathy for their monarchs.  The couple will receive a charming gift in the form of a great screen.  On five panels, their Jubilee is painted in a delicate and naive manner like Epinal images.  Sissi and Franz-Josef will place this screen in the Red Salon of the Imperial Villa, in Bad Ischl.

Prince Rudolf, Archduke of Austria.

At Godollo, the equestrian festivities begin again, between hunting and dressage.  The Empress is seeking to correct her faults by mounting all available horses.  This is no longer sport, it is a vocation.  The hunting season for the Crown Prince is also open.  Rudolf, who has several feminine successes to his credit, is literally pursued by a half-Greek widow, Baroness Helena Vetsera.  Viennese aristocracy watches, with a mixture of amusement and curiosity, the way in which the Baroness, who has two daughters, tries to marry them “well”.  Beseiged, Rudolf chooses to laugh about it.  Sissi and Franz-Josef are a lot less indulgent.  At the family dinner of 3 December, the day after the thirty-first anniversary of his rise to the throne, the Emperor remarks:

“This woman’s activity around Rudolf is incredible.  She follows him step by step.  Today, she even gave him a gift.”

Rudolf’s real thoughts are elsewhere.  He is living the happiest time of his life.  His travels have rendered him famous in Europe.  At twenty-two-years-old, he is the most observed Crown Prince and the most sought after.  His personal life, very agitated, doesn’t really bother his father, but the Emperor thinks that he should find a wife for his son.  It’s about time…  And Franz-Josef already has an idea.  Having made a precise examination of all the possible young ladies, he has shown interest in Stephanie of Belgium, the daughter of King Leopold II.  Her mother, Queen Marie-Henriette, was born Archduchess of Austria.  The King of the Belgians is favourable to the union.  So, when Elisabeth manifests her intention of leaving for Ireland at the end of January 1880, Franz-Josef asks her to pass through Brussels on her way back.

***

The new stay in Ireland is marked by a succession of falls from horseback and spectacular accidents.  The Empress gives the impression of wanting to stretch her efforts – and her luck? –  to their limit, by looking for more speed, wider ditches, higher banks.  Her habitual admirers follow her, when they can.  Around her, the best cavaliers fall, including Middleton.  She recounts to Franz-Josef, frightened by this recital of stunts and accidents:

“He remained attached to his stirrup and it was almost more terrifying than the other day…”

The Empress is more in danger of killing herself on horseback than of having a love-affair with Captain Middleton…

However, Elisabeth is recalled to reality by a message from Franz-Josef.  He asks her to see Queen Victoria to compensate for the effect of the Empress of Austria’s presence, for more than a month, in Irish territory.  Sissi is not happy but she doesn’t argue.  On 10 March, she lunches at Windsor Castle.  Returning to the Claridge Hotel, in London, Elisabeth receives a telegramme.  She blanches.  Her lady-in-waiting trembles as she opens the message.  She reads:

“The Crown Prince is engaged to Princess Stephanie of Belgium.”

She exclaims:

“God be praised!  It’s not a misfortune!”

Sissi replies:

“May God make that true.”

This fear, unfortunately founded, shows the premonitory instinct of the Empress.  Although, her anxiety is mostly about the ages of the fiances;  Stephanie is only fifteen.  Since her own marriage, Sissi is afraid of premature unions.

On the way home to Austria, she stops in Brussels.  All the royal family is there.  Splendid in a blue gown with a mink border, Sissi captivates all gazes.  The comparison with Princess Stephanie is not to the young girl’s advantage.  She is fresh, a little plump.  Elisabeth questions Queen Henriette:  Stephanie is not yet pubescent…  Sissi is convinced:  this marriage is madness.  It must be delayed…  And Rudolf?  Is he in love or is he submitting to his father, who is negotiating a marriage for State reasons?  A brutal change has occurred in the Heir to the Throne’s behaviour.  A few weeks ago, he declared to his former preceptor:

“I am not ready to be a husband and I have no intention of becoming one as long as I can prevent it.”

But, on Sunday 7 March, after his last interview with Stephanie, he writes to this same Count Latour:

“I have found what I was looking for.  Stephanie is pretty, good, astute, very distinguished and will become for the Emperor a daughter worthy of trust, a faithful subject and a good Austrian.”

Having known many pretty, easy girls, Stephanie’s absence of maturity has perhaps moved him.

Franz-Josef is happy and reassured.  But the Empress is worried.  The discussion turns nasty.  Sissi obtains only one thing:  that the date of the wedding be not fixed immediately.  Rudolf complains that his mother is very reserved about his fiancee, but he returns to his garnison’s Command, in Prague.

Back in Bavaria, and thinking that Louis II is at Berg Castle, Sissi crosses the lake.  The sovereign is absent, and the Empress, disappointed, wants to leave her cousin a mark of her passage which is more affectionate than a visiting card.  In the park, she picks a branch of jasmin and adds it to her card.

***

To be continued.